Darlinghurst Courthouse - Oxford Street - Taylor Square

 

Darlinghurst Courthouse 

The New South Wales Enabling Act & 

The New South Wales Court Act 1787

& the CHARTER OF JUSTICE, 2nd April 1787

Were Both Enacted On The 7th February 1788,

 After Arthur Phillips Instructions From King George III 

Had Been Read Aloud And Enabled By John Collins, Judge Advocate Of The New Colony. 


On The 11th February 2 Convicts Were Convicted Of Stealing, One Was Sentanced To 150 Lashes With The Cat-O-Nine-Tails, & The Other To Be Marooned On Pinchgut Island (Now Called Fort Denison) In The Middle Of Sydney Harbour To Starve To Death. 

The first civil action is brought by convicts against the captain of the transport, whom they accused of stealing belongings they had given him for safe keeping. He was found guilty.

In September 1795, during Governor hunters term, there was another strange civil case. Two soldiers of the New South Wales for the suit for £500 damages for a £20 each.

The courts  shuffled from one place to another until Greenways building on King Street, the first Supreme Court, was ready.

The courts were shuffled from one place to another until greenways building on King Street, the first Supreme Court, was ready.

Meddling commissioner Bigge had forced Greenway to turn his original courthouse into St James church.

Satisfied with the makeshift he then had to create alongside the church to service port. The building, until 1828, handed civil and criminal cases until the new criminal court was built at Darlinghurst 14 years later.

Commission a big head for screen way to turn his original courthouse into St James church. Every little architect was deeply dissatisfied with the makeshift you don’t have to create alongside the church to service courts. The building, not opened until 1828, handled civil and criminal cases until the new criminal court was built at Darlinghurst 14 years later

The building was designed by multiple ideas, which was one wonderful well. But the time is regarded as a/inspiration to go to Newport house hard up against the back of Darlinghurst jail. This arrangement would obviate the lamentable exhibition of prisoners creating through the town