Sydney Architecture- Early Australian Architectural History

Chapter 2. BRICKMASTER

Early Australian Architectural History

As soon as the encampment was formed at the head of Sydney Cove, and the construction of the huts and barracks begun, attempts were made at more serious building in the houses for the Governor and the Lieutenant-Governor.

Unfortunately these two men never worked in accord. Ross, the Lieutenant-Governor in command of the army, and Phillip, the naval commander in charge of the administration, carried with them a professional jealousy which prevented proper co-operation. From the first the coolness between them was symbolized by the fact that the Governor began erecting his brick house on the eastern hill of Sydney Cove whilst Ross chose the western side upon which to build his stone house.

There was evidence to show that Ross tried to overturn the civil government so that the country could be run as a military establishment, but fortunately Phillip was able to settle this problem by sending the "thorny military gentleman" to Norfolk Island in 1790.

The erection of the Governor's house is an important event in the study of Australia's architecture. It was the first building with pretensions to anything more
than mere shelter, and there were in its design factors that were to affect Australia's buildings for twenty years. Although there was no trained architect in the Colony to direct Sydney's buildings, nevertheless in the eighteenth century an amateurish knowledge of the visible aspects of architecture was widespread. In the great era of colonial expansion, army and navy men in the normal course of their professions in various parts of the world had, from sheer necessity, to know something of building. It is manifest that this influence was working in the design of the Governor's house.

The second powerful influence was the presence of some building tradesmen amongst the convicts. These men would have detailed knowledge of structural methods, and some experience of the practical side of architecture. There were some bricklayers and a brickmaker, as well as a mason. There was also at least one
plasterer; he appears in the records as being involved in a dispute between Ross
and Phillip.

In another dispute over the cutting of some rafters, the word architect appears
for the first time in Australian history, but this was a misapplication of the term,
because the gentleman concerned was actually Henry Brewer, the Provost-Marshal
of the Colony, who was in this instance acting as what we would call a clerk of
works or building superintendent.

A number of brick presses were discovered amongst the stores and were soon
put to use, since belts of very good brickmaking clay were found a mile or two
from the settlement. Brick kilns were immediately erected so that the burning of
brick and clay roofing tiles could begin, to enable the master bricklayer to make a
start on the more substantial buildings. This worthy was James Bloodsworth, who
thus emerges into the clear Australian sunlight from the obscurity which would
always have enshrouded him had he remained in England. He was forced to New
South Wales against his will, but once there he found, as many of his kind were to
find, a new environment, a new and satisfying purpose in life.

Everyone spoke well of Bloodsworth. David Collins, Judge-Advocate under
Phillip, recorded that there was not a house or a building in Sydney Town that did
not owe something to him. Captain Watkin Tench of the Marines, in a full and
amusing account of the early settlement, let us know that good conduct earned
Bloodsworth his emancipation in 1790, only two years after the founding of the
Colony."

The Sydney Gazette, which had been founded in 1803, reported of Bloodsworth
in 1804 that, "The first house in this part of the Southern Hemisphere was by him
erected, as most of the public buildings since have been under his direction." In
the year of his death his position had been that of Superintendent of Buildings,
carrying with it a salary of £50 year.

What sort of building was this taproot of Australian architecture, this first
Government House that sought, ignorantly perhaps, but nevertheless earnestly, to
bring a small touch of culture into the sunlit wilderness? Work was commenced
on it in May 1788, and it was modest in size for a vice-regal residence, but the
original scheme had been even more humble, for a three-roomed cottage had
been projected. However, as the lime-bonded walls proved to be strong and satisfactory,
an additional storey with three more rooms was included in the design.

It had stone foundations, walls of brick with stone quoins, or comer pieces, running
up the angles of the building, and burnt clay shingle tiles on the roof.' One officer
of the Marines described it as "an elegant brick house'. It was the only building
in the Colony whose walls were cemented with lime mortar. One authority says
the lime was brought out in the ships as ballast but this is most unlikely because
at one stage during construction rain caused the walls to collapse, proving that in
the first attempt the mortar used was puddled clay, which was to be the normal
cement of the settlement for some years. It is certain that the lime mortar used in
the reconstruction of the ruined walls of Government House was made from shells
picked up along the shores of the harbour by female convicts whose only occupations,
at least during daylight hours, seem to have been shell-gathering and making
wooden pegs for fixing roofing tiles.

