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After Macquarie: Conserving Heritage Places: Clarendon, Tasmania, 2010 Conserving the Macquarie Legacy – a fabric-based viewDonald Ellsmore When Lieutenant Colonel Lachlan Macquarie arrived in the Colony of New South Wales at the beginning of 1810 he found the built fabric of the penal settlement to be crude — acute shortages of quality materials and a deficit in building skills and architectural supervision were obvious to him at first glance. He immediately embarked upon a course of improvement that embraced all aspects of building to accommodate free settlers, convicts and the military, including himself. Two hundred years later we can look back on the legacy of Macquarie’s brief twelve year stewardship with a measure of satisfaction that he had the foresight to lay down an enduring plan for the improvement of architecture and planning. Macquarie’s legacy is readily observed in place names, urban plans and landmark structures. With perseverance we also find it in the materials and construction techniques that enrich our historic environment. In preparing this brief discussion on the fabric of Macquarie’s campaign to civilize colonial society through planning and public works I returned to the notes of my teacher on Australian architectural history Morton Herman, whose treatise The Early Australian Architects and Their Work 1 paints an endearing if sometimes fanciful picture of those early years when a European pattern of development was laid somewhat uncomfortably over the Australian landscape — A landscape that had been shaped imperceptibly over tens of thousands of years by the indigenous population. Herman drew on the detailed research of M.H. Ellis whose account of the life of this complex and important historical figure, Macquarie 2 was published only a few years before Herman identified Macquarie as the person who ‘introduced architecture’ to Australia. 3 In this paper, Macquarie is the focus for a discussion on building fabric and its conservation. It re-examines aspects of an architectural legacy that, for all intents and purposes, began with Macquarie. It considers some easily-overlooked facts that can be used today as a measure of the standards we apply in the routine care of our oldest surviving buildings. Because some of those buildings pre-date Macquarie, a short review of the state of the built environment of the colony of New South Wales in January 1810 is provided to put the Macquarie legacy into context. The built form of the Colony in 1810 No architect or sophisticated builder had laid their hand on the penal settlement before the arrival of Macquarie and there was no-one competent to carry out his first ideas for improving the built form of the infant town in which he landed. Two months after his arrival he wrote to Lord Castlereagh in the Home Office requesting that ‘a Government Architect should be immediately sent out to this colony to plan and superintend the erection of all public buildings and I respectfully entreat your Lordship will send out a well qualified person of this description to the Colony as soon as possible … with ideas, taste and a drawing board complete’. 4 That person, as it transpired, would be Francis Greenway, although he was not sent by Castlereagh in response to Macquarie’s pleading request, but rather, as a convicted felon, and he did not appear until four years later. The First Fleet had arrived with some building supplies and pre-fabricated building components, but nothing that could meet the needs for making permanent built structures. Therefore the first settlers did what everyone before them had done: they scrounged indigenous materials; in particular timber for framing, reeds and leaves for roofing, and clay for plastering. Morton Herman’s delightful illustrations include an imagined first building form of hardwood framing, thatched roof and wattled and clay-plastered walls. A likely source of this assumed style can be found in the correspondence of a military officer who wrote that ‘ … we ourselves have been obliged … to cut thatch and wattles for our hutts … ‘. 5
The first designer and craftsman of any substance, according to Herman, was James Bloodsworth, who is credited with introducing brickwork and constructing the first building of substance. 6 This building does not survive. The oldest surviving building is John Macarthur’s Elizabeth Farm, described by him as ‘a most excellent brick house, 68 feet in length in front, and 18 feet in breadth … it consists of four rooms on the ground floor, a large hall, closets, cellar, &c.; adjoining is a kitchen, with servants apartments and other necessary offices’. 7 Some other houses, presumably of similar construction, at least in terms of their principal materials, were sometimes referred to as ‘well shingled and glazed throughout’. 8 However these presumably substantial buildings were outnumbered by less sound and less substantial buildings that Macquarie found upon survey soon after his arrival to be in a most ruinous state of decay. 9
