Parramatta Heritage Architecture audio tour

Welcome to Parramatta. Enjoy the friendly vibe as you walk through our doors. Browse the Local studies library, heritage displays, and ethically sourced merchandise. We have free public facilities and cold water to refresh you as you begin to explore our fabulous city. 

Did you know Prince Alfred Square was the place of the first two gaols for convict men and women?  The gaols were placed across the Parramatta River and away from the main town to stop any bad influences on the good town’s folk. The good folk of Parramatta town kept away from ‘gaol green’ too!

You will see the many layers of past Parramatta as you wander among mature trees and pleasant gardens. Look out for the elegant Bandstand with its rotunda shape. You can imagine Parramatta’s best-dressed ladies and gentlemen listening to a concert band on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the 1800s.

This site is the birthplace of the Catholic religion in Australia. Irish priest Father Dixon is believed to have conducted the 1st Catholic mass here in 1803 with 4 Irish convicts.

The 1st Catholic Church was built in 1822 on the site of the present Cathedral.  Many layers of Catholic institutions, like the remains of an old school, have been found in archaeological digs in this Precinct. 

Fire flames gutted this old Cathedral on Monday 19th February 1996. The fire destroyed all the interior and roof, leaving a $5 million bill! The tower and spire built in the mid-1800s appeared to survive this fire a little better. The old Cathedral was rebuilt and is now the Blessed Sacred Chapel.  A new and larger Cathedral was built behind this Chapel.  Visitors are welcome to walk inside both buildings to experience the serene atmosphere.  Contemporary Australian artworks were commissioned.

The rebuilt Cathedral won Australia’s leading public building prize, the Sir Zelman Cowen Award for Public Buildings in 2004.  This is the first time a place of worship has won this prize and is a credit to the architects, MGT.

Architect Style of the Cathedral – Victorian Gothic Picturesque

Architect – Various with MGT commissioned for the Rebuild in 2002 

This is the second Presbytery on this site. The old 1843 one was deemed ‘insanitary’ after the tragic death of Father Murphy in early 1904 from typhoid, believed to have been present in the old building.  This new Presbytery was finished in late 1904 and named after the popular Father Murphy. 

Architect – James W Hill 1904

Architect Style – Victorian Filigree.  Note the decorative filigree or cast iron lacework on the verandas.

Does the Headmaster’s Residence look familiar to you? Remember Murphy House Presbytery and the elaborate filigree or cast-iron lacework on its veranda? This building also has massed filigree work on its upper veranda. Celebrity Sydney architect Cyril Blacket altered this Residence in 1889.

The original residence was a single-storey sandstone building. If you peep through the trees, you may be able to see the old sandstone blocks on the ground floor walls.  

Today this building is the office for the new Bayanami Public School. Bayanami means ‘to learn’ in Darug language. The Darug Aboriginal nation first lived on this site.  

This Colonial Georgian building highlights the excellent sandstone masonry which has certainly stood the test of time. The Greek Doric style Portico was in the original plan. Can you see the simple stone capitals on the top of the columns? This is one of the main features of Doric architecture.

Looking up at the building, how many floor levels can you see?  The change of colour in the sandstone will give you a hint!   The school has had a lot of alterations and repairs over its long history from 1836 to 1968.  

The Parramatta river below King’s school is fresh water.  We know the Burumadgal Aboriginal people and colonists treasured this water as they, their animals and crops needed fresh water to survive. Everyone, including the King’s schoolboys would have enjoyed swimming in this refreshing river water on a hot Parramatta day. 

Architectural Style – Georgian

Architect - Ambrose Hallen NSW Government Colonial Architect

This sandstone arch bridge was designed and built by Scottish engineer David Lennox. Mr Lennox was smart and designed an arch bridge with strong stone supports on either side of the River. The floodwaters had destroyed previous wooden beam bridges prior to this Bridge being built in 1836.  The arch style was not so easily washed away by the flood waters.  

