Yasmar is a heritage-listed house at 185 Parramatta Road, Haberfield, Inner West Council, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It has variously served as a private home, Sunday school, children's court and juvenile remand and detention centre, and is now used by community groups and as a correctional services training facility. It was designed by John Bibb and built from 1856 to 1858. The surrounding site has also been known as Yasmar Hostel, Yasmar Detention Centre, Yasmar Child Welfare Home, Ashfield Remand Home, Yasmar Shelter and the Yasmar Juvenile Justice Centre. The property is owned by Land and Property Management Authority (LPMA) (State Government). It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 18 February 2000.
History
The Ramsay and Learmonth families and the construction of Yasmar
In 1803, a land grant of 480 acres, the boundaries of which form the present day suburb of Haberfield, was made to NSW Army Corps Ensign Nicholas Bayley (or Bailey) and known as "Sunning Hill" Farm. The land was sold for 850 pounds in 1805 to Simeon Lord (1773-1840), wealthy emancipist who changed the locality name to "Dobroyde" (note with an 'e') after his cousin's home, Dobroyde Castle, Lancashire, England where he had spent much of his youth. Lord had been convicted in 1790 for stealing cloth and was transported to Sydney for 7 years. He arrived in 1791 and after his release became a very prosperous businessman. By 1820, he was recorded as being the largest landholder in Sydney.
In 1825, Simeon Lord's daughter, Sarah Anne, married Dr David Ramsay. Ramsay, born in Scotland in 1794, had graduated from the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh and had arrived in NSW as a ship's surgeon aboard the "Surry", a convict transport in 1820. Two years later he returned and established a business with his former ship's captain, Thomas Raine. The firm of Raine & Ramsay was a broadly based trading enterprise, located on the corner of Bligh and Hunter Streets, Sydney billing itself as 'ship owners, agents, general merchants and wool brokers'; Ramsay also held several offices with Scots Church, Sydney. There was a conditional transfer of Dobroyde Estate as a dowry. The Ramsays built their home "Dobroyde House" on a crest of their estate fronting Parramatta Road between present day Dalhousie Street and Rogers Avenue. It was a timber cottage with a garden. The Ramsays moved into their new house in 1826. Mary Louisa, first of 10 children to the Ramsays, was born the same year. (9 of the 10 surviving children are buried in St David's church yard: one died young. Percy is buried in Brisbane. Family names are commemorated in Haberfield's street names e.g.: Lord, Ramsay, Yasmar, Dalhousie, Percy, Edward [now Hawthorne], St David's, Learmonth).
The Raine & Ramsay partnership did not last and Ramsay devoted much of his time to his Dobroyde estate, especially horticultural pursuits. He also had an inn known as "Speed the Plough" or "The Plough Inn" built on the Dobroyde Estate side of Parramatta Road at its junction with Liverpool Road. He owned the inn but leased it out for others to manage. It was a two-storey building with a verandah across the front and a single storey wing on each side. It was a noted landmark in the district. Here locals, travellers, and drovers taking cattle or sheep to the Glebe Island abattoirs could quench their thirst. In the 1860s a flour mill and bakery were built near the inn.
In the 1830s, Ramsay established the Dobroyde Gardens Nursey alongside Iron Cove Creek (now Hawthorne Parade). In 1840, Sarah and David Ramsay set up a home Sunday School at Dobroyde House, the first Home Sunday School of the Presbyterian Church of NSW. That year Dr Ramsay was presented with a silver medallion for "Pine Apple" at the Flora & Horticultural Society Show. David Ramsay owned most of what is now Haberfield and grew oranges and pineapples along the creek. Their son Edward Pierson Ramsay, who would become a prominent zoologist, was born in 1842.
In 1850 Mary Louisa Ramsay married Alexander Learmonth. Learmonth had been born in Scotland and had arrived in New South Wales in 1842. In 1854 the Ramsay's 3rd daughter, Isabella Helen was married to Dr John Belisario, English dentist, at Dobroyde by the Rev. Dr J Dunmore Lang [SMH 7.10.1854]. Dr Belisario was accredited as first colonial dentist to use ether as an anaesthetic; tooth extraction for Duke of Edinburgh in 1869; later he became a member of Linnean Society and Australian Museum. In 1855, four roads were constructed through Dobroyde Estate and named Ramsay, Dalhousie, Waratah and Boomerang. In the same year, 46 acres of the estate was transferred to Alexander and Mary Louise Learmonth.