Father’s Day fair at Sydney Seymour Cottage, Sunday 4 September 2022
Our friends at the Romsey and Lancefield Districts Historical Society are celebrating spring by holding a Father’s Day family fair at Sydney Seymour Cottage, 20 Palmer Street, Romsey on Sunday, 4 September 2022, 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.
There will be music, wine, and food and two interesting speakers discussing the history of this property:
- Fiona Webber of John Patrick Landscape Architects on the historic gardens, and
- Guy Murphy of Bryce Raworth Conservation and Heritage on the history of the cottage.
Guy and Fiona have recently completed the Conservation Management Plan (CMP) for Sydney Seymor Cottage, which was funded by the Victorian Government Living Heritage Grants Program.
Sydney Seymor Cottage is constructed in the early 1850’s with a local hardwood timber post and beam frame, uniquely infilled with pairs of ‘Singapore Cottage’ meranti doors. It is PB52 on our list of portable buildings.
Miles Lewis to present on Portable Buildings in Australia
on Thursday, August 5, 2021
at The Royal Historical Society of Victoria, in partnership with Engineering Heritage Victoria
View of Samuel Hemming, works, Bedminster. Bristol, including a church similar to the one which survives in part at Gisborne, Victoria. Illustrated London News: XX1V, 69 (18/12/1854), 141.
This event is in the past
Portable buildings, today referred to as prefabricated, were imported in larger numbers to Australia than to any other part of the world during the nineteenth century. They were made not merely of timber and iron, but of oilcloth, slate, zinc, papier mâché, and ‘portable brick’. More also survive in Australia than anywhere else, though not of those more ephemeral materials. They range through iron lighthouses, cottages of ‘teak’ from Singapore, German glazed conservatories, plate iron fronted buildings from Glasgow, and redwood houses from California. Many are of the greatest technical interest, and in few cases do any examples survive in the country of origin. For these reasons it has been proposed that they should be nominated as a group for World Heritage Listing. This presentation will sample these various types, concentrating on those which survive today.
Miles Lewis, AM FAHA, is an architectural historian specialising in the interaction between technology and culture in areas such as vernacular architecture and prefabrication, and in technical innovation generally. He edited the international text Architectura, and has this year published a book, Architectural Drawings: Collecting in Australia. He is an emeritus professor of the University of Melbourne, and is a member of the Portable Buildings World Heritage Nomination Task Force.
Professor Charles Sowerwine who is also on the Portable Buildings World Heritage Nomination Task Force and chairs the RHSV Heritage Committee will chair the evening.
Press release for our launch 15 April 2021
Media Release
Immediate release
Embargoed 00.01 AM 15 April 2021
A call for World Heritage Listing
for Australia’s unique collection of
19th century imported portable buildings
A campaign to be launched by the Hon. Dr. Barry Jones on 15 April would see about a hundred Australian buildings, some of them very humble, take their place on the UNESCO World Heritage list alongside the Great Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, and the Eiffel Tower.
The campaign will raise awareness that Australia has the world’s most extensive and best-preserved collection of 19th-century prefabricated buildings. They include houses, shops, churches, schools, lighthouses, and even the NSW legislative council chamber. The thing that unites them is that they were all shipped from across the world to our shores from the 1840s onwards.
They are important not just to the history of Australia, but to the history of the world, because they reveal a great deal about the development of world architecture and because they are the physical evidence of a global trading network that had to adjust to the rise of the steamship, the Californian Gold Rush, the Crimean War and the opening of the Suez Canal.
The organisers of the campaign are calling on state governments to adopt the proposal and recommend it to the federal government so the Commonwealth can champion the cause for World Heritage listing.
Campaign organiser Professor Miles Lewis says: “The huge importation of buildings from overseas is a really exciting aspect of Australian history because there has been nothing comparable in scale elsewhere in the world.”
Australia has 104 surviving 19th-century prefabricated buildings. 63 of them are in Victoria, 16 in NSW, 13 in South Australia, 4 in Tasmania, 3 in Queensland, 3 in Western Australia, and 2 in the Northern Territory and. This is more than the rest of the world combined. Many of the buildings are already protected under relevant heritage controls, but they are not recognised collectively for their contribution to world architecture.
Remarkably Australia has:
· The only Singapore-made wooden buildings known to survive in the world.
· German wooden buildings which also appear to be unique.
· United States made buildings, of which only one is known to survive in the USA (and
that in storage)
· More than a dozen iron buildings made in Glasgow in the 1850s, though only two
survive in Glasgow itself
· Both wood and iron buildings by twenty-one English makers, very few of which can be
identified in England itself.
These buildings are in every state of Australia, and the Northern Territory, but the majority are in Victoria. Victoria stands to benefit most from the prestige of the listing and from the tourism which results from it. Geelong will benefit most of all, because it has more of these buildings than any local government area in Australia.
Convenor of the campaign, Tony Isaacson, says “A World Heritage listing is an important thing for the country concerned. It gives a boost to national pride and identity, and it generates tourism. Two-thirds of the buildings in this proposal are in Victoria, and it will be a bonanza for the state and for all states that get on board.”
Making a World Heritage nomination is a major exercise, in which the Commonwealth Government requires the support of the relevant states - in this case all of them – and it can take from five to ten years. And this proposal is further complicated by the large number of properties involved. But it already has great support within Australia and from overseas.
· The Hon. Dr. Barry Jones is both the former federal Minister for Science and the former vice president of the UNESCO World Heritage Committee. He will be speaking at 136 Sackville Street, Collingwood, VIC on Thursday 15th April at 6:15 pm
· For interviews contact Tony Isaacson, mobile 0418 381 638
· For a copy of the World Heritage proposal go here:
Portable Buildings World Heritage Nomination Task Force launch
PBWHNTF was launched by Barry Jones on Thursday 15 April 2021, with over 100 friends and supporters attending
Barry Jones launched the Portable Buildings World Heritage Task Force at 136 Sackville Street Collinwood, site of four very special and beautiful Singapore Cottages, on Thursday 15 April 2021.
Over 100 guests attended, inspected the cottages, and celebrated the launch.
PBWHNTF for short!
Sackville St courtyard
Photo PBWHNTF
Barry Jones with Taskforce members Andrew Muir and Miles Lewis
Photo PBWHNTF
Tony Isaacson, convenor, introduces Barry Jones
Photo Alan Willingham
Inside 136 Sackville St
Photo PBWHNTF