Skilled male convicts from stonemasons to carpenters worked on this Bridge. Groups of these workers were seen with chains attached to their bodies walking through the streets of Parramatta from their Convict Barracks in Macquarie Street to the Bridge. 

The increase in traffic resulted in an additional lane being added in the 1930s.  It was built of steel and concrete with a sandstone façade.  Do you think you are looking at the old or the new addition?  It’s hard to tell from this distance, so I’ll tell you. You are looking at the new addition.

Photo credit: Lennox Bridge: Hill Thalis Architecture & Urban Projects Pty Ltd

Did you know that the first Parramatta hospital was called “a most wretched hospital, totally destitute of every convenience”? This quote came from Captain Watkin Tench RM in November 1790. Cpt Tench was describing the Parramatta Tent Hospital used mainly for sick convicts. This Hospital was built in the form of a tent with 2 long sheds, a thatched roof, and a bare ground floor. Thank goodness the following Parramatta hospitals were built with bricks and mortar! Images of these hospitals can be viewed in the Pavilions.

Archaeological artifacts from the Hospitals were excavated and also housed in the Pavilions. Be sure to look down as you walk around and read the interpretative information about other old buildings that once stood here.  

The Parramatta District Hospital was fully integrated with Westmead Hospital on 11th November 1978.  This site is now used as the Parramatta Justice Precinct.
Architect Barts Smart 2007

Photo credit: Colonial Pavilion: Dictionary of Sydney

You are looking at the oldest domestic townhouse in Parramatta and mainland Australia. This pleasant Colonial Georgian home has symmetrical façade windows and doors placed evenly apart from each other.

Brislington has always been associated with interesting owners.  The first, ex-convict John Hodges, designed and built the home in 1821. Local folklore tells of John winning a vast sum of money in a card game at a local hotel. Stories tell of a wheelbarrow full of gold nuggets! We don’t know if this is true but we do know John won a lot of money and built this home.  Unfortunately, John was accused of accepting a stolen hearthstone from the Government quarry.  He was forced to sell his home in 1825.

Dr Walter Brown set up his medical practice in this townhouse in 1857. He named it Brislington after his home city Bristol, England. Three generations of Dr Browns worked from Brislington.
Today, Brislington is a Medical museum run by the energetic nurses who use to work at Parramatta District Hospital. Some of these nurses lived at Brislington when it was a Nurses’ Home after the 1950s.  Be sure to visit and have a chat!

Photo credit: Brislington: Brislington Museum

What does this iconic Parramatta landmark remind you of?  A castle in a faraway land? Look at the prominent white quoin or cornerstones that contrast with the pinkish stone building, the tall tower that resembles a lookout, and the central entrance arch all help to create the feeling of a castle.  

This is one of 6 gatehouses dotted around the boundaries of Parramatta Park. They once kept unwanted visitors out of the Governor’s Domain. Parramatta Park was established for the people in 1858 with soldiers leaving the Gatehouses to caretaker families. Samuel and Matilda Case were the first to reside in this newly built Gatehouse in 1885. Other families like the Percy family ran a small zoo and a takeaway food shop from the early 1900s.

This Gatehouse was renovated by the NSW Government’s Architect Office in 2014. The project won the NSW Public Works Strengthening the Environment and Community Award

Architect - Gordon McKinnon 1885

Architectural style – Victorian Tudor Revival

Photo credit: George St Gatehouse: Rusty Compass

(Formerly The Rural Bank)

This is an unusual ‘no frills’ Beaux-Arts interwar building. The Beaux-Arts style of architecture was extremely popular in the United States of America in the early 1900s. The great American architects Frank Llyod Wright & Louis Sullivan championed the Beaux-Arts style. This old Bank building is a rare example of the Beaux-Arts style in Australia today. The former Commonwealth Bank of Australia building in Martin Place is another example of Beaux Art’s architecture.

