On paper – measured drawings of Elizabeth Farm
As part of the restoration works at Elizabeth Farm in the 1980s, a set of extraordinarily detailed hand-drawn measured drawings were produced of the house and service buildings. Created long before the advent of computer drafting, they were the work of NSW Government Architect John Whyte (Ian) Thomson, with Diane Jones and project architect Ian Sansom.
The drawings enable the different construction stages of the house to be identified. The original cottage that was built in 1793 saw considerable change over the following decades. In particular, sheet 6: section BB shows the front verandah and rear skillion room that were added in 1825–28 to the original high-pitched roof over the dining room (room A4) and the rear service wing (today known as the ‘colonial kitchen’) with its cellar (room C1) added in the early 1810s.
The drawings painstakingly record individual flagstones and wall masonry, as well as cracks in walls and sections where plaster has fallen to reveal the ceiling timbers.
The drawings also show the internal bathroom that was created for a caretaker shortly after the house was acquired by the Elizabeth Farm Trust in 1968. With a need for an onsite presence, the Trust had converted a small room at the rear of the original house that had originally been a dressing room and bedroom. (Today this room is known as the ‘blue room’, after the colour of an original distemper paint that was found there.) These bathroom facilities were removed during the early 1980s conservation; the Macarthurs’ home did not have a bathroom, and the Swann family’s bathroom was in what is now a staffroom in the rear wing.
Prize-winning drawings
In 1982, six measured drawings were submitted under the pseudonym ‘Macarthur’ to the Wiggins Teape / Architects’ Journal international measured drawing competition for drawings of ‘historic buildings, structures, machinery and archaeology’, and were co-awarded the second prize.
As reported in the Architects’ Journal, the competition assessors ‘particularly liked the Elizabeth Farm entry as much for its great historical interest as for the skill with which it was measured, drawn and very accurately documented’.1
Notes
1. ‘For good measure’, Architect’s Journal, 8 December 1982, p30.
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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.