Sydney Architecture- Early Australian Architectural History

Chapter 11. ARCHITECTURAL ANATOMY

Early Australian Architectural History

AUSTRALIA'S architecture has always marched with its history. The architecture, like the country, has had periods of affluence, and periods of poverty. It
has sometimes been excellent, has often been decadent, but it has always
been important. Beginnings were to affect later development, and the good qualities,
although often neglected, have had a continuing effect for good, especially in
periods of architectural appreciation.

The very simplicity of Colonial work, springing from the pressing need for
economy in design thought, is its most valuable attribute. Because of the few
craftsmen available, and their lack of craftsmanship, excess and extraneous omamentation just could not be afforded in the buildings of the day, and so for aesthetic effect, for drama and beauty, reliance had to be placed upon excellence of proportion and the sympathetic and clever use of the building materials available. This produced a forthright artistry, which, if sometimes naive, is fundamentally sound and has ah honesty of expression of high architectural worth.

In Australia of the Colonial period, the contemporary trick of applying an
erudite, architecturally studied, but arbitrary facade to a building in the Renaissance
manner was, fortunately, almost completely absent. In England, and in Europe
generally, the more learned architects were patterning the faces of their buildings
with pilasters, engaged columns, cornices, and other forms that had no relation to
the structure behind them. The placing of unloaded columns on the face of a loadbearing
wall was meaningless pedantry, divorced from structural feeling. The
Colonial designers expressed the wall itself-beautifully textured, carefully proportioned
in the whole and in part, with details sometimes crude, but always
appropriate. A clear statement of basic elements that contributes so much to
the success of Colonial design is produced by revealing the unornamented structure.
It cannot be stressed too strongly that Australia has a fine and distinctive
Colonial architecture. At the same time it belongs to a whole family of Colonial
architectures that were spread throughout the world by Holland, France, and
England in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.' All these had family
resemblances, but they also had those differences we should expect to find in individuals.

The rich, but restrained, early American buildings generally resemble, but vary
greatly in detail from the Colonial Dutch of Cape Town. The nineteenth-century
buildings of Cambodia are of the same kind, but are flavoured differently from
those of Australia. Many of the early buildings of New South Wales are patterned
on English models which, in turn, were greatly influenced by developments in
other colonies, particularly India.

Australia's early houses, with their wide verandas and spreading eaves, are not
phenomena which leapt spontaneously from the soil; they were importations from
the tropics, via England. The army had lived in all parts of the world and it was
the soldiers who provided the controlling influences in an Australia which was for
many years a military post, ruled by military men. It was perceptive men such as
Greenway and the unknown designer of Bungarribee who gave the purely Australian
sod to buildings. This point needs to be laboured, for self-appointed entrepreneurs
of Australian architecture have stated that the reverse is true: that Greenway
was the importer of ideas, whilst the less conscious designers suited their style to
Australian conditions. Anyone who has examined the great majority of early Australian houses and their counterparts of the same period in the south of England,
from London to the westernmost counties, will have little difficulty in exploding
such a theory. There are houses, great and small, in Devon and adjoining counties,
that could be physically exchanged for early buildings around Sydney, and it
would be extremely difficult to detect the substitution. Even in Tasmania, where
a cool climate makes them of but little use, we find many verandas to Colonial
house.

Most of the purely Australian quality in early buildings stems directly from
building techniques, and from an understanding ofthe effect ofclimate on materials.
Intelligent men were soon conscious of the fact that New South Wales was a most
difficult place in which to build. Did not Greenway in 1835 write darkly of the
"woeful experiences" that afflicted those who ignored the nature of local materials,
particularly wood, and who paid no regard to climate? In his very first buildings
he showed his recognition of these fundamentals. Liverpool church and its successors
were designed not with the formal parapeted walls he had been acquainted
with during his architectural training, but with widely overhanging eaves, so that
the periodical heavy rains would be carried out past the confines of the budding.
It would be difficult to believe that he was not simultaneously conscious of the rich
effect of the consequent deep, cool shadows cast down the beautiful brickwork of
his walls.