There is no identifiable architecture pattern in Beaux-Arts other than a monumental block with sculptured facades. You can see here a block building covered in cream tiles and a simple 4 square Doric column Portico. The decorations on this building are understated copper panels. Copper flourishes in circular patterns from the Art nouveau style and contrasting copper zigzag patterns from the Art Deco style decorate the building’s stubby wings and pillars. Looking up, you can see the Australian Coat of Arms.

Architect – A.W. Edwards working for the Rural Bank Architecture Department. Early 1930s

Architecture Style – Interwar Beaux-Arts

Photo credit: Lachlan Macquarie Chambers: City of Parramatta Archives

This impressive Interwar building lets you know your money is safe in this Bank! The architects incorporated a lot of different styles into this building. The prominent entrance bay is flanked by many Doric sandstone columns of different sizes. The finely dressed sandstone is called ‘ashlar’. As you look up, you can see a row of dentils or teeth like sandstone decorations and an impressive balustrade railing.  

One of Parramatta’s famous folklore stories originates when this Bank bought the existing building on the site, The Australian Arms Hotel in 1874, for their new premises. The Manager, Mr Claudius Cairnes, transplanted a sweet water grapevine into the front of the building. It grew so well over the Bank’s old building that it covered the upper veranda and is said to produce half a ton of grapes annually. Cuttings of the vine were unsuccessfully transplanted in Parramatta Park in the early 1930s to make way for the Building you are now looking at.

Architect Spain, Cash & Dods 1938

Architecture Style – Inter War Classic 

Ex-convict, John Montgomery was granted a Publican’s license and built this Inn in 1823. The building is Georgian style and is made with sandstone blocks. Can you see the simple sandstone windowsills and brackets? The iron veranda is supported by timber posts. As you look up, you can see a horizontal sandstone band called a ‘stringline’ at the top of the building. Why is the building sloping down on the eastern side? Maybe the convicts did not dig deep enough trenches for the building’s footings?

St Patrick's Inn is significant in its rarity as an example of one of Parramatta’s earliest commercial buildings and its association with the convict era. The site is also archaeologically significant as records show 2 convict huts were built here prior to the Inn.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported the opening night of The Roxy on 6th February 1930 as a great affair. Local dignitaries including the Mayor of Parramatta, Mr Arthur Collett, enjoyed the talkie movie “Innocents of Paris” starring Maurice Chevalier. The paper further noted the “excellent taste of the Roxy… entirely in Spanish design… furnished with lush velvet fabric of Indian red, green, blue and gold colour scheme”. There was even artistic electric lighting and many pots of fern and palm plants. The opulence and beauty copied straight from Hollywood. This decadent atmosphere and talkie movies would have taken away people’s worries about the looming economic Depression in Australia.

The National Trust stated in 1975 that The Roxy was the “best surviving example of the Spanish Mission style of architecture adapted for a large public building in Australia”. The Roxy has a long list of heritage and conservation orders.

A British Christie Organ accompanied the talkies and movies until 1958. This organ is repudiated to be the largest organ in Australia. The Roxy cinema complex technically closed in 1975 with the Hoyts Cinema group installing a triple cinema complex.  

Mr Brian Powyer, the former President of the NSW National Trust stated in 2019 “The Roxy is one of those very iconic items. There is no long term citizen of Parramatta who doesn’t relate to the Roxy theatre in some way”. Todate, it is hoped this iconic landmark will reopen as a major cinema theatre in Western Sydney. 

Architect – L.F. Herbert & E.D. Wilson with Moore & Dyer 1929

Architect Style – Spanish Mission 

It is easy to walk past this old Georgian sandstone building, built around 1835. If you stop and look up, you’ll notice its original symmetrical windows in the 2nd storey. The ground-storey windows and doors have been altered over time.   

Of equal interest is one of the previous business owners, a Polish aristocrat, Count Lucien de Broel Plater who ran a family cordial and confectionary business from this building. 

