NESTLED in a small valley near Mount Macquarie and beside the Belubula River lies the town of Carcoar, some 52 kilometres west of Bathurst. It was gazetted as a village on September 29, 1839, the third settlement on the western side of the Blue Mountains, after Bathurst in 1815, and Wellington in 1817.
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Surveyor James Bryn Richards named two Village Reserves in 1828: Blackman’s Swamp, now Orange, and Carcuan, now Carcoar.
The town was established at the behest of Devonshire-born merchant, Thomas Icely, who had arrived in Sydney on September 24, 1820. Icely became a successful pastoralist and was a Member of the Legislative Council from 1843-1856 and 1864-1874.
He received a grant of 560 acres from the Crown on May 26, 1829 and called this grant Coombing, an old English word meaning deep hollow or small valley. Icely added to the grants by purchases, one of which was a 1396-acre block he bought on February 7, 1835 for £349.
He called this holding Stoke after the village in the north west of Devonshire, England where his father had lived. It was on this holding that the town of Carcoar was established.
The first land sales in the town were held in 1840, and the town developed and subdivisions took place. Following Icely’s death in 1874, the land passed to his son Charles, who sold it to Barnard Stimpson for £220 in 1875. Stimpson, born in Berkshire, UK in 1819, arrived in the Colony in 1835 and owned the Albion Stores in Carcoar.
He had other land around the area, and became the first mayor of Carcoar in 1879. He also built Blenheim Hall in 1859 and in 1864 was elected to the NSW Parliament as the Carcoar representative.
It seems that Stimpson subdivided the land and sold a block to William and Harriet Downey. Following William’s death in 1884, Harriet sold the property to builder Alfred Collard on December 9, 1885 for £112.
It is believed Collard built a house on the land with a large weatherboard building beside it housing a furniture and ironmongery store. These buildings were burnt to the ground on Saturday July 5, 1890, and as a Lumme photograph of 1892 shows the existing house, it is believed Collard rebuilt some time between 1890-1892.
Subsequent owners of the property were carpenter Walter McFarlane Watson on July 8, 1908, grazier Albert Ernest Oliver on September 27, 1916 and farmer George Blazley on April 6, 1925.
Following Blazley’s death, his wife Matilda inherited the property for her life. When she died on April 4, 1966, her Trustees/beneficiaries sold the property in December of that year to Eric and Myrene Stammers. The next owner, stock and station agent Francis Gerald Laing, purchased on November 13, 1966 and sold to John and Suzanne Curley on June 16, 1988.
Diana DeLamotte, as Trustee of the Estate of the late John Curley – Suzanne having died in 1990 - sold Kentucky to David and Elizabeth Pickett in 2005, at which time the house was uninhabitable. The Picketts moved to Carcoar from Sydney and started major renovations and restoration with the assistance of Tablelands Builders in Bathurst.
They scrolled through nearly 3000 glass plates from photographer Edward Lumme’s massive Mandurama collection at the National Library, and have restored the façade according to early photographs.
They opened up the cellar and removed the rear kitchen/laundry/storage rooms and rebuilt them into a combined kitchen and living area on the same footprint, recycling the bricks. Tiles lifted from the hall to correct a rising damp problem were also recycled for use in the restored fireplace and kitchen hearths.
The two front rooms still have the original cedar flooring and the ceilings in the main part of the house are a tall 13’4”. There is a lovely pair of busts in the hallway archway. The current laundry occupies what may been a stranger’s room for travellers with its own fireplace and which is only accessible from the outside.
The name of the house goes back to at least 1925 and was possibly inspired by a local resident who was a colonel in the Confederate army during the American Civil War.
Kentucky stands proudly as a reminder of Carcoar’s early history as an important administrative district in NSW, and the National Trust congratulates the Picketts for their commitment to, and care of, the property.