The history of Skellatar house - the end of the Bowman Era

Let's return now to the twin brothers for whom the house was built, Andrew and Edward Bowman.

Andrew Bowman's first wife died in childbirth in 1878, the second year of their marriage. He remarried in 1883, the year that Skellatar House was built, and it's unclear whether he ever lived at the new house. In any event, Andrew and Edward now divided their share of the estate between them. Andrew took the eastern portion, which he called Gyarran. He built a homestead there in 1900, and it is still standing, near the New England Highway on the top of Black Hill in Muswellbrook. Edward Bowman retained what had been the central portion of the original estate and the Blacket-designed homestead. In 1890, at the age of 50, he married Irene May Purchase, and their family comprised three daughters and a son.
They are pictured above with one of their daughters, Winifred.


Edward was an alderman at Muswellbrook for twenty-two years, and he served six terms as mayor between 1875 and 1901. In 1906 he was elected the first president of the Council of the Shire of Wybong. This official-looking portrait is from the collection of the Muswellbrook Shire Local and Family History Society.


He was a magistrate, a councillor of St. Andrew's College at the University of Sydney, honorary secretary of the Upper Hunter Amateur Race Club, and a First Lieutenant in the Muswellbrook Corps of the New South Wales Volunteer Infantry. Bowman Park on Skellatar Street, Muswellbrook, was established on land that Edward Bowman gave to the people of Muswellbrook. When he died in 1926, Skellatar was inherited by his only son, Edward Hunter Bowman.

Edward Hunter Bowman was born in 1895 at Skellatar. After his father died he established a dairy on the property, and continued grazing the existing cattle and sheep. In the early 1930's he went to England and bought his first racehorse, a stallion named Archcullen. Hunter Bowman went on to become a prominent personality in the world of horse racing. He owned, or part-owned, a number of successful horses, including Allunga, Flying Knight, Cherry Bar and Hesdin. He established a racecourse on the estate, and this later became the Skellatar Park Racecourse. He served as president of the Upper Hunter Amateur Race Club, the Muswellbrook Jockey Club and the Polo Club. The ballroom wing of Skellatar House was constructed for Hunter Bowman in the 1930's, so he must have been a gregarious sort of fellow who enjoyed entertaining. He married Jean McLellan Trotter in 1921, but they had no children. Hunter Bowman died in 1952, and the Skellatar estate was subdivided and sold.

So now we come to the Education Era in the history of Skellatar House, from 1953 to 1997.


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The history of Skellatar House - the Bowman Era

Between 1846 and 1848 a family named Bowman gradually purchased the entire Skellator estate. The patriarch of the family was George Bowman of Richmond. He was born in Scotland in 1795, but at the age of three he was brought to the colony of New South Wales, where his father, John Bowman, received a land grant on the Hawkesbury River near Richmond. John Bowman is interesting because he commissioned the famous 'Bowman flag', shown here, to celebrate Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

The flag was on display at the Mitchell Library in Sydney during 2005, to coincide with the Trafalgar bicentennial. It's important because it's the earliest evidence of the use of the symbolic Australian fauna, the kangaroo and the emu, and it's widely regarded as the inspiration for Australia's national coat of arms.

When George was a young man, about the year 1818, he decided to do some exploring. According to various sources, he either joined an overland expedition led by John Howe of Windsor from Richmond to the Hunter River, or he later followed in Howe's footsteps along what is now the Putty Road. He is thought to be the first European to follow the course of the Hunter River from Singleton to Muswellbrook. He was very impressed by the fertility of the land he saw, so he decided to buy as much of it as he could afford, in the areas we now know as Singleton, Muswellbrook and Scone, and he received land grants as well. He was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1851, and in 1872 he became Mayor of Richmond.




Here's a portrait of George Bowman,
looking very much like the patriarch he was.





George Bowman needed plenty of land because he had 9 sons and 2 daughters to provide for. In 1848 he took the 12,560 acres of land he had purchased as the Skellator estate, and divided it into three portions.

The western side of the property was given to his third son, William, who was 25 years old, and this became the estate known as 'Balmoral', on the Denman Road out of Muswellbrook. Andrew and Edward, the 8th and 9th sons born in 1840, were twins. Their share was the eastern and central portion of the estate, for which the name, Skellator, given by Sir Francis Forbes, was retained. But they began to spell it with an 'a-r' at the end, instead of an 'o-r'. George Bowman also settled other sons on Hunter Valley properties, including Archerfield and Oaklands in Singleton, and Arrowfield and Strowan in Jerrys Plains.

Andrew and Edward were only 8 years old in 1848 when they received their property settlement, and so of course they were much too young to farm their lands themselves. After completing their secondary schooling they both went to study law at the University of Sydney, and then they went to England to continue their legal studies.



Here's a photograph of each of them looking like dashing young men about town. Andrew is on the left, and Edward on the right.

Andrew was apparently completely deaf, so perhaps his twin helped him with his studies. They both obtained their bachelor degree in law from the University of London, and returned to New South Wales in 1869.


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