Sydney Architecture- Early Australian Architectural History

Chapter 16. THE GOTHS

Early Australian Architectural History

JAMES HUME is a very obscure figure in Australian architecture and is seen
clearly only in fitful glimpses, like a figure moving in dappled shadows. He
worked late in the decade comprising the 1830s, and only seven buildings
have been traced to him.

A large house called Greenknowe that formerly stood at the head of, and gave
the name to, what is now Greenknowe Avenue, Potts Point, Sydney, has been
attributed to him. This was in fact built in 1846 for John Gilchrist, and it
was conspicuous in the district for eighty years.'

In 1839 a report in the Sydney Herald established that Hume was the architect
for a church in Wollongong.The account reads:

"...on 4th August the Newly erected Presbyterian Church in this flourishing town was
opened by Rev. Tait. It is a neat brick-built edifice in the Gothic Style from a design
by Mr Hume, and capable of containing three hundred people. When the tower,
which it is intended to erect in front is completed it will be a great ornament to the
village . . . The Reverend Gentleman appeared in an elegant new pulpit gown,
presented to him by the ladies of his Congregation. . . .”

We hope the architecture of the church was worthy of the splendour of its popular
pastor on this occasion.

The church acquired its tower and spire, and a porch, in 1843, but having
been situated in what is now the business district of Wollongong it has long since
been destoyed.

Hume also was the architect of St Andrew's Cathedral in Sydney, his work
preceding that of the great Edmund Blacket who completed the cathedral in later
years. It is likely that Hume supervised and advised on Bishop Broughton's idea
for the cathedral, for the Bishop later claimed that the design was his. Greenway
had designed the first cathedral, that "metropolitan church" whose progress was
stopped by Commissioner Bigge after the foundations had been laid. In 1837
Governor Bourke had the original foundation stone, which rested in what is now
George Street, Sydney, taken up and re-laid on the present site of the cathedral, to
the west of the street alignment.

By 1839 considerable progress had been made in the new work, the walls of
Hume's design being so high as to be described as "rearing themselves against the
skyline". Construction went ahead very slowly till about 1841 or 1842, when the
financial depression, which caused the stoppage of so much building work, brought
this to a standstill also. When building recommenced some of Hume's work must
have been incorporated in the present cathedral, but what it is and to what extent
it went unaltered by Blacket is now impossible to determine. Hume's design had
its tower at the east end and when work stopped the walls were complete, ready
for the roof to be put on.

Lindesay, a house that survives in excellent condition on Darling Point,
Sydney, was long attributed incorrectly to Humes- he did survey it for sale at a
later stage, but the architect is unknown. Lindesay, sometime spelt Lindsay, was
built by Campbell Drummond Riddell who arrived in Sydney from Ceylon
in 1830. Exactly when the house was built we do not know, but it was advertised
for sale by Samuel Lyons, the merchant and auctioneer, in June 1841, in terms that
suggested it had been in existence for some time. It was described as "forming a
complete gentleman's country seat" with summer-house and bath.'
Today, like those of so many houses of its period, Lindesay's former grounds
have been severely reduced by subdivision into building lots. Its former water
frontage to Sydney Harbour has been shorn off, and the house sits on a small
island site bounded on all sides by Lindsay and Carthona Avenues. The main house
is rectangular in shape, and behind it runs a wing of service quarters that gives a
broken and uneven line to the masses of the building, completely at variance with
the simplicity of the main block; for, despite the obvious restlessness in the details
of the front, the basic element is essentially a plain balanced façade in the formal
Georgian tradition. The windows, the door openings, and the placing of the chimneys
all conform to the Georgian, and not the Gothic, formulae. The broken
parapet line, with its false and meaningless gables, the string courses, and the
heavily moulded chimney stacks are all in the nature of applied ornament. So
sterile was the Gothic movement that men such as Hume thought to create Gothic
buildings merely by adding extraneous ornament to what were essentially
Georgian ones. All this affectation, it may be noted, was external only. The moment
one enters Lindcsay the classicism of tradition is apparent. The doors, architraves,
and the small moulded cornices above could be moved into Camden House, or
simdar buildings, and they would be perfectly at home.

It is fortunate that this innate Georgian spirit breaks through and overpowers
the applied and, in detail, ugly Gothicism. Lindesay has charm, dignity, and an
architectural quality that can only be called good. Today, its stone walls have been
painted white, which gives a sparkling freshness to the somewhat too heavily
moulded and worried wall surfaces. The slate roof means little in the design, being
almost obscured, but the great chimney stacks are a forcefully dominating feature
of the composition.

Too much praise cannot be given to the modern addition. Lindesay always
lacked a veranda, and the owner, wishing to have some space on the sunlit side of the
house, provided the accommodation for himself by having a small glass-walled
summer-house, octagonal in shape, built at the east end of the terrace. In this way
the original terrace and the architecture of the house are left undisturbed, whilst
all the extra room required is provided neatly and adequately.

