on the southern slopes so that views from the house are oriented to the hills to the north and the arrangement of paddocks and fields is more open. Tropman & Tropman wrote '...by the late 1970s/early 1980s, the city man's country house was becoming increasingly divorced from its rural setting and oriented towards a more desired landscape of forests, groves and hilly dales'. The reorientation of the relationship of the house in its garden setting with the broader landscape is likely to be directly related to plans for a suburban subdivision to the south of the house. In 1982 a Commission of Inquiry into the future of Harrington Park recommended that the in the southeast corner be rezoned from rural to urban, which was approved by then Planning Minister Craig Knowles in 1986. An area of 40 ha around the house was to be retained by the Fairfax family. In the late 1980s, planning commenced and the first of the Harrington Park villages (Lakeside) began construction in 1994. Currently the name "Harrington Park Estate" is used for the suburban area developed to the south of Narellan Creek, Stage 1 of a development which extends to the north of Narellan Creek. A 1997 proposal for an altered curtilage to the house was rejected by Camden Council. The direct relationship between the homstead group and its traditional landscape features, such as Narellan Creek and Crear Hill, has been recently compromised by intervening suburban development. During the 1990s, the residential development continued. Construction of the third Harrington Park Village (Park Haven) was underway in 2005. By 2011, Harrington Grove (north-east of the homestead) was nearing completion. Description Estate The 1815 grant was for . The 1828 census noted that of this was cleared and cultivated. Broadly that comprised rich alluvial flats where paddocks of crops and cultivated land were, and broader grazing paddocks, with scattered remnant eucalypt schlerophyll woodland across the ridge of hills to the homestead's north. Harrington Park homestead complex is the core of a once much larger historic farm estate, covering what today is the new suburb of Harrington Park, Harrington Grove etc. The centre of the historic estate including the area around the homestead, outbuildings, garden, yards, former nursery etc. remains although the remainder has been subdivided, rezoned and is being redeveloped in stages as a residential suburb, primary school and open space areas. Landscape Elements access from Camden