Lucien and his brother Ferdinand escaped a failed insurrection in Poland, fleeing to England in 1831. It was here Lucien met his English aristocratic wife, Charlotte Duffus. The couple together with Ferdinand made Parramatta their home in 1840. It is believed that they and their 10 children all lived in this building. It’s hard to imagine that there was enough room for them all and the business?

Mr. George Oakes, Parramatta’s first NSW Parliamentarian employed James Houison to design his new house, Perth House. James incorporated innovative design features. The first being the veranda. Verandas have long been used in India to protect the main building from the hot sun. They were adopted by the British colonists, including here at Parramatta. The veranda added extra living space for growing families. Often the boys in large families slept on their verandas.  

The second innovative feature is the stone hobs in which the wooden veranda posts sit. The termite insect, a wood-eating pest, was stopped in its tracks by the stone hobs. James signature style twin veranda posts are easy to spot here.

The stables can be seen on the western side at the back of the house. The large Morton Bay fig tree in front of the stables was planted by the Oake family in the early 1840s.

Perth House is credited with ‘a high degree of creative excellence’. It is a rare reminder of the once numerous and harmonious low-scale buildings found in Parramatta.

Architecture – James Houison 1841

Architecture style – Colonial Georgian   

One can imagine the red-coated soldiers trudging up this Lane to go to the Male Convict Barracks, once situated at the top of the Lane. Convicts were housed here from 1820 for many years and worked around the town on government projects including Lennox Bridge. 

As you walk up this Lane, stop and look at the humble Warden’s Cottages built around 1842 for warden’s working at the Barracks. Further up the Lane on the eastern side, is the convict-built sandstone wall. Note the sandstone blocks, their colour and coarse texture. The capping on top of the wall has been finely dressed in the ashlar style but, unfortunately, is in need of repair.   

The Convict Barracks continued to be used after convict transportation ceased in the late 1840s. The Barracks were repurposed into hospitals. Later the buildings housed homeless old men and were demolished in the early 1930s.

Today, the Arthur Phillip High School occupies this site with its smart technological driven classrooms and multi-storey buildings.  What a change!

As Barrack Lane meets Macquarie Street, look across the road and see the first 1873 Parramatta South public schoolhouse in front of you. You could mistake this schoolhouse for a private residence with its twin gable roof, large and numerous windows and novelty twin veranda posts. The building certainly doesn’t look like an institution. The gables even have decorative bargeboards running along their inner ends. Cast your eye up to the point of the gables and note the small decorative roof spires to emphasise the apex of the gables.  

Why would this schoolhouse be built in an attractive and detailed Victorian Gothic style? Well, prior to 1875, parents and citizens had to finance one-third of the school building and its furnishings.

The Parramatta parents and citizens certainly appeared to spare no expense in this building’s design.  A NSW Department of Education School Inspector’s Report of mid-1874 noted the Parramatta South Public School rooms were “as large and airy with furnishings. There was no Residence attached to the schoolhouse”.  At the time,  there were 139 students of roughly equal number of boys and girls enrolled in this school. Certainly, a good number of Parramatta parents valued education, as they do today.

The peaceful folk of old Parramatta needed a strong, permanent military presence to maintain order among the unruly, male-dominated convicts and settlers. Governor Macquarie wrote in 1816 that “I have marked out the site of the new Barracks on the rising ground… and about the Centre of the street.  It rained all afternoon on this day, very heavy”. Despite the miserable weather, Lt Watts produced a fine plan of a large, brick two-storeyed building to house 100 soldiers, two single-storeyed cottage residences for the officers, and a carriage loop facing a parade ground.   Cookhouses, washhouses, stables for horses, and an armory were just part of a long list of buildings built on this site from 1818 to 1820.

And don’t think you could walk into the Barracks either.  There was a guardhouse at the entrance with soldiers to stop you!

