Sarah Wentworth
![](https://images.slm.com.au/fotoweb/embed/2022/12/50b730c27393487e8aca49e3045d76f8.jpg)
Eavesdropping on the Wentworths
A new self-guided audio tour is available at Vaucluse House, revealing what it was like to live and work there in the middle years of the 19th century
![Old yellowed image of the mausoleum. It is sitting on top of a large sandstone rock.](https://images.slm.com.au/fotoweb/embed/2022/12/f1232205b9ed48129d3b93e64196ea67.jpg)
My Fathers Were But Strangers Here
William Charles Wentworth was a nineteenth century hero in a land still described by twentieth century commentators as possessing no heroes
![image of painting showing a dramatic panoramic view of harbour surrounded by natural bushland with Vaucluse estate in the foreground.](https://cdn.sanity.io/images/zl9du87e/staging/79c1bdb9a39d8c02372ac4749f2024b81f09ee97-1366x935.jpg?fit=max&auto=format)
Museum stories
Not a lovelier site
‘There is not a lovelier site in the known world’, wrote the Sydney-born barrister and novelist John Lang about the Wentworth family’s estate of Vaucluse
![Sarah Wentworth (1853)](https://images.slm.com.au/fotoweb/embed/2023/09/391311ae087a47aea2456bd792172ba7.jpg)
Promised in marriage, courting in Colonial NSW
Free men and women who courted were considered to be ‘promised in marriage’. When a promise of marriage was broken—or breached—the offending party could be pursued through the civil courts for the value of ‘lost expectations’
![Lavishly draped windows behind drawing room furniture.](https://images.slm.com.au/fotoweb/embed/2022/12/c5526cb328e347baa5a4f18f971f3ccd.jpg)
Reviving Vaucluse House
The drawing room refurbishment draws upon authentic sources and traditional trades to re-create a room that the Wentworths might have known, while the orientation room has been redesigned to enhance visitors’ understanding of the site’s complex history
![Black and white photograph of Vaucluse House with large fig tree and vine covered verandah](https://images.slm.com.au/fotoweb/embed/2022/12/6ee168025ce34de49edf51cf7195dc42.jpg)
The leprechaun in the garden
Most of us have some childhood memory – or something half-imagined, half-remembered – of a garden of seemingly infinite adventure, far from the reasonable world of grown-up things