One other important building which Hume did not design but whose erection
he supervised was Burdekin House, which formerly stood on the west side of
Macquarie Street, Sydney (102). This was the finest building in the Regency style
in New South Wales, but it is doubtful if its design was local in origin. There is a
tradition, but no proof, that the house was designed in London.' The skill in design
was most marked, but even for his share Hume could claim credit, because the
&shed house was superbly built and beautifully finished and this would have
required architectural supervision of no mean order, especially as Hume had to
forsake his beloved Gothic detailing and work in the Georgian idiom.

The elevation was a perfect example of the late Regency development of
applied plaster treatment, the walls being more restless and less true in architectural
expression than the simple, smooth ones of such houses as Camden Park. In the
simpler style the basic and necessary elements of the elevation, and those alone,
are grouped harmoniously together. At Burdekin House a number of inessential
elements were arbitrarily applied to what need only have been a plain wall pierced
by the door and window openings. In the treatment of the actual infillings
of these openings the designer of Burdekin House was on surer ground, although
the diminution of the size of the window-panes as they got progressively higher
was a curious and unusual treatment. The spider's web over the main entrance
door was once justly famous as the richest and most perfectly executed fanlight
of its type in Australian Colonial work. The entrance door itself was a quite
massive piece of joinery in one leaf, 4 feet 45 inches wide and 8 feet high. The
knocker was of cast iron of superb modelling. The window to the stair hall
on the first floor was scarcely less rich than the main door below it. All the curves
in the wooden sash-bars were sweetly and perfectly formed.

The columns to the veranda were of wood, hollow and built up in sections,
and had delicately carved Ionic capitals. For a time these survived, after a fashion the
truncated shafts were roused for a veranda of St Malo, a large house, demolished
in 1961, at Hunter's Hill, on the Parramatta River. A detail of the stone gateposts
of Burdekin House is in another chapter (61).

The plan of Burdekin House had a central hall opening to rooms on either side.
This follows the simple pattern so usual in houses of the period. The kitchen was in
the basement, and the upper floors generally followed the outlines of the ground
floor, although for the bedrooms the available space was more closely subdivided
than in the ground-floor rooms.

The interior was very rich, the walls, probably for the first time in Australia,
being decorated with rococo moulded plaster ornament applied to the surface?
The house, as originally built in 1841, was 79 feet wide at the ground floor, but
only 5s feet wide at the upper floors. A view of the house in this form, and with
the original lodge at the left-hand side of the main building, can be seen in Fowles's
Sydney in 1848. At some time the width of the upper floors was increased to that
of the ground floor, this work being shown in broken line on the elevational drawing.
Unquestionably, the additions, by bringing the elevation into the form of a
rectangle, greatly improved the proportions and the appearance of the facade.

The house was demolished in the 1930s and its passing has been greatly regretted
by all those who have had a sincere interest in Australia's early architecture. It was
one of the finest examples of a Colonial house in this part of the world, although
a purist might cavil at its applied mural treatments. Its craftsmanship, its careful
proportions, and its fine and sympathetically used materials made it a choice
example of the art of a period from which too few examples have survived.

Hume also supervised the erection of a country house for Sir Thomas Mitchell
in 1842 at East Bargo, a locality that no longer appears on ordnance maps. Formerly
known as Park Hall, East Bargo, this house is now the school of St Mary's Towers,
Douglas Park, and the drawing shows the building as it is today (103) According
to the school records the designer of Park Hall was that Edward Blore of London
who designed Government House, Sydney (P. 203). The style of Park Hall gives
great credence to this statement, for it is so much the Gothic Revival English
country house of the 1830s that one is quite startled to come upon it in the Australian
landscape. From his claim for payment of wages (dated 1844), we know that the
builder was Alex Burnett. The arcaded veranda as shown on the drawing was added
to the building upon its first change of ownership. Otherwise the house has been
little altered.

In 1841 Hume designed the curious Synagogue in Sydney (117) that is reviewed
in a later chapter, but this can scarcely be called a credit to him.15
And so another architect has appeared before us, had his little say, and passed
from the stage once more. Neither socially nor architecturally was his work very
important, but it does not lack interest.

Another architect, represented by one known work only, was Thomas Bird who.
designed the still existing Church of St Peter, Cook's River. As this was the first
church to be built close to, as opposed to in, Sydney it caused quite a lot of excitement
at the time.lE The foundation stone was laid on 9th July 1838 by the Governor,
Sir George Gipps, himself, who was, as an enthusiastic newspaper reporter put it,
"rapturously received". Bumpers were drunk in great profusion, and amid much
pomp innumerable speeches were made. Bishops, lesser clergymen, and politicians
got a great deal of the attention they so ardently craved, but the architect was not
invited to partake of the oratory or the ceremony. He was tersely reported as being
amongst those present, and there were others lower down the scale still, for, "after
the company had separated, the workmen attached to the building were regaled".
The reporter, however, was enjoying himself to the point of lyricism: "The day
was delightful, joy seemed to pervade every bosom and thus was laid, in all innocence
and mirth, the foundation of the first Church, within a delightful drive of
four miles from Sydney."

It is quite respectable in size, being 90 feet long and 40 feet wide. In the Sydney
area only St James's Church antedates it, so the Church of St Peter naturally causes
intense interest amongst historians. Architecturally speaking, least said soonest
mended.

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.