Macquarie’s call for better buildings One of Macquarie’s first orders called for brick or weatherboard houses nine feet high, with brick chimneys and shingle roofs. He determined how and where these buildings should be built in the settled areas. Shortly afterwards he turned his attention to buildings that had been built already in places they should not be in his opinion. He directed that they should be removed or relocated, to appease his desire for order. For example, in a general order of October 1810 regarding the bare patch of ground that he set aside for leisure purposes, he advised the residents of the Brickfield Hill to the south that ‘none of those persons who have obtained permission to make Bricks, shall in future, on any pretence whatever, presume to cut up any ground for that purpose beyond the Line fixed upon as the Boundary for the Brickfields’. 10 At Windsor he directed the removal of disorderly structures to create a town square that he named in honor of his emancipee Magistrate, Alexander Thompson. The fact that these structures were probably insubstantial made the task relatively straightforward. The materials would have been recycled. Timber – the most common construction material A large proportion of buildings constructed in the early years were timber framed and timber clad. Solid masonry structures were relatively few in number. Wooden buildings were roughly hewn from local trees and in the main they were the types of vernacular structures that we readily refer to as slab huts, employing large vertical timbers for weatherproofing and strength, although some were clad with horizontal weatherboards. A close reading of the Sydney Gazette of the year 1820 led James Broadbent to conclude in his masterful thesis on Australian Colonial Houses 11 that the older weatherboard huts and barracks and stores at Launceston had by then been superseded whereas in Hobart Town, a settlement of 5000-6000 people, there were only a handful of brick buildings amongst the wooden houses, huts and stores. 12 William Charles Wentworth provided some detail of the nature of construction of these houses when he volunteered that ‘the houses are in general of the meanest descriptions, seldom exceeding one story (sic) in height, and being for the most part weather-boarded without, and lathed and plastered within’. 13 He may have been mistaken about the lathing and plastering of walls, because there is good reason to believe that at least some would have been brick nogged; a most cleverly adapted building system described below. Little was said about roofs, and nothing about roof framing. This needs some discussion. Roof framing and roof claddings, which were so very different in later periods, were critical to the strength and stability of any habitable structure. Roofs of the early Nineteenth Century need to be understood, starting with the size of roof timbers, which were mostly massive when measured against later examples.
The way that roofs were constructed on the more sophisticated buildings in the early years, prior to the involvement of trained architects, can be judged by examples such as Rouse Hill House and the Rum Hospital. They had much in common with mediaeval roofs in Britain. They were constructed with large hardwood members that were capable of carrying loads and spanning distances far greater than their use demanded. They were therefore strong despite any deficiencies in their design and construction, so it is unsurprising that they have lasted into the twenty-first century. The oversize members spanned relatively short distances in simple triangulated structures that were cleverly planned to conceal the fact that they were actually small roofs. When contrasted with the architect designed roof of Hyde Park barracks, which spanned greater distances and carried false brick chimneys as well, the earlier roofs appear to be primitive, but strong. It is easy to speculate that the use of short lengths of large dimension timbers was an economical use of the convict labour that was used to saw the wood and manhandle the members in the construction. But it is more likely that the external appearance of the building was the main guiding influence. Furthermore there are examples, such as the goal at Liverpool, which has a roof constructed with relatively light timbers spanning relatively larger distances. It survives very well due in no small measure to ventilating eaves, which are probably a late nineteenth century alteration of the original design. 14 Bricks and mortars Bricks of a rather poor quality were plentiful in 1810 but there were no competent bricklayers to lay them. Bricks were produced in a notorious area on the western side of the penal settlement called Brickfield Hill, where Australia’s first polluting industry was described by a visitor in 1809 as comprising ‘over forty houses, and numerous manufactories for tiles and earthenware crockery as well as bricks’. 15 Improvements in the quality of bricks occurred slowly over time. In the following discussion about Francis Greenway some information is provided about one of the first serious attempts to assure better quality bricks for substantial buildings. A detailed account of the growth and development of the brick-making industry is provided in recent publications. 16