Lesser men were learning these things in the hard school of bitter experience,
with inevitable changes in the outward aspects of architecture.
Building technique was, as always, a predetermining factor in appearance.
This is the prime reason why Colonial buildings and modem buildings, although
they represent stages in the same evolution, cannot possibly be identical in essential
appearance. Such a result is achieved only by sentimental copyism, which, fortunately, never deceives. The falseness is always apparent; the decadence is ever
self-condemned.

A detailed analysis of Georgian architecture shows how the constructional
method employed in each part of a building affected the appearance of the whole.
Perhaps nowhere is the contrast between Georgian and modem construction more
clearly revealed than in the Gaming of roofs. The essential principles are shown in
the diagram (56). The Colonial builder formed a roof merely by resting heavy
rafters against each other on top of the walls; the ceiling joists rested on the walls
or on beams between the walls. Because of their weight, such rafters would tend to
spread apart at their lower ends pushing the walls over in the process, and the cure
taken was to make the walls so thick that their mass would resist this thrust." The
modem technique is to use the ceiling joists to tie the lower ends of the rafters
together; this prevents spreading, so that walls can be quite thin. This is, of course,
the scientific approach, for less material is made to do the same work as the old
bulky construction.

The principles involved in building science were understood by such men as
Greenway and Mathew, but the cruder method of construction was widespread.
This had a distinct effect on the appearance of large roofs, because these were in
reality formed up of a number of small roofs. As a result, roofs were kept low and
narrow, a treatment which adds greatly to the charm of many Colonial buildings,
for it gives them a long, earth hugging appearance.

Another curious Colonial habit was to make the roof independent of the
internal structure generally. A modem architect will use his internal walls as bases
from which to strut up the roof timbers. Colonial builders often ignored these
walls and placed an awkward beam between the outer walls to carry the roof. At
the surgeons' quarters at Fort Street (41) this resulted in a "hollow" roof of a particularly odd appearance. Some roofs were given a "bell-cast" at the eaves, as at
Government House, Parramatta (39), and Wivenhoe, near Cobbitty.

Another indication of the lack of scientific knowledge amongst Colonial
builders is the very consistent misuse of beams. A beam whose broader side is laid
flat is weaker than one which rests on its narrower side. An elementary proof of
this may be obtained by resting the ends only of a thin ruler flat on two books. A
finger pressed down on the centre of the ruler will cause it to bend and deflect.
If; however, the ruler is turned so that its narrow edge rests on the books, and is
held in that position, no amount of pressure applied downwards by a finger will
cause it to bend. With Colonial beams, presumably the wider upper surface provided
a convenient working surface, but the lack of understanding of elementary
building science wasted a lot of potential strength. This misuse of beams could be
seen at the Fort Street surgeons quarters, both in the veranda eaves and the
window heads.

Because of the need for simple roof construction, the plan shapes of the buildings
were kept to simple rectangles as far as possible. Chimneys were almost
invariably grouped symmetrically on the main elevation. This can be seen in the
diagram (57) and in many of the illustrations throughout this book. The combination
of rectangular plan, small-span roofs, and symmetrically grouped chimneys
is the hall-mark of Australian Georgian architecture. Sometimes the individual
features were varied a little, but the combination was always found in principle. As
Georgian architecture gradually deteriorated, this principle was less and less followed,
but, nevertheless, it persisted for a remarkably long time in Australia.

Verandas were often, but not essentially, included in domestic buildings, where
they were always on one floor only. In hospitals (37) and other public buildings
the two-storied veranda was sometimes used, but it did not appear in domestic
work until a later date, when it became very popular. Often the veranda was
included under the same roof as the house in a single-storied building, which gave
a restful unity to the composition. Examples of this are seen at the Fort Street
surgeons' quarters and at Roseneath (82).

The columns of verandas differed greatly in detail. The main types have been
shown, although it will be realized that the dates of individual types varied considerably(58).

