Dendy Cottage


	DENDY COTTAGE

A little north of the Long Tunnel Extended Gold Mine sits a modest house bearing the name ‘Dendy Cottage’.

Henry Dendy was an English pioneer and settler who arrived in Australia in 1841. He made a fortune in buying and developing land near Melbourne, but became financially insolvent after the Great Depression of 1843.

Growing old, Henry went to live with his son who drove the engine at the Long Tunnel Extended Gold Mine in Walhalla.

Rather sadly, seeking independence, Dendy asked a friend to do up an old hut in the bush. In 1881 Dendy died at Walhalla, where he was buried. An epitaph might be the comment of his former servant John Booker: 'a good, honourable, kind master, but no businessman'.

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Henry Dendy (1800-1881) was born in Surrey, England. When his father died in 1838, Henry was a brewer at nearby Dorking. In 1840 he sold the family farms and paid £1 an acre for a special survey of 5120 acres (2048 ha) at Port Phillip. He arrived in Melbourne in1841 with his wife Sarah, whom he had married in 1835, and their 5-year-old son Henry.

Dendy's behaviour was extraordinary, especially his attempt to establish a manorial estate in the pastoral colony. Inadvertently, though, he almost made a fortune. If applied to urban land, his order was thought to be worth £100,000.

Astonished by his potential windfall, Dendy accepted advice from the forceful merchant J. B. Were, who was his agent. Defiantly, they claimed urban land before accepting two miles (3.2 km) of bay frontage at the Melbourne five-mile limit. Their Brighton Estate was surveyed in May 1841. The ambitious plan, a pace-setter for Melbourne, offered delightful foreshore sites, a township with crescents and an inland village among seventy-eight-acre (33 ha) farms. Dendy built a two-storey 'manor house' and made his seventy-four-acre (32 ha) seafront home, Brighton Park, a show place. His prosperity seemed assured, although the original manorial dream had been amended. Unable to employ the twenty-nine families and twenty-two single workers he had sponsored under the land regulations, he helped them to settle.

When depression hit the colony in 1843, land sales ceased and bad debts accumulated. Dendy suffered severely but kept afloat for a time until In 1845 he was declared insolvent. He attempted to recover by brewing at Geelong in 1846-48.

After visiting England for some years, he returned to a sheep property near Werribee, then to a flour mill at Eltham, where Sarah died in 1861. He sold the mill in 1867 to go to Gippsland, where he was a director of the Thomson River copper mine. It devoured his capital. Growing old, Henry lived with his son, who drove the engine at the Long Tunnel gold-mine, Walhalla. Pathetically, seeking independence, Dendy asked the friend who had built Brighton Park for materials to do up an old hut in the bush. On 11 February 1881 Dendy died at Walhalla, where he was buried. An epitaph might be the comment of his former servant John Booker: 'a good, honourable, kind master, but no businessman'.

http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/dendy-henry-12883