Mortars for brick and stone masonry walls and wall and ceiling plasters were simple mixtures of sand and clay dug near to the construction sites in the early years. These clay or loam mortars were perfectly adequate in dry conditions but whenever they were exposed to moisture they were prone to fail due to the cyclical swelling and shrinkage of the clay. Simple measures to reinforce the mixes and reduce the clay content were employed with some success. These measures included the addition of grass fibres and glutinous materials such as blood, mollusks and other sea creatures, but probably not beer. Lime was the more conventional binder for mortars and plasters in sophisticated structures but, apart from the small quantity that was imported, and that which could be made by burning seashells, it was in short supply. Its use was restricted in the early years to the most prestigious government projects and then only as an additive to mixes that comprised mainly sand and clay. The search for suitable building limes became a major preoccupation of the early builders and was ongoing for many decades. During Macquarie’s time reliable sources of shells were located in outlying waterways and a steady supply of lime from them became a reality, but not before Macquarie was forced to issue an edict in 1818 forbidding the gathering of shells — once considered inexhaustible — from around the coves of Sydney Harbour. 17 And to enforce the edict he imposed a fine ‘not exceeding five pounds sterling, one half of which is to go to the Informer and the other half to the police fund’. 18 Shells were obtained from distant locations including the Hawkesbury and Hunter Rivers. At Limeburner’s Bay on the Hunter River, and at other sites where the shells were burned and the resulting lime loaded in sacks for transport to the larger settlements, the convicts suffered cruelly. The un-slaked and sometimes auto-slaking lime burned their skin and caused painful lesions. Physical evidence provided in the many surviving examples of pre-1860 masonry structures indicates that the quality of lime produced from shells improved over time, probably in response to improvements in the methods used for calcining (burning) — a process that converted the calcium carbonates to calcium oxides (lime). The burning of shells to produce building limes continued until at least the 1860s in areas including the Macquarie towns on the Hawkesbury River. Evidence of this can be found in the bedding mortars of surviving structures (although it is not immediately evident in the better quality buildings where measures were taken to sieve out the coarser, tell-tale particles of shell and cinder). Nevertheless we can see that the coarse mortars containing substantial quantities of shell and cinder have performed at least as well as more refined examples over a long period. Stonework Stone was found in abundance in Sydney Town but there was precious little skilled labour or specialized tools to work it. Early stone buildings exhibit wide joints, rough finish and inconsistent unit dimensions. These characteristics would be readily identified by today’s master masons as unacceptable shortcomings, but were entirely understandable under the circumstances. One of the oldest surviving examples can be seen in Australia’s oldest church at Ebenezer, which celebrated its bicentenary last year. The sandstone that was used in the construction was quarried at the site of the church on the banks of the Hawkesbury River. The church was built with skilled free labour. Paradoxically, two hundred years later it was conserved (in part) with convict labour. 19
The Hawkesbury River attracted free settlers who farmed the rich alluvial soils and survived the floods that inundated their lands far too frequently. By 1800 half of the cultivated land in New South Wales was on the Hawkesbury River. Three quarters of the Colony’s grain was produced there. But despite the importance of the food production, the early governors were dismissive of the settlers there, who they regarded as idle, impoverished, disobedient and in debt. They were also too far from the main settlement to be brought under the control of the Governor. 20 It is revealing that the building of a church and schoolhouse at Ebenezer by the ‘Portland Head Society for Christian Knowledge and the education of Youth’, was an exercise in self sufficiency. It was an unusual collaboration between members of the Anglican and Presbyterian faiths who engaged two sawyers to cut the timber, a carpenter to work it, and two stonemasons to build the walls. 21 The building of the church was a slow process; the structure therefore was used in an incomplete state as both schoolhouse and church until it was finished and furnished in 1817. Contemporary with the Ebenezer church but far more ambitious in scale and architectural pretensions, was the Sydney General Hospital, also built in sandstone. The stonework at both buildings exhibits a similar level of naiveté. Macquarie had set his sights on establishing a large general hospital when he embarked upon his campaign to provide the settlement with substantial public buildings. It would be built on the eastern ridge on the alignment of the street he named for himself. However, when he was denied the funding and authority to build it, he entered into a contract in which Alexander Riley and Garnham Blaxcell would undertake the work in return for the right to import and sell 45,000 gallons (204,570 litres) of rum. The contract for this unusual procurement arrangement was signed on 6th November 1810. 22 The foundation stone was laid one year later on 30th October 1811.
