An Australian politician, barrister, adventurer, author, and political activist, Wentworth
was born on the 13th of August 1790 on Norfolk Island to parents Catherine Crowley and
D’Arcy Wentworth. His parents met on the Australian-bound Neptune, part of the
second fleet, arriving in Sydney in 1790.
Catherine Crowley was a 17-year old Irish convict, shipped to Sydney after being charged with stealing clothing, and D’Arcy Wentworth, a surgeon turned “highwayman” avoided prosecution in London by accepting a post as a surgeon’s assistant in the newly colonised New South Wales. The timeline suggests they conceived William on board out of wedlock.
The family established themselves in Parramatta buying land and property and sent William back to London for his early schooling. After returning to Sydney and conducting an exploration through the Blue Mountains in 1813, he went back to England where he studied at Cambridge University and was admitted to the bar. Wentworth once again returned to Sydney in 1824 and went on to inherit his father’s land after his passing in 1927. This newfound wealth meant Wentworth was one of the richest men in colony. In 1827 he purchased a small stone cottage on prime land, which he extended into an opulent, gothic mansion later named Vaucluse house.
He lived there with his lover Sarah Cox, also the daughter of ex-convicts, with whom he had two out of ten children out of wedlock, and later married. Despite their wealth and stately home, William and Sarah were faced with exclusion from the prominent colonial families in the area, riddled with scandal and illicit history.
Wentworth went on to be a prolific journalist and activist, advocating against the exclusion of ex-convicts-turned-free settlers. He established the first (liberal) newspaper in the colony “The Australian,” campaigned for trial by jury, and helped form the University of Sydney among many other accomplishments. Being rejected socially and politically, particularly from the prominent Sydney elitist group “the exclusives,” the family eventually resettled in Dorset, England, where Wentworth died in 1874.
Broadhurst, William Henry, 1855-1927, The State Library of New South Wales
Following Wentworth’s wishes, Sarah employed the architect duo The Mansfield Brothers to design the Wentworth Mausoleum for her husbands final resting place. The Gothic-inspired sandstone mausoleum was built on top of a rock on the grounds of Vaucluse House, where Wentworth ritually stood and overlooked Sydney harbour. The Mausoleum sat under a towering rock escarpment, bordered by bright clusters of native flora and fauna. It is evident that The Mansfield brothers were inspired by the “Picturesque Movement” of the time, with the human-made elements of the Mausoleum and natural surrounds, seamlessly existing with one another. Sitting atop the black and white marble floor features a European, Carrera marble sarcophagus, under a terracotta tiled roof, with stained glass windows adorning the Wentworth coat of arms, and a 1st Century AD copy of a Pompeian mosaic among other opulent features.
Wentworth’s body was transported from England to Sydney, and he was posthumously celebrated in a public funeral at St Andrews Cathedral in the city. His coffin was then walked all the way to the Vaucluse House grounds, the streets lined with tens of thousands of onlookers, and lowered into the majestic crypt inside the Wentworth Mausoleum where he lies alongside his family.