Elizabeth Farm: the old and the new
Produced in 1987, only three years after the house first opened to the public, Elizabeth Farm: the old and the new is a valuable record of the ‘no-barriers’ museum as it was first experienced by visitors.
In this excerpt from the house’s then guidebook (Historic Houses Trust of NSW, 1984), curator Dr James Broadbent explains the approach to the interpretation of the house and garden, and especially the unique and evocative visitor experience that it enabled. It is an experience we see visitors enjoying in the footage.
‘Elizabeth Farm has been furnished very simply to give visitors more access to the rooms than is normally possible in house museums. This deliberately sparse furnishing is like that of a theatre set, it is not intended to be a full or literal recreation of John and Elizabeth Macarthur’s furnishings … Rather, it is intended to suggest how the rooms were used during their occupancy of the house in the second quarter of the nineteenth century, to create a mood, to encourage the viewer’s response and to stimulate the imagination.
‘This allows not only a closer inspection of the house and its details, but also enables the visitor to experience the house in a way that is not possible in house museums fully furnished with intrinsically valuable objects.’
Elizabeth Farm: the old and the new
This film was originally produced in 1987 for the Heritage Council of NSW as a promotional film for the Department of Environment and Planning. It has been digitised as part of a special project at Museums of History NSW to preserve ‘at risk’ audiovisual material. State Archives Collection, Museums of History NSW: NRS-16375-A000022723. © NSW Film Corporation
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Dr Scott Hill
Curator
Formal studies in architecture, along with travels through Asia and Europe, furthered Scott’s interest in colonial building, domestic design, and the intrinsic relationship between architecture and landscape. This culminated in his PhD ‘Paper Houses’, which examines the significant colonial identity John Macarthur’s interest in architecture, and the design of the Macarthur houses Elizabeth Farm (1793) and Camden Park (1834). In Scott’s words: ‘understanding a historic house, an interior or landscape is for me a process of 'reverse‐designing', about taking the finished product and digging down to find the 'why': the reasons, the decisions and the myriad hidden influences that led to its creation’. He has been curator at Elizabeth Bay House and Vaucluse House and most recently at Elizabeth Farm, Rouse Hill Estate, and Meroogal; ‘The Curator’ in the award-winning SLM blog The Cook and the Curator; co-curated the Eat Your History: A Shared Table exhibition; and in 2023-24 he was senior curator of the exhibition ‘The People’s House: Sydney Opera House at 50’ at the Museum of Sydney.
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