Governor's House

Beez Neez now Chy Whella
Big Bear and Pepe Millard
Sat 9 Jan 2016 23:27
Governor's House
 
 
 
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On our visit to the Museum of Sydney, we took the first set of stairs and dominating the space was this marvellous model. The first Government House [1788-1845] used to stand on this site, it was a six-room dwelling built in just over a year for the colony’s first governor. Governor Phillip’s house was built using convict labour, with sandstone foundations, locally made clay bricks, imported glass, and shell and pipeclay mortar. It was just one room deep. As alterations and additions were made by successive governors, it grew into a rambling house by the time it was demolished nearly sixty years later.
 
 
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Developing this model was a challenging exercise for the museum. While the appearance of the front of the house is well known, the back is more of a mystery. Through careful detective work, with pictures, archaeological evidence, documentary research, examination of surviving contemporary buildings and collaboration with architectural historians, plans were prepared for the model maker. The key pieces of evidence used were the 1836 watercolour by Charles Rodius, the 1829 view by Thomas Woore, which is the only known detailed nineteenth century image of the rear of the house, and the floor plan prepared in 1845 for the report that recommended the house’s demolition.
The evolution of the house to its final documented form can be traced within this model. Of the other buildings on the site, only the kitchen and main outbuildings are shown, for reasons of scale.
 
 
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Artifacts from the Site: The first archaeological dig on this site, in February 1983, revealed the foundations of Governor Phillip’s house. This and later digs uncovered a wealth of artefacts. Many can be dated to the first Government House, and tell so much about its construction and life. Fragments of window glass, nails, sandstone, bricks and locally made clay tiles – soon replaced with shingles – add to the knowledge gained from excavated drains, footings and walls, including those of Governor Macquaries’ bow-fronted Great Saloon’. Shards of ceramic, from fine china to utilitarian earthenware, fragments of stemmed glassware and clay pipes, oyster shells, bottles, bones bearing butchering marks, and lumps of charcoal and coal all provide insights into those who lived in, worked in and visited the first Government House.
 
 
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1791. This watercolour by Joseph Bradley shows the first Government House about three years after the foundation stone was laid on the 15th of May 1788. The two-storey brick residence, with cellars below, was completed by June 1789. Its six rooms were supplemented by skillion-roofed additions and a stairhall to the rear, and several outbuildings. The garden and outbuildings were enclosed with a palisade fence, and a walled forecourt had sentry boxes at each end, which were soon replaced to either side of the house. This building replaced the portable canvas house, erected on the eastern side of what became known as the Tank Stream, in which Governor Phillip had lived when he arrived in the colony.
 
 
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Taking of Colbee and Benalon. William Bradley watercolour, from his journal ‘A voyage to New South Wales’, 1786-1792. Aboriginal people generally avoided the early settlement. Governor Phillip even resorted to kidnap to establish regular contact. After a dramatic reconciliation, Aboriginal people began to frequent the settlement and became a constant presence in and around Government House. Some sought food, assistance or refuge; others dined with the governor or lived periodically in the house complex. The yard was said to be always open to the often large groups of Aboriginal people who passed through the settlement. Friendships were formed with individual men and women, and several Aboriginal people were buried in the governors’ garden.
Historic Events: Government House was the site of significant events in the colony’s history. A printery began operating in an outbuilding in 1795. Here the first Australian book was printed in 1802 and the first issue of the Sydney Gazette in March 1803. A new printing office was constructed adjacent to the house in 1805. The most momentous event occurred in January 180 when Governor William Bligh [he of the popular kind with both officers and men at sea] was overthrown and placed under house arrest in what became known as the ‘Rum Rebellion’. More fittingly, Government House also hosted the first meeting of the Legislative Council in 1824.
The Governor’s Garden: Initially the governor’s garden was laid out for food production, with plants from England, Rio de Janeiro and the Cape of Good Hope. Several Norfolk Island pines were also planted, interspersed with native vegetation. Gradually the garden became more ornamental, with exotic species, a grand carriage loop, a shrubbery and a grassed slope down to a foreshore wall. The last of an avenue of stone pines along the entrance drive survived until 1901. Major changes to the garden and grounds by Bligh and the Macquaries created a picturesque landscape.
 