Another wonder of this building was the staircase, which was to be the only
one in the Colony for a long time to come. We are so used to buildings comprising
a number of storeys that it is easy to forget that living on several levels is artificial
and unnatural. At any rate this is so if we are to believe the evidence of Arabanoo,
an aboriginal captured at Manly, on the north side of the harbour, and brought to
Sydney in semi-captivity. All the wonders of the white man's world made but little
impression on his primitive mind, excepting only the Governor's house. He could
not conceal his astonishment at a gunyah, or dwelling, in which some men could be
inside and at the same time be walking over other men's heads."

The size of this first Australian brick building is known with accuracy because
it lingered on until 1845, and there still exists a curious manuscript plan that gives
the sizes and ceiling heights of the three front rooms on the ground floor. Additional
information is provided from archaeological sources. In 1899, when the street pavement
at the corner of Phillip and Bridge streets, Sydney, was opened up, the
foundations of the old building were uncovered.' Thus its location was fixed with
very great accuracy, and confirmatory evidence was obtained as to dimensions.
Since this was perhaps the first example of archaeology in Australia, it is unfortunate
that the work was not done with any great skill, and that the evidence presented is
somewhat confusing.

To compile the reconstruction drawing of Government House shown, not only
was this information used, but contemporary artists' drawings were studied exhaustively.
However, although they manifestly purport to represent the same building,
they succeed in portraying a dozen different buildings. The differences between any
two views are sometimes slight, but are always evident. For this reason contemporary
views of old buildings, so beloved of historians, for purposes of architectural
research must be treated with the most guarded reserve. Old drawings of
existing buildings demonstrate clearly this deviation from truth, although artistic
licence would account for some of it. For better composition, or more pleasing
grouping, an artist is quite at liberty to make visual facts subservient to emotional
pleasure, even if it sometimes makes for architectural nonsense. There are drawings
of early (and still surviving) Australian churches that show spires where no spires
ever were, and, conversely, omit doors, windows, turrets and the like that are
surviving originals and there for all to see. Call artistic licence perhaps be carried
too far ?

Another source of error is that old engravings, when these are consulted, present
the plate-engraver's interpretation of an artist's original that may be hazy in more
than one detail. This is a fruitful cause of deviation from architectural truth.
However, if properly used, contemporary views of buildings can be very useful.
It is all a matter of judgment and experience, wherein the quality of accuracy in
draughtsmanship will tell much. Where, for instance, in a view of the old Government
House the surrounding recognizable terrain is drawn with loving fidelity,
the artist's version is much more readily acceptable architecturally than that of
another whose details of surviving features is gaily careless to the point of hopeless
abandon.

This good circumstantial evidence, allied to known facts, has allowed a reasonably
accurate reconstruction to be made, and Government House looked as it is
illustrated here (a). It was later extended by additions, but this was the original
house.

James Bloodsworth was responsible for other buildings about the town. We
can safely attribute to him the design of tile dry-store erected at the head of the
wharf that projected from the south shore of Sydney Cove. This was a large, rectangular
building with hipped roof, containing an attic floor lit by the first dormer
windows to be seen in New South Wales. Judge-Advocate Collins, writing later,
said that the most material public work of December 1790 was the completing of
the new store on the east side of the cove. It was 80 feet long and 24 feet wide and
was used for storing dry goods. It was a taller building than was usual for the
Colony at that time, for it had a spacious loft.

This question of height of building was one of some consequence, and was
intimately bound up with constructional techniques. One of Phillip's many writings
on the subject gives us the clue. The lack of limestone obliged the settlers to limit
the height of heir masonry structures. Although the day mortar was of a strong
binding nature, walls could not be carried higher than twelve feet above the
ground, since heavy rains weakened them so much that the weight of the roof
would cause them to collapse. Elsewhere he records that the clay mortar caused the
walls to be made of extraordinary thickness, and that even then they were
unreliable.'

That year, 1790, produced quite a lot of excitement in one way and another.
Not only were the prefabricated hospital and the dry-store completed, but welcome
supplies from England allowed an issue of clothing, even providing a pair of shoes
for each convict. Not to be outdone, the aborigines also had their little essay in
sartorial decoration when they stole the flags from the signal-station on the South
Head of the harbour, and decked themselves in the brightly coloured cloth.
A whale in the harbour wrecked a punt, drowning several men, the body of one
being washed up later in the shallows of Rose Bay. The whale must have been
damaged in the collision, for it went ashore at Manly, to the delight of the natives
who feasted for weeks.'"

The heavy rains in April 1790 caused several chimneys to collapse, although
poor work was blamed more than the rain. The chimneys had been built by "taskwork"
that the men hurried over in order to save time, which they then could
devote to their own purposes.