Today, the Lancer’s Barracks has the proud history of being the longest continuous operational military facility in Australia.  The Barracks is home to the 1st/15th Royal New South Wales Lancers.
You are welcome to take a guided tour of the Lancers Memorial Museum which has over 7000 heritage listed items including the fully restored ACE Matilda Tank.  A rarity and special item.

Designer  – Lt James Watt  1818-1820

Architecture style – Georgian 

A Scottish migrant known throughout the Parramatta district as “Honest James” designed and built this once prosperous-looking townhouse. You may have heard of James Houison. James was Parramatta’s legendary colonial architect.  He designed many beautifully proportioned public and private buildings in Parramatta and beyond.

Kia Ora is the family home James designed and built for his wife Ann and their children. They lived here for over twenty years. One of the main alterations to the original house has been the removal of the front veranda and Jame’s signature-style twin veranda posts. 

This building was nearly burnt down a few years after its completion. Lightning from a severe electrical storm set fire to its stables. It was only the combined efforts of the local people and town water carts that saved this home and its well-stocked timber yard, also owned by James.

The site of 64 Macquarie Street is also famous for its original 1823 lessee, an ex-convict named William Bateman. It was in the Bateman family’s hut that son John Bateman was born in 1801.

John is remembered as one of the co-founders of Melbourne. James bought the lease for this property from William who had established the timber yard business. A smart investment on James’s behalf.

Architect James Houison 1841-1842

Architect Style  Colonial Georgian

This impressive public building speaks of a confident Parramatta community with civic pride. This pride was evident at the official opening of the Town Hall in August 1883. The Parramatta Glee Club staged a performance of Haydn’s choir piece “The Creation”. Newspaperman Cyrus E. Fuller noted, “each room was very lofty and the Council room with a marble mantelpiece and a splendid chandelier”. Grand Indeed!

This grand interior reflects the grand architectural style of the Building.  It is easy to think of an English country house or a French chateau as you look at the second-floor balustrade railing and decorative pediment trims on the window frames.  The architect was creative in adding many different architectural styles to the building.

Before you leave, cast your eye to the Crest or Coat of Arms above the Entrance Portico. The City of Parramatta is possibly the first Council in Australia to adopt an Aboriginal-themed Crest and by 1880! The Council is proud of this Crest and it is still in use today. We are yet to discover which Parramatta resident initiated such an innovative idea?

Architect – W.A. Mansfield 1879-1881

Architecture Style – Victorian Free Classical

St John’s is the oldest Church in continuous use in Australia, dating back to 1803. 

Take the time to wander around, enjoy the curtilage open spaces, the Royal Memorial Gate, and of course the Cathedral. The sandstone was sourced locally, is of the highest quality and workmanship standard. Can you spot the buttress supports built against the walls to reinforce them? Buttress supports were common in old buildings because roof structures lacked adequate bracing. 

The unusual twin towers were built at the request of Mrs. Elizabeth Macquarie. The 12th century Saxon architecture style has been continued when architects James Houison and Edmund Blacket later designed and rebuilt the Church. The motifs originally incorporated by James Houison are fascinating and have symbolic meanings. The most repeated motif is the chevron or zig-zag which symbolises the completion of important work.  

Attending St John’s was a great affair in the early to mid-1800s. The Advocate newspaper wrote, “state carriages rolled up with footmen, the Governor and a suite of officers. The Regimental band played”. The Cumberland Argus stated, “the convicts who were not in a chain gang sat in one gallery, while the King’s schoolboys sat in another gallery and orphan children yet in another gallery”.

Today, the Cathedral is regularly opened for inspection and all are welcome.

Architects:

• Lt James Watt  Twin Towers   1817-1819
• James Houison Church Rebuild 1852-1855
• Edmund Blackett Eastern End Extension 1882

Architectural Style – Originally 12th century Saxon evolving into Victorian Romanesque.