Verandas sometimes had horizontal ceilings, and sometimes the
ceilings followed the sloping line of the underside of the rafters forming the
veranda roofs. The veranda eaves were sometimes of straight, severe lines, as at
Bligh House (78), but almost as often they had a very curious valance board cut and
shaped into all sorts of intricate patterns. This board was about the only
thing in Australian Georgian architecture that was consciously rich and playful. It
was unnecessary and, therefore, was purely ornamental. Other features were decorative, but they were elaborate treatments of necessary parts of the building. The
valance board reached its most remarkable form at the Victoria Club, Sydney (60).
Veranda floors were almost invariably of sawn stone flags, and often the main
hall of a building was paved in the same way. Denham Court (95) has the living
hall paved with stone, set in a diagonal pattern, and the entrance hall of Brownlow
Hill, near Camden, is similarly treated. Most churches, too, had stone-flagged
floors. All this paving was set directly on the ground, more often than not providing
a nice convenient route for white ants to enter the building.

Veranda railings were of wood or cast iron (61, 64, the latter always imported
from England until the foundation of the famous Russell foundries in Sydney,
about 1843. Other foundries were soon established, including that of Dawson, who
produced a great number of architectural castings.

The English cast iron has far greater delicacy and better design than the local
work, which first copied the imported patterns and then rapidly degenerated into
crude forms. The wood railings showed great ingenuity and variety in form and
pattern, generally being built up of members of square or rectangular section,
and being of very fine craftsmanship. The more ornate railings had panels of
cumed and bent members alternating with louvred panels, as is shown in the
example at Potts Point (61). Bigger panels of the same type were made to serve for
veranda screens, either between sections of verandas, or between the veranda and
the street. These became increasingly intricate and were most decorative, the
richest example ever executed here probably being the one at the Victoria Club,
that now-vanished epitome of Colonial decoration.

In doors and windows, glass was always in small panes because sheet glass was
limited in size by the process of manufacture. The glass-blower formed a cylinder
on the end of his blow-pipe and, whilst hot, the glass was split down the long
dimension and allowed to fall out flat, so forming a sheet of glass generally less
than a foot long. Since Governor Phillip had asked for supplies of glass "not less
than 10 inches by 8" to be sent out, some panes must have been smaller than
that.

By 1817, plate glass of limited dimensions was coming into use. The first
lighting of the lamp at Greenway's lighthouse was delayed until supplies of plate
glass arrived for the lantern.' By 1820 sheets nearly two feet long were available
for ordinary building purposes (111).

The smallness of glass panes was the reason for the most decorative element in
Georgian architecture. All glass areas were patterned into the lace-like tracery of
the wooden sash-bars, to subdivide the glass area into small units. Great care and
skill were lavished on this glass design, whether for fanlights over the doors of
smaller cottages (63a, 63b) or for the fanlight at Burdekin House with its exquisite
elliptical design (103a). Typical semicircular heads to doors are still to be seen in
the Fort Street area of Sydney (64), and a glance through the illustrations in this book
will discover other examples. Curiously enough, working drawings of the period
seldom indicate this sash-bar tracery. Only the shape of the windows or doors
are indicated, and the openings are always coloured grey all over, the subdivision
lines of the bars being ignored (32, so, 51). Doors were always pannelled, sometimes
with a flush "bead and butt" panel, and sometimes moulded, the moulding
ranging from simple scotias to very heavy bolection moulds, or a combination of
these forms. All this moulding was run by hand and the workmanship is almost invariably first class. The use of quarter columns on the door frame, as at 37
Lower Fort Street, was a favourite decorative treatment, but few such doorways
now remain (64, 65, 67).

In early New South Wales, the great cedar forests of the Hunter River Valley
and the North Coast were destroyed to provide vast quantities of one of the
loveliest and most easily worked joinery timbers. The sash-bars forming the
tracery in fanlights and windows were very delicate, those at Burdekin House
being 24 inches long and only B inch thick, very sensitively moulded. Colonial
joinery of this class was of a high order of excellence, making modem joinery of
similar type appear brutal and unfeeling by contrast. Apparently the hand was able
to give a quality to the working of the Windmill Street wood that the machine cannot, so that machine-made joinery must, of necessity.