Unfortunately for Macquarie the expectations of the contractors that they would make a considerable profit were not realized and so they took shortcuts in the construction to minimise their losses. The oddly planned, poorly built and curiously financed row of two-storey verandahed pavilions sited on the town’s most desirable aspect was roundly criticized for its poor construction and poor design. The stone columns were described as ‘[reflecting] as little credit upon the judgment of the colony’ as [they did] ‘upon the profound knowledge of the architect’. 23 The verandah and roof framing were thought to be so suspect that the buildings would surely fall to ruin. 24 Even so, it survives in part to this day and, since 1828, has housed the longest running Australian parliament. It is one of a substantial number of buildings by Macquarie that have withstood the test of time. Quite a few of these buildings are made of brick; some are stone. The author of the criticisms, Francis Greenway, was a man of forthright action and firm belief in his professional knowledge. When he was entrusted with building a lighthouse at South Head shortly after his first task was to teach the stonemason’s how to work the stone. This training trickled down to other masons and other projects over time. Francis Greenway – first architect The quality of stonework and brickwork improved under Macquarie. This was substantially because of the efforts of the architect Macquarie finally found in the person of Francis Greenway, a thirty-five year old who pleaded guilty to a forgery in 1812 and was transported for fourteen years. When summoned by Governor Macquarie in 1814, he was already preparing a design for a geometrical staircase for Ultimo House. In 1816 Governor Macquarie appointed him to the position of Civil Architect and Assistant Engineer, to plan and erect the government public works. More than ten of those works survive in the Sydney region. Nine of them are face brick buildings.
3. See also Paul Memmott, Gunya, Goondie and Wurley; the Aboriginal Architecture of Australia, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2007. When Europeans first reached Australian shores, a long-held and expedient perception developed that Australian Aboriginal people did not have houses or settlements, that they occupied temporary camps, sheltering in makeshift huts or lean-tos of grass and bark. Memmott’s book redresses that notion by explaining the range and complexity of Aboriginal-designed structures, spaces and territorial behaviour, from minimalist shelters to permanent houses and villages. 4. Historical Records of Australia, Volume II, (HRAVII), page 223, Macquarie to Castlereagh, 8 March 1810. 11. James Broadbent, The Australian Colonial House, Architecture and Society in New South Wales 1788-1842, Horden House, Sydney, 1997. 12. James Broadbent and Joy Hughes (eds), The Age of Macquarie, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1992, p.17. 14. The gaol at Liverpool that was erected during Macquarie’s term was converted to a courthouse in the 1870s. 15. F.Peron, ‘Description of Sydney Town, the capital of the English Colonies in New South Wales’, The Monthly Magazine, 1 September 1809, p.127. 19. When the parishioners embarked upon a campaign to prepare the church for its bi-centennial celebrations it raised funds from a wide range of donors, many of then descendants of the church founders. Day-release prisoners were employed in some of the routine tasks under an arrangement between the church and the NSW Department of Corrective Services. 23. Committee to Contractors, 15 May 1816, J.T. Bigge, Report — Appendix, Mitchell Library Bonwick Transcripts, Box 15, p.1392, quoted in James Broadbent, The Australian Colonial House, Architecture and Society in New South Wales 1788-1842, Horden House, Sydney, 1997, p.62.
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Introduction
