Elizabeth Farm
Elizabeth Farm House is one of the oldest remaining farmhouses in Australia, though all that remains of the initial house is said to be one room. It is regarded as one of the premier examples of early Colonial architecture in Australia.
Macarthur wrote to his brother:
“In the centre of my farm I have built a most excellent brick house, 68 feet (21m) in front, and 18 feet (5.5m) in breadth. It has no upper story, but consists of four rooms on the ground floor…”
The initial house was rectangular in plan, divided down the middle by a hallway with two rooms on either side. The house underwent many changes both immediately after construction and over time, the first of which being the addition of the north verandah. The verandah was a sign of prestige which indicated that the occupant was of a more leisured social class. The Elizabeth Farm verandah is also believed to be one of the first of its nature in Australia giving birth to a feature which has become characteristic of rural homesteads in the country, a tradition that continues to the present day.
Hambleden Cottage was built in the early 1824 (by John Macarthur and Henry Kitchen), in the early Colonial Georgian style, a few hundred yards away at the bottom of the hill that Elizabeth Farm House sat upon making this homestead a group of buildings. The cottage was first occupied by John Macarthur’s son, Edward, later becoming the home to a former governess.
Both the House and Cottage have managed to survive to the present day and are now managed by the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales.
Read more about this topic: John Macarthur (wool Pioneer), Architectural Legacy
Famous quotes containing the word farm:
“Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)