At Parramatta the barracks, which had been covered in with wood shingles,
fell into decay, although barely finished, and it was decided to replace them with
brick buildings. Generally the aim now was to have brick buildings with tile roof
as a protection both from the weather and from heat. Whilst only wooden store
buildings existed, the most acute anxiety was felt regarding the fire risk to what
few food stores there were. When little food was available it became so precious
that the all too prevalent plundering of the government stores had to be treated as
a hanging matter.

It all made work for Bloodsworth, who must have been a very busy man in
those days. There were the soldiers' barracks to be built on the west side of the
Tank Stream, brick houses for the Reverend Richard Johnson, the Surveyor-
General, the Judge-Advocate, and the many buildings in Sydney that gradually
turned it from a wild valley into a colonial town. It was an attractive town. The
contemporary drawings show buildings set in park-like countryside, with sufficient
clumps of trees to preserve the natural attractiveness of the original landscape.
The buildings, though simple, were handsome. The bricks and tiles were of one
colour, a light brown, that blended beautifully with the grey-green bush-"quite
romantic". The wooden buildings sparkled whitely in the sunlight, washed as they
were with pipeclay found plentifully about the cove.

The output of the brickfields was considerable. Wheeler's gang of twenty-two
men and two boys turned out 90,000 bricks and tiles monthly, moderately good in
quality, worth 24. per thousand in England, according to Wheeler. Smaller gangs
were producing proportionate amounts. These bricks were drawn over the rough
tracks to the settlement by gangs of twenty-four men harnessed to carriages. Other
smaller carts were drawn by twelve men, and a load was 350 bricks, or about three quarters
of a ton. A day's work for the smaller carts was the delivery of five loads and
quite enough too! The bricks were of better quality than the tiles, because
grinding of the clay was impossible for lack of machines, and it had to be trodden
into a suitable consistency.

Becket's gang of fifty-two people was making 25,000 bricks weekly, worth
30s. per thousand in Birmingham, according to their maker. These bricks were
deep red in colour and soft in texture, being made from a different sort of clay
from the Sydney bricks. Becket was working at Rose HilI, the original name of
the modern Parramatta, about fourteen miles from Sydney, at the head of the
stream that flows into Port Jackson. Here good land delighted the settlers, and
many acres were brought under cultivation. In the clearing of the land, at last good
timber had been found growing on the rich rolling acres, some of it most
respectable in size.

By 1803 timber was being shipped to England: ironbark, stringybark, and
mahogany. Sticks of mahogany measuring 2 feet by 15 inches at the butt and over
40 feet long are recorded, and in one shipment sticks 70 feet long had to be cut in
half to get them into the ship's hold. The accompanying report says of these potential
masts that "they will do for line of Battleships, and are far more durable than
English oak".

All the records and diaries of the period are filled with critical analysis of the
native timbers and their estimated usefulness for building, cabinet-making, and
for naval purposes. Lieutenant William Bradley visited tile settlement and made
copious notes on the timbers available:29 "Ironwood (Ironbark) grows tall and
large all about but near Rose Hill in Particular. Fit for large Beams, Girders, &c.
A very good timber for such large uses tho' very hard to cut and work." Wood
of the gum-tree he found poor, "fit for little but the fire but very good for that".
(We have seen an almost exactly similar observation from another source.)
Mahogany he recommended for furniture, and turpentine found in so-foot trunks
3 to 4 feet in diameter at the base was fit for "any kind of building use", so that
experience was showing that there were suitable building materials available,
but that they had to be used judiciously and with understanding of their
nature.

Rose Hill had become the granary of the Colony, and was for a time more
important than its parent, Sydney; by 1791 all activity had been transferred upriver.
Communication with Rose Hill was by means of a rough track along the
south bank, and by water. When Australia's first locally built ship came into service
she was naturally sluggish in the water, since through ignorance or necessity her
timbers were of indigenous hardwood. She had an official name, but the convicts
who had to row her soggy hull over those fourteen weary miles referred to her,
with exquisite etymological exactitude, as "The Lump". History disappoints us in
not recording precisely which adjective die men selected to describe just what
sort of a lump.

Rose Hill, though tiny, was laid out on a quite admirable, if naive, town plan
by Phillip's direction, and the locality was renamed Parramatta, according to the
aboriginal usage, in 1791. The main street ran east and west, was 200 feet wide,
and stretched one mile from the landing place on the river bank to the government
cottage on the hill. Ranged down each side were sixteen houses of wattles plastered
with clay and thatched, each 24 feet long and 12 feet wide. Floors and fireplaces
were of brick, and the two rooms accommodated ten men.