Entrance doors invariably were furnished with a decorative knocker of cast
iron or brass (73, 103b), in the designing of which conscious art was given full
play. When a few of these knockers have been examined it is not difficult to realize why many of them have become collectors' items.

French doors were extensively used and they were the subject of the same care
in design (78, 96). Very often, especially in country houses, the reveals of windows
and french doors were, as has been mentioned before, lined with cedar panelling
which was hinged so that it could be unfolded out of its recess to form protective
internal shutters for the openings. The outsides of such openings were almost
invariably fitted with those decorative and eminently useful louvred shutters
that are such a conspicuous feature of Colonial buildings; many examples of
them will be seen in the accompanying illustrations.

Internal doors were always fitted with moulded architraves, sometimes mitred
at the comers, or often fitted with rosettes (96).

Similar architraves were so often fitted around fireplace openings that their
use could be classed as the standard Colonial practice. Sometimes, as at Junction
Cottage (66), the rosettes at the comers of the architrave were square, but more
commonly they were round, being tuned on a spindle in manufacture. Never did
fireplaces reach the richly embellished standards of American Colonial work,
and only rarely did they become as complicated as the examples at Roseneath
(82) or, more particularly, Dunmore House (68). The latter has exquisitely
carved cedar mantelpieces and fire surrounds, which are very late Georgian in
design.

Besides being built of split-timber planks or, more rarely, stone and sod, walls
were constructed in five ways. Weatherboard on timber framing was employed
much as it is today. Sometimes a brick wall was lined externally with battens, and
the whole brick building covered with weatherboard so that in appearance it was
indistinguishable from a timber-framed house. Internally, of course, such a building
would have plastered walls in the ordinary way. Occasionally, as at Bungarribee,
internal partitions were of brick nogging, in which form of construction the wall
is framed up with timber members, the panels are filled in with brick, and the
whole surface is plastered over. This is really the famous "half-timber" work of
Elizabethan England.

Masonry walls were sometimes of solid stone throughout their thickness, but
more frequently the two faces of the wall were made of skins of stone 6 to 8 inches
thick, the centre of the wall being packed with mud and straw. This form of construction was studied in considerable detail when the Wollombi Inn was being
demolished in 1950. The mud packing gave good insulation against heat and protection against the weather but, of course, the stability of the wall suffered. We saw previously that Greenway
followed this principle of using good facework with a
poor core in the brick walls of St James's Church, Sydney, but since Sir Christopher
Wren had also followed it in his great St Paul's Cathedral in London designers
could at least claim excellent precedent. There is a lot to be said for a triplex wall
when weather has to be kept out of stone walls, and since bulk did not-matter in
wall construction-indeed it was admired-perhaps, in this sense, the Colonial
builders built wisely after all.

For all masonry walls whether of brick or stone the foundations were of stone
and were brought above the ground line and generally revealed as the base course
of the walls, as in all the Greenway churches. At St James's Church, Sydney, the
foundations are formed with fine stone facework, which covers a rough rubble of
brick and lime mortar, sometimes looking more like a honeycomb than honest
walls. These stone foundations, with the lime-mortar joints, or filling, were
depended upon to provide the damp-proofing of the walls. This device was quite
successful and generally served its purpose for about eighty years. Age and settlement, however, eventually break down the efficiency and damp rises into many
old walls, causing the decay of the masonry usually evidenced by the typical
"damp flare" patterns on the wall faces. Such damp can often be cured only by
sawing a course out of the walls, inserting a damp-proof course, and then restoring
the wall- a tiresome business.

Projecting bands of stone, called "string courses", were employed in both brick
and stone walls and were supposed to bind the fabric together; their efficacy is,
however, highly doubtful, the net result being more decorative than useful.
Window sills and door sills were invariably of stone, and throughout the
County of Cumberland which surrounds Sydney the local sandstone was used.
This is the "freestone" that reminded the earliest settlers of the Portland stone of
southern England.