 
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Philip Gidley King and is wife Anna Josepha, and their children Elizabeth, Anna Maria and Phillip Parker. A watercolour by Robert Dighton, 1799. Government House, vice-general residence, office and venue, became a family home with the arrival of Governor King and his family in 1800. The presence of children called for nurses and schoolrooms. Some servants arrived with the governors; others were engaged in the colony. Furniture and furnishings were imported or acquired locally, but governors also brought their own possessions with them and often sold them on departure. In 1805 Mary King was the first governor’s child born in the house, and in 1814 the birth of Lachlan Macquarie junior was joyfully welcomed. Mrs Darling bore a daughter and two sons in the house, one of whom died there before his second birthday.
 
 
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1809. This George William Evans watercolour shows the significant changes the house had undergone by 1809. When Governor King assumed command in 1800 he found the house uninhabitable until it had been reroofed. King built a long drawing room to the east, and in 1802 extended the existing verandah, probably added by Acting Governor Major Francis Grose in about 1794. A bedroom and dressing room appear to have been built behind the drawing room. Governor William Bligh arrived in 1806 and made further extensive repairs. He had the shrubbery laid out in walks and all the rocks in the garden were blown up and removed. The house was painted and repaired again for the arrival of Governor Macquarie at the end of 1809.
 
 
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By 1820 when this watercolour was painted Governor Macquarie had extended the house in two stages. Between 1810 and 1812 three rooms were constructed at the rear: a large bow-fronted dining room or ‘Great Saloon’, a family bedroom and an office. The rear skillion rooms and stairhall were demolished and replaced. From 1818 to 1819 Macquarie’s mew east wing was extended and given a second story. This gabled wing, attributed to architect Francis Greenway, was separated from the long drawing room by a recessed porch, later glazed in. However, Governor Brisbane, who succeeded Macquarie, found the house unsuitable and resided mostly at Parramatta. Few changes were made to Government House during his term, although the verandah was significantly altered or extended in 1824.
 
 
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Thomas Woore’s 1829 drawing shows the house from the rear after the last known extensions had been completed. The house had been repaired in 1825 for Governor Darling’s arrival and new rooms added within the roof. In 1827 a new servants’ hall was added to the rear, with bedrooms above. Two extra bedrooms were created upstairs by raising the walls and completing the west wing. A staircase and gallery were built along the front by altering the roof, linking the two ends of the house. In 1828 the kitchen and other out offices were rebuilt, the verandah reflagged and a cross wall constructed from the front gate to screen the back of the house from the main approach.
 
 
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Government House [and part of the town of Sydney] – a hand-coloured lithograph by Augustus Earle, 1830. A Social Hub: Royal birthdays and other special occasions were celebrated at Government House with levees and dinners for officers, gentlemen and foreign visitors. Those events were enlivened by regimental bands; later there were balls, suppers and fireworks. The governor entertained regularly, holding intimate dinners, musical evenings, family celebrations, tea parties, dances and card evenings. Hundreds eventually attended balls at the residence, so temporary structures were erected as supper rooms. Decorations were increasingly elaborate – festooned leaves and flowers, flags, Chinese lamps, bayonets, transparent paintings, chalked floors and intricate illuminations. An invitation to Government House became a benchmark of respectability.
 
