EDWARD CASTRES GWYNNE

was born in 1811 near Glynde, Sussex, England. He was the son of the Rector of Firle, and cousin of General Gordon of Khartoum. After a Classical education in minor public schools, he thought of following in the military steps of his famous relative, but settled instead for the safer alternative of law. He practiced as an attorney until 1837, when a family acquaintance, Sir John Jeffcott, South Australia’s first Supreme Court Judge, made him an offer of Clerk of the Court in South Australia. Unfortunately for Gwynne, on arrival in South Australia, it emerged that Jeffcott had no power to make Gwynne an offer of Government employment, and in any case Jeffcott had died by the time Gwynne arrived. However, this turned out to be little loss, since he was granted a licence to practice and soon became prominent at the Bar, shining particularly in equity cases.

The energy that he extended to his profession was not completely consumed and, like other legal contemporaries, he looked also to politics. As a nominated member of the Legislative Council, he took a conservative position that failed in regard to State aid to religion and continuance of a nominated Council, and did him no good when he first faced the electors. ‘I had no idea how unpopular it would be’. Although he lost that election, he was elected to the Upper House two years later, only to resign in the following year upon his appointment as third judge of the Supreme Court – the first member of the South Australian bar to be so appointed. One of the reasons for Gwynne’s appointment was the erratic behaviour of Judge Boothby, with whom Gwynne was at loggerheads from the inferior position of a practicing council. He had been considering a move to Melbourne before this appointment as he ‘…would certainly not have practiced before him any more.’ Despite having to endure Boothby’s constant jibes that he was not a real Judge since he had never been called to the English bar, Gwynne’s deep conservatism sometimes brought him into agreement with his colleague’s opinions, as for instance the Real Property Act of 1858. This Act, which established for South Australia a sane clear system of issuing Certificates of Title to landed property, appalled both men.
Gwynne did not go so far as Boothby in declaring that the Act was repugnant to the basic principles of English law, but he had a profound distrust of a system which gave absolute discretion in the first instance to a Lands Titles Commission – ‘an irresponsible secret tribunal’, he called it.

The very idea revolted Gwynne’s English soul, accustomed as he was to a system that went back to the Doomsday Book, and where title searches might be intricate, long and profitable to lawyers. Regardless of opposition from the South Australian Judges and bar, the ‘Torrens System’ flourished. As the Register remarked (5th November 1860), after two years’ experience of it, ‘two thirds of the conveyancing of the Colony is done in the Lands Titles Office’. It became, in fact, a notable contribution to conveyancing systems in other parts of the world. Both of the locally appointed judges found life on the Bench with Boothby intolerable. So bad was it that Gwynne and the Chief Justice, Sir Richard Hanson, wrote jointly to the Governor complaining about Boothby’s claim to be ‘the sole rightful Judge’ (24th April 1867). Boothby’s eventual dismissal was a relief, but not the last of professional affronts. When Chief Justice Hanson retired, neither Gwynne nor Judge Randolph Stow (of Felixstow) took kindly to the elevation of Samuel Way, a barrister, direct to the post. For his part, except on business, Gwynne never spoke to Way again.

Out at Glynde Place however, he was monarch of all he surveyed. There, his drive, imagination and pride could be fully expressed in creating a beautiful and even marvellous scene. In 1848, Charles Pitt was so impressed with the property where horses, ponies and cows browsed in the home paddocks and a garden was being shaped that would become, he thought, the talk of the country. Within two decades, it was the talk of the country, at least if the Register could make it so; (28th July 1866) ‘Are the public of South Australia aware that within a few miles of the metropolis is one of the largest orangeries in the world, and one of the finest, if not the finest, pinetum in New Holland, having for their owner His Honour, Mr. Justice Gwynne? We fancy not’. Tight-packed small-print columns proceeded to make up the deficiency:

The estate is situated to the southward of the road leading to the Glynde Hotel (now Payneham Road), almost directly opposite to Felixstow. It is approached by an extensive carriage-drive, hedged in by rows of native gums, which form a complete avenue and which, when the interior enclosure is entered, are supplanted by oranges and other fruit-trees. The visitor may wander along a broad path a quarter of a mile long, skirted the entire distance by orange trees. There is a corner known as the Wood, planted with specimens of thorn, sycamore, sweet chestnut, oak, several varieties of elm, the yew & ash. In the vinyard there are 10 acres of Pedro, Ximenes, Palomeno blanco and Dorodilla, 2 acres of Verdeilho and 8 of Carbonet, Shirax and Malbeck. Nine or ten gardeners were employed full time to maintain the estate.

The whole property consisted of 400 acres on the south side of Payneham Rd, (the carriage driveway described above is now [2001] Avenue Road, Glynde). The 12 roomed house, large cellars and stables had a rateable value of 235 pounds ($470), easily the highest in Payneham. No one on the whole Eastern plains, except the South Australian Company held so much land. The last link with the Gwynne estate is the family home, which after 140 years, survives in Avenue Road on a small-sized block. An enormous Moreton Bay fig tree looms over the house that it has sheltered so long, and a lonely red gum with its feet enclosed in bitumen divides Avenue Road as it leaves Payneham Road.

Edward Castres Gwynne died in June 1888. He, his wife Marian, and many of their descendants are buried in this cemetery.

(Payneham-Garden Village to City. James Warburton. Payneham Council 1983) This book is in the Trust’s Library

Return to Historic Section