Often brick walls were rendered with lime plaster and whitewashed, the stone
trim being left exposed. In country districts where lime was precious or unavailable
the plaster was composed of soil mixed with cow-dung and chopped grass; it was
applied with a spade, smoothed off with a trowel, and finally colour-washed with a
mixture of apple-tree ashes and sour milk. This mixture was also often applied to
rough split-timber houses to give them a smooth weather-tight finish. What with
the dung and the milk these buildings must have had quite an air about them.
Houses of even humbler type had the cracks between the split timbers packed with
clay mixed with grass; the floors of such buildings were of packed earth.

By 1828 deposits of marble had been discovered, but no use whatsoever was
made of them. In the same year Governor Darling reported that plenty of limestone
was available, but at an inconvenient distance from the coast. Until these
fields were developed, most of the lime had to be obtained by burning shells, which
were picked up along the shore in the earliest days, and later dredged from the
bottoms of estuaries. Often the lime was mixed sparsely with mud to form a
nondescript compo-mortar which still alarms modern architects when they have to
alter these old buildings in country districts.

Sydney's early lime mortar alarmed its householders too, for it was so soft that
in 1826 brick walls afforded but a sorry defence against our expert and ingenious burglars, who will pick a hole through one of such in a very few minutes, no part of a house being safe: back, front, and gable, proving all equally inviting. They will effect their breach with a celerity and a silence which few new-comers feel disposed to give credit to, und they awake some morning vestless and bootless, and on prying round in quest of their stray habiliments find themselves unexpectedly assisted in the search by the friendly face of daylight now peeping through a port-hole in the wall, where no daylight peeped before.
Warehouses and stores were built of stone because although the mortar for these
buildings was still soft the heavy masonry made the above method of burglary
difftcult.

Narrow openings in walls were covered by stone lintels, wider openings by
arches- either semicircular, elliptical, segmental, or flat. The last is not a true arch,
but is made up of stones or bricks interlocked in arch form (61). In brick arches the
voussoirs, or arch members, were always of bright red "rubbing bricks", which
were of soft texture and so could be rubbed to the required size in gauge boxes. It
was the building apprentice who always drew the monotonous job of pushing the
sides of the boxes to and fro to grind the brick into shape.

Because walls were invariably thick, recesses were possible, and we have seen
how Greenway and other designers would decorate a plain surface with them.
Structural piers bonded to the wall were used decoratively as well as logically, but
all this was in the nature of the construction.

It is worth noting that not only were the Colonial bricks soft in texture and of
beautiful colours, but they were bonded in a way that gave additional richness
of texture. In modern Australian brickwork, because of the almost universal use of
the cavity wall, only the crude "stretcher" bond is used, whereas in earlier work
English and Flemish bond were employed. Modem bricks are large, machine made,
and hard in feeling, in contrast to Colonial sandstock bricks, which were
hand-made, soft, and sympathetic. Wall surfaces externally were finished in the
natural brick, or sometimes covered with stucco. Stone walls were generally of
dressed stone, so that the wall face was given what the Colonials called a polished
surface; that is, the surface of the stone was ground smooth. Although this was the
most popular form of stone dressing, every other type was used, from random
rubble to carefully tooled decorative stones. Stone courses were, almost invariably,
one foot high, thus providing a built-in measuring rod.

Internally, rooms were lined with boarding as at Junction Cottage (66), plastered
or, more rarely, panelled. The height of panelling generally was restricted to
3 to 4 feet from the floor. Wall skirtings were very large, sometimes as high as 18
inches, always heavily moulded, and generally of wood.

Ceilings were sometimes boarded or, more usually, lined out with laths and
plastered over. This type of ceiling has a definite life span, so that literally hundreds
of old Colonial buildings now have had their cracked and dropping ceilings
replaced, or the original work strapped up with battens and boarding.

From the first days in Australia, roofs were covered with burnt-clay tiles and with
split-wood shingles. Early records refer to the use, for shingles, of timber from trees

resembling the English oak. Some shingles preserved from the roof of the surgeons'
quarters of the old Military Hospital in Sydney (38, 41) were submitted to the
Forestry Commission of New South Wales, who declared them to be rose she-oak
(Casuarina torulosa). At the same time, the large beams in the veranda and roof of
the same building were identified as narrow-leaf ironbark (Eucalyphs crebra), and
the floor timbers as grey ironbark (EualyphsanicrtlataA). Though burn-clay tiles
were amongst the first building materials manufactured in Australia, their popularity
waned, and by 1830 they were very rare.

