the Cooks River. His estate was broken up after he was murdered by escaped convicts in September 1834. Thomas Holt (1811–1888) was a Sydney business tycoon who built a castellated Victorian Gothic mansion named 'The Warren' in 1857 in Marrickville South. It was designed by architect George Mansfield, and contained an impressive art gallery filled with paintings and sculptures from Europe. It had elaborate stables built into imposing stone walls, and large landscaped gardens filled with urns overlooking the Cooks River. Holt gave it that name because he bred rabbits on the estate for hunting, as well as the grounds being stocked with alpacas and other exotics. The Warren was a landmark in the district for some decades; the still-operating Warren View Hotel in Enmore as evidence of this. Renovations were undertaken in 1866. There were also bathing sheds and a Turkish Bath built on the river. The property was south of Wardell's and covered the area from today's Unwins Bridge Road to Illawarra Road and Warren Road. Thomas Holt was a large land holder in Sydney with another mansion at the edge of Gwawley Bay, Sylvania Waters, New South Wales in 1881,(his last and greatest residence, the monumental forty room Sutherland House mansion which was destroyed by fire in 1918) and vast property holdings from Sutherland to Cronulla. As Holt's health began to be an issue, the Warren was subdivided in 1884 with the land around the immediate building's grounds being sold off - and the family returning to Britain for the remaining years of his life. He died in 1888. The estate stables were demolished some time between 1884 and 1886, with the nearby Ferncourt Public School being originally built as a house "Prosna" by Polish born artist, Gracius Joseph Broinowski, from sandstone blocks of the stable, and a cedar staircase and marble mantelpiece purchased from Holt's estate installed in it. It is obvious today the last block remaining where the mansion stood as it is indicated by the newer houses of the 1920s-1930s as well as, obviously the name of the road, driven down the western side of the block - "Mansion Street" - and "Holt St" adjacent to it forming the lower side of the square perimeter). The Warren became a nunnery when the mansion and of land were purchased by a French order of Carmelite nuns. The Carmelites were evicted from The Warren in 1903