Dalley's Castle, Manly History

The story of an eccentric Australian.

Pic 1: Dalley’s Castle in 1897.  Scan 29.7.04

DALLEY, WILLIAM BEDE, QC MLC, (1831-1888), 'patriot, scholar and statesman', was born in George Street, Sydney, on 5 July 1831, son of John Dalley, store-keeper, and Catherine Spillane, who were both convicts. Dalley worked his way up in the world, becoming a lawyer and then a very vocal satirist and Parliamentarian, famous for his liberal-minded views on the death penalty and human rights.

Short and thickset, with a “jovial and often glowing countenance”*, Dalley’s colourful cravats and buttonholes reflected his unique flair and style – he was a colonial trendsetter. He saluted friends and acquaintances alike as 'Old boy' and found it virtually impossible to resist any appeal to his generosity. By the mid-1860s he was renowned as the most scintillating conversationalist and after-dinner speaker in the colony.

On 15 June 1872 at St John's Church of England, Darlinghurst, Dalley married Eleanor Jane Long. The union brought him great happiness, but just nine years later Elanor died of typhoid fever, leaving six young children. Grief-stricken, Dalley withdrew from public life, sold his house at Rose Bay and lived at Sutton Forest, devoting himself to his children.

In 1882 Dalley, returned to Sydney. He bought the area of ‘Manly Heights’ and decided to build a castle-like building in the Gothic Revival style on his new property, out of the beautiful local sandstone. He named it Marinella (meaning ‘home by the sea’) and took up residency in the magnificent castle in 1884.

While living at Marinella, Dalley returned to public life as Attorney General of NSW. The Goulburn Herald contrasted Dalley's intellect with his indolence and thought him likely to prove more 'ornamental than useful'. But the next three years were to be his most active. When he died in 1888, Dalley was greatly missed and the papers all rang long obituaries.

Dalley’s Castle (as Marinella was commonly known) became a boarding-house and lay derelict, before Camden Grammar School for Boys rented it from 1933 to 1939. Frederick Earle, a student and teacher there, remembers the hard work needed to make the castle habitable as a boarding school. Local children loved to play in the grounds of the ‘haunted’ house.

For nearly sixty years the building dominated the Manly skyline. The demolition of Dalley’s Castle in 1939 was controversial. New laws passed to restrict residential flat buildings were too late to save Manly’s most famous landmark. A Sydney Morning Herald editorial calling for ‘Control of Flats’ denounced the ‘irretrievable damage’ caused by the destruction of ‘romantic homes’ like Dalley’s Castle. That same year, H.G. Smith’s historic Fairlight House was also demolished.

MAN04137  View from Dalley’s Castle
MAN05066  View of Dalley’s Castle from Manly Oval
MAN05402  Dalley’s Castle, 1930s, photo by Leon Cayley
MAN01136  W.B.Dalley

* The Australian Dictionary of Biography, online edition. http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A040008b.htm