John Verge - Main Projects

Main Projects

• Camden Park, Menangle (1835)

Camden Park House is completed on 1835, a year after John Macarthur, the client death. This house is still occupied by the Macarthur family and become one of the great mansions of Australia. The style of this house is Palladian style with central two-storey block, one-storey wings and extensions at each side. The façade is giving a colonial elegancy sense of looking, where there are white stucco walls, stone porch and window trimming that results a visual excellency of feeling. This colonial house’s floor level is very near to ground level, which gives an air of intimacy, and also the overhanging roof has a secret gutter that avoids the ugly-looking gutter which usually put it in the front façade of the wall.

• Denham Court, Ingleburn (1832)

Denham Court which is located in the local government areas of the City of Campbelltown and City of Liverpool placed on south west of the Sydney Central Business District. Originally, this building was a single-storey house but around 1832 to 1833, Captain Richard Brooks as an architect was enlarging this house by adding two-storey wings with two flanking bow-fronted one storey room. This court is regency influenced with trim lines, stucco walls, and the simple shallowly recessed panels projecting porch. Denham Court’s room is 14 feet high with a geometrical stair along the west wall of the house and also there is a large living hall that extending across the width of the house between the bows fronted. The floor in this house is paved with flagstones diagonally with 18 inches square each. Moreover, in the west of this court, there is a Denham Court chapel, which is a mimic of the church at Denham in England. Those churches were designed by John Verge as well with the style of it is Gothic, where mostly this style is taking over the style of every church.

• Elizabeth Bay House (1835–1838)

Elizabeth Bay House, which is a historic home, is located in the suburb of Elizabeth Bay in Sydney, New South Wales, and Australia. It is built between 1835 and 1839. It was known as ‘the finest house in the colony’ as well as a home in the Regency style, originally surrounded by a 54-acre garden, but now situated within a densely populated inner city suburb. It shows Verge at his best and worst as a designer. The main elevation is a simple Regency front, whilst the sides, less ambitious but perhaps more pleasing, have large curved bays, running through the two floors. The general impression given by the design is of quietness and good taste, the severely stuccoed walls being relieved only by the somewhat stiff mouldings run in the plaster work and the elaboration of the entrance. The rear of the house is unstudied and lacks the neatness of the other elevations. The interior has some splendid rooms, the stair hall being one of the finest and perhaps the best, of such things in Australian Colonial architecture. Elliptical on plan, the stair and its upper landings sweep completely round the curved walls. The French windows on the northern front give beautiful light and superb views to main apartment. Verge seems to tire and falter when trying to coordinated all the parts into a whole.

• Rockwall House, Potts Point (1831–1837)

Rockwall House, which is still well-known, is located at Rockwall Crescent that is the well-preserved Regency house that Verge designed for John Bushby. It is quite close to Tusculum. The Rockwall House shows Verge in his most restrained and pleasing mood, although the columned porch seems to overpower the flanking verandas in scale.

• St Scholastica’s College(1831–1900)

St Scholastica’s College, which formerly was Toxteth Park George Allen Estate, is located in Avenue Road Glebe, built in 1831. Toxteth Park was built for George Allen (1800–77). It was a rectangular two-story block with single-story wings, s a stone-flagged veranda on two sides, with the kitchen and servants’ quarters behind. The style of St Scholastica’s College is original structure Old Colonial Georgia (still visible), Second story and tower Victorian Italianate added in the 1870s. Handsome Inter-War Romanesque chapel added in the twenties. It is made of brick. Moreover it was originally House, then convent and Education.