Newington House - The House

The House

Newington House is a two storey Regency villa, built between 1829 and 1832, in the style of an English mansion, with disciplined English gardens. In its heyday the Blaxland Estate was famous for its landscaped gardens and orchards. The house today is located in the centre of the Silverwater Corrective Centre. The main front of the house is symmetrical, with a central pedimented break-front. The main entrance door is surmounted by a decorative fanlight. The design has been variously attributed to John Verge and Henry Cooper however no original drawings have been located. Newington House was one of the subjects of architect and writer William Hardy Wilson's romanticised drawings of colonial architecture in NSW published in the 1920s. The house is now used as an administration block of the Silverwater Corrective Centre. The house is unusual in architectural terms, for its character rather than its quality; externally it forms a typical Regency structure, its initial conception somewhat marred by the awkward later placement of the verandah, which however presents a fine portal to the house. Internally the main items of significance are the room layout and the rigorous but rustic character of its joinery, where aspirations to the manner and style of a Verge house are seen in primitive form, revealing more general standards of workmanship of the day, and thus the joinery is idiosyncratic in detail rather than of refined quality.