Although embryonic, Parramatta's town plan was essentially right in principle,
and it is only to be regretted that it was soon abandoned, for the plan of modem
Parramatta which replaced it is a shoddy thing by comparison.

This original plan, and the similar plan for Sydney which was equally right in
principle, were the work of Lieutenant William Dawes, the second name of importance
in the events which were to lead to an Australian architecture.

Dawes, whose father was a clerk of works in Portsmouth, volunteered his
services for Botany Bay in 1786, and came out in the First Fleet. Almost immediately
he was appointed Engineer and Artillery Officer, and he was responsible
for the erection of the several batteries that protected Sydney Cove. The most
famous was Dawes Battery, which remained for many years on the point bearing
his name, where streams of cross-harbour traffic now create an uproar to disturb
a peace that was never broken in anger by Dawes's guns.

An officer, writing home in 1790, described Lieutenant Dawes as "a most
admirable man, and although young, truly religious, without any appearance of
formal sanctity. He is kind to everyone. . . . He has a great share of general knowledge,
studious, yet ever cheerful. . .

" Elsewhere in this correspondence we see
reference to the "ingenious Mr Dawes", and his work upon Sydney's town plan.
This again was essentially simple in conception, but necessary, for Governor
Phillip found that his building programme and the future projects of his town
needed a regular plan. Wide streets were planned, proper regard being paid to the
prevailing winds and the topography of the site. By Phillip's direction provision
was made for building lots with a 60-foot frontage and a depth of 150 feet, and
only one building was to be allowed on each allotment."

the plan was good,
and made intelligent arrangement for present and future public buildings, it is again
a matter for regret that Australia has lost the fruit of Dawes's abilities.
It is known that he constructed an observatory slightly to the south-west of
his battery, but we have no details of it except that some stone blocks were cut for
its walls. He established its astronomical position, but by the modem reading this
had an error of 59 seconds of latitude and 7 minutes 12 seconds of longitude. Navigation
must still have been a rather wobbly science in those days, for members of
a Spanish expedition which visited Sydney in 1793 attempted to fix the position
and they produced errors of 13 seconds and 5 minutes 50 seconds respectively.
Dawes also designed and built a powder magazine near by.

He was something of an explorer, as well as soldier, designer, and astronomer.
Phillip ordered him to take a party to climb the Carmarthen Mountains, a name
that has caused great controversy amongst historians ever since. After they had
penetrated the mountains to a distance of fifty-four miles from the coast, hunger
and fatigue forced the party to quit.
Dawes's amiable character was finally to get him into trouble. In November of
1791 Phillip ordered him to join a punitive expedition against the Botany tribes,
but after searching his conscience in the matter of attacking the black man he
refused to comply with the order. High words followed and Dawes sought the
advice of the Reverend Richard Johnson, who counseled obedience to lawful
orders. This seeking of a second opinion occasioned further tension between Dawes
and the Governor, and finally the breach became so wide that Dawes insisted upon
returning to England, after having been four years in the Colony. In later life he
became Governor of Sierra Leone, and when he left that post because of ill health
he wished to return to New South Wales, but he never did so.

We next hear of him as a lieutenant of Royal Marines, on half pay, in "circumstances
of great pecuniary embarrassment" in the island of Antigua whence, in
1826, he importuned the Government in London for payment for his services in
that expedition to the Carmarthen Mountains undertaken thirty-seven years earlier.
His appeal was disallowed on the grounds of the unreasonable lapse of time, as
may well be expected.

He died in 1836; and so passed away in obscurity Australia's first town planner,
whose reward was fame only, and the association with a point in Sydney Harbour
which bears both his name and the southern abutment of a great engineering work.
There was no obscurity surrounding the death, in 1804, of Australia's first
designer and building craftsman, James Bloodsworth. He died in his house in what
is now O'Connell Street, Sydney, on first March of that year, from a disease that
started as a severe cold. So great was the esteem in which he had been held by his
fellow colonists, that Governor King ordered what was then the equivalent of a
state funeral. The bier, followed by his widow and five children, accompanied by
a crowd of people, was escorted by troops with muted drum and fife. The body
was laid to rest in the town cemetery with military honours, a strange and satisfying
end for a former convict.

This section is based on the excellent book Early Australian Architects and Their Work (Angus & Robertson, Syd, 1954); Herman, Morton, (1901-1983). Illustrated and Decorated by the Author.