By 1837 Governor Bourke was seeking the import of slates for government
buildings, and these were used a few years later in the Customs House.
Already that horribly efficient and hard roofing material, corrugated iron, was in
use and had been placed over the veranda of a cottage in Kent Street that survives
to this day. A drawing made in 1830 shows this unfortunate forerunner of so much
Australian ugliness. By 1850, as iron came into general use, the craft of
shingle-splitting began to fade away.

Nails were always precious in Colonial days because they were made by hand;
even a good forge hand could make only 1400 a day.

Georgian planning was extremely simple and suffered from none of the complications
introduced by the mechanical services for which modem architects must
make such elaborate provision. Kitchens, whether in private houses or in public
institutions, were in individual service wings separated from the main building;
hence the prevalence of charing-dishes, which were most necessary in Colonial
manages if food brought across the yard was to arrive in the dining-room with
some vestige of heat left in it. The arrangement of rooms was rudimentary,
generally consisting of cell-units opening off an entrance hall; sometimes rooms
would open off other rooms. Typical single-storey plans can be seen at the Fort
Street surgeons' quarters, Sydney, the officers' quarters at the military barracks,
Parramatta (44), and Roseneath (82). Two-storied plans are shown for Burdekin
House (102) and Government House, Parramatta (40). Other examples of domestic
plans are also given (71).

In larger buildings the planning was just as simple, if not proportionately simpler
than in domestic work (70). Watts's hospital could not have been more elementary,
and its plan was very similar to that of the Rum Hospital.

Greenway's church plans, his courthouse at Windsor, and the Liverpool hospital
have already been reviewed, and Lawless saw no more reason for complication
in his Benevolent Asylum. Life was less involved in those days when absence
of plumbing and of services intricately woven into the structure meant that the

architect was not at all concerned with the integration of mechanical equipment
with useful spaces. He had only to enclose space in the form of rooms, which could
be used for any purpose at will. Numerous servants ensured that the simple plans
would function satisfactorily. Ease of working was of little consequence in domestic
or business planning, because complication of work provided more employment
for more people. It was an inverted variety of social economy, hut the result was
not unreasonably bad.

Sewerage was not unknown, and we have seen earlier that Greenway worked on a
scheme to serve the whole of Sydney. We learn from an inventory of furniture in
Government House, Sydney, compiled by Major Antillin 1821, that a water closet
was installed there, complete with a cistern. Water-borne sewerage is one of the
oldest systems known to man, having been employed in the Palace of Minos, in
prehistoric Crete. The first architectural book set up in print, Alberti's De Re
Aedeficatoria, written in the fifeenth century, gave information on the design of
sewers: "Drains are of two sorts; one carries away the filth into some River, Lake
or Sea; the other is a deep Hole dug in the Ground, where the Nastiness lies until it
is consumed in the Bowels of the Earth."'8 Whether the Government House sewers
were this primitive sort of septic tank, or whether they were discharged
into Sydney Cove, must remain a matter for conjecture.
Also in the inventory of Macquarie's furniture are listed "3 round washing
tubs" and "1 Bathing ditto", entries which are somewhat revealing as regards the
relative importance of clothes washing and body washing. Bathrooms were then
unknown in the Colony, although they had been in use in England for some time.
As early as 1720 the great house Chatsworth in Derbyshire had a very well equipped
bathroom, with what we might call all modem conveniences:
"Within this is a batheing room, ye walls all with blew and white marble, another of
Red veined marble. The bath is one entire marble, all white, finely veined with blew and is made smooth. . . .
At the upper End are two Cocks to let in one hot water, ye
other Cold water to attemper it as persons please."20

This is most luxurious, and it makes Macquarie's little portable bathing tub seem pretty mean. And we fear that on a cold winter's morning in the "bath"-room at Government House the only thing "all white, finely veined with blew" would be His Excellency himself.

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.