 
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1836. This watercolour by Charles Rodius is generally regarded as the most accurate portrayal of the house. By 1831 the residence included a drawing room, dining room, butler’s pantry, servants’ hall, schoolroom, governor’s office, halls, anteroom, eleven bedrooms and a bathroom, with separate laundry, kitchen and quarters. It was repaired and painted for Governor Bourke’s arrival at the end of the year. By then the drawing room windows had either been extended down to the floor or converted to French windows. Repairs continued – leaky shingling caused a ceiling to fall down, new privies were built south of the main outbuildings in 1837, and the kitchen buildings were substantially repaired or rebuilt after a fire in 1840.
 
 
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1845. ‘Old’ Government House – ‘an incongruous mass of buildings built at different periods’ – was vacated in 1845. Governor Gipps moved his household to the new Government House just completed above Bennelong Point and still in use today. In August 1845 a Board of Survey judged the old building to be unsound and dangerous, too costly to repair and in the way of proposed new streets and allotments. Demolition was recommended and promptly approved. By January 1846 much of the house was gone; by March Philip’s original building and those parts in the way of the extension in Bridge Street had been cleared away. The east wing was demolished by May, in August the old bricks were sold and by December 1846 the first Government House had almost disappeared.
 
 
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The house and its grounds prevented the expansion of the town to the east. In 1825 Governor Brisbane suggested selling the water frontage along the east side of Sydney Cove to fund construction of a new residence. This was echoed in 1832 by the Surveyor General, who also proposed that the old house be removed so that the streets could be realigned. The building’s demolition was also periodically urged by the press. The plan [unknown artist], which accompanied the 15th of September 1845 Board of Survey report that recommended demolition, reveals the old house’s fate – it and its drive, paths and gardens are shown overlaid with streets and allotments.
 
 
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Comments from Governors on the house.
 
 
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Upstairs in the Museum we could see a ‘footprint’ of the first Government House Place, which has now been preserved as a public space. This site marks a crucial turning point in Australian history: a symbol of 1788 and British colonisation, some say invasion, it means different things to different people.
In the 1980’s, on the verge of the development of a multi-story building on this site, archaeologists exposed the remains of the First Government House. After a sustained public campaign to save the site, Premier Neville Wran announced on the 12th of October 1984 that the foundations would be preserved.
 
 
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The Plan. Steel studs mark the outline of Governor Philip’s original house [1] and white granite traces the final form of the house with additions made by the successive eight governors to 1845 [2]. The grid of archaeological excavation of the site, 1982-1992, is marked in black granite.
The sculpture Edge of the Trees by Janet Laurence and Fiona Foley, [4] symbolises the first encounter between the Cadigal people and the strangers of the First Fleet as they came ashore in 1788. The Museum of Sydney on the site of the first Government House [5] opened in 1995, designed by architects Denton Corker Marshall.
The harbour always dominated the view from the first Government House and can still be glimpsed today, although the view was obscured in 1962 by Sydney’s first skyscraper, the AMP building.
 
 
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Looking down into the Museum foyer, there are glass panels looking down to a drain, the skeleton of a dog and some foundations.
 
 
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“........having a good foundation......I presume it will stand for a great many years.” Arthur Philip 1788.
Outside. Alas, the house has gone. But Philip’s foundations have withstood many changes in this place. Excavated in 1983 from their asphalt grave, they are now exposed to public view in this environmentally-controlled showcase. Here are Australia’s first bricks, transported on the First Fleet or made in the Brickfields from Sydney clay. Here too the first blocks hewn from age-old Sydney sandstone. The sprawling footings and drains that later governors added to Philip’s foundations have been preserved for posterity. Finally, a picture of the ‘new’ house [we would tour before leaving Sydney] a few minutes walk away. Crossing Macquarie Street, to the Conservatorium of Music [initially built for Elizabeth Macquarie because she missed the castles of home – her husband and Francis Greenway came up with the idea of making a ‘castle’ like structure to be used as stables.........no surprise that there was public outcry]. From the Con, turn left and there is this fine looking building.
 
 
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ALL IN ALL A FASCINATING HISTORY OF A HOUSE
                     A VERY IMPRESSIVE STORY