People came to Orielton from Sydney, using the train to Campbelltown to shoot over Orielton's land and attend the adjacent Harrington Park race track. The Peisley family knew the Davy family who occupied Harrington Park from 1852 to 1870. During the early 1870s the sport of coursing (the pursuit of live hares by greyhounds across the countryside) was introduced to Orielton which became a popular activity at both the Orielton and Harrington Park estates. By the 1870s Harrington Park house had established a reputation as a gentleman's country seat, with "hospitality, picturesqueness and the hunt bringing interesting associations to the English eye". In 1874, Harrington Park and Lot 1 of Orielton was purchased by William Rudd Snr, a grazier of Houtong Station in the Lower Murrumbidgee who also then owned neighbouring Harrington Park. Rudd changed the perceptions of Orielton and Harrington Park as a "gentleman's seat" to that of a graziers property. He also gained control of the remaining parts of Orielton estate. Harrington Park and Orielton remained within the Rudd and Britton (descendant) families until 1933 when (with the Great Depression having an impact) they were sold to Arthur and Elaine Swan. Ownership, 1876 to 1943 Mrs Harriet Beard, widow of Wynyard Square, Sydney bought and occupied Orielton in 1876 when the Rudds were living at Harrington Park and both were responsible for developing the properties in the Victorian period building design and garden or landscape schemes. The Beard family became involved in district affairs and were esteemed as gentry. The Beards changed and developed the homestead extensively to relate to the southern prospect and expansive views to Studley Park and the floodplain of Narellan Creek. At one stage, a small school was conducted at Orielton. With the shift to grazing, the great barn would have lost its original function. The existing access and arrival drives date to this era, as does the terracing south of the house and its extension and reorientation to the south, with two-storey Victorian Italianate style southern facade. Harriet appears to have made Orielton a large residential villa, making many garden plantings including Bunya pines, hoop pines, funeral cypress, Moreton Bay fig, maritime pine, Austrian pine, privet (hedges), photinia (hedges) and European olives to the orchard's northern boundary. These plantings probably reflect Victorian era symbolism relating to her loss of a husband, and some may relate to her own death in 1910. The estate