John Benjamin Graham


John Benjamin Graham was an English settler in the early days of South Australia, who became very wealthy thanks to his mining interests, then left the colony, but not before establishing a mansion for many years known as "Graham's Castle".

History

Graham grew up in Sheffield, England, and at age eighteen was apprenticed to an upholsterer in London. At his employer's urging and with £250 of his money to invest as well as £40 of his own, he emigrated to South Australia aboard Recovery, arriving in September 1839. He found work with an Adelaide ironmonger, but soon went into business on his own account and was quite successful.
Around 1845, after the discovery of copper at Burra Burra, he invested all his savings in South Australian Mining Association shares, which repaid him handsomely: soon he was S.A.M.A.'s largest shareholder, with £1,090 in £5 shares, roughly 9% of the original total shareholding of £12,320, having presumably purchased additional scrip from early profit takers.
Directors were Charles Beck, James Bunce, John Benjamin Graham, John Bentham Neales, William Paxton, William Peacock, Charles Septimus Penny, Emanuel Solomon, and Samuel Stocks, jun., with Henry Ayers as secretary.
In two years he was in receipt of £16,000 in dividends per annum, tens of millions of dollars in today's currency.
;Prospect House
In 1846 Graham purchased a property, on the Lower North Road in the suburb of Prospect, previously owned by John and Maria Richmond.
He erected a 3-metre-high stone fence, and engaged architect Thomas Price to build for him an opulent mansion of 30 rooms, dwarfing every other pile in the city, including Government House.
Tenders were called on 22 August 1846 to build a high limestone wall around four acres of the property and three weeks later tenders were invited from various trades to build the mansion, followed by tenders for coachhouse, and stables.
It is likely, but not certain, that the Richmonds' cottage was retained, perhaps as servants' quarters.
Prospect House was Adelaide's first Gothic Revival mansion, and designed to be impressive. It was box-like of two storeys, the upper floor being of a smaller plan than the ground floor. It reputedly had thirty rooms, and was built of coursed local limestone. It had a wide west-facing veranda with a return to its north side.
Rooms on the upper floor opened via French windows with green-painted cedar shutters onto a crenellated open balcony. The veranda was also enclosed by shutters.
The flat roof, which was accessible from below and surrounded by a crenellated parapet, gave a panoramic view of the Adelaide plains from the sea to the Adelaide Hills and beyond.
Even the chimneys were crenellated, reinforcing the popular epithet "castle".
The interior was spacious and impressive, with polished oak and cedar panelling and marble inlays. The thirty rooms included a wide hall and a dining room with eight doors running on little wheels which fitted into recesses in the wall, and a panelled partition which folded back to make two large rooms into an immense one.
The building, which dwarfed every other mansion in the colony, including Government House, loudly proclaimed its owner's wealth, though not necessarily exemplifying good taste.
A. T. Saunders warns against confusing Prospect House with John Howard Angas's Prospect Lodge, on the Torrens Road corner, Bowden, opposite the Park Lands.

Return to England

Around 1847 he brought his mother and stepfather, John Adams, out to South Australia, and had them living with him at Prospect House, presumably as caretakers against the event of Graham's return to Adelaide; this notion is supported by an entry in his diary.
In January 1848 he left Adelaide aboard Gellert for Calcutta, and toured the East and Europe before settling in England.
From 1848 to 1867 Henry Ayers served as his agent in South Australia, followed by his brothers-in-law Frank and Henry Rymill.
He returned briefly to Adelaide aboard European in March 1858, when he resigned as a director of the Burra Burra Association.
Investments in South Australia included the Canowie and Curnamona Stations in 1869, which were sold in 1926.
He purchased a Schloss in :de:Handschuhsheim|Handschuhsheim, near Heidelberg, where he resided from around 1855, and was known for his gracious and lavish hospitality.
He died at his residence, Warrior Square, St Leonards-on-Sea on 8 November 1876, with an estate estimated at £200,000.

Family

Graham married Louisa Rymill, eldest daughter of Robert Rymill, of Brompton Row, near London, on 10 April 1849. Louisa was a sister of Henry and Frank Rymill; it was at her urging that they arrived in Adelaide aboard Caucasian in October 1855.
Graham's stepfather John Adams remained at Prospect House, hosting a Christmas party for Sunday School children at Prospect House, and a fete in honor of the consecration of Christ Church, which was recorded on watercolors by S. T. Gill. A similar occasion the following year was marred by a self-selected elite who blocked the Sunday School teachers from the dining room until all the drinks and party food was gone. Adams announced his imminent return to England in June 1853. He organised a sale of Graham's movable assets including his pipe organ, which was purchased for Christ Church, North Adelaide, and later went to the Norwood Baptist Church.
"Graham's Castle" had the reputation of being haunted by a sailor, supposedly an earlier owner of the property. It turned out rabbits were living under the floorboards, giving rise to occasional unexplained noises.
By the 20th century suburbia had encroached and the "Castle" was just an unmarketable curiosity off Braund Road, Prospect, and in the way of progress, and was demolished in September 2001. No plan of "Prospect House" survives and apart from a few street names, no evidence of its existence remains.