The Reverend Samuel Marsden was granted 417ha of land on South Creek in 1804. The Georgian homestead Mamre was built in the 1820s and occupied by Samuel Marsden's son, Charles, until it was sold to Richard Rouse in 1840. It was then given to Rouse's daughter, Henrietta, and son-in-law, Robert Fitzgerald, and remained in that family until it was taken over by the State Government in 1975. The homestead was restored in 1984 and in 1985 the Sisters of Mercy leased the property for twenty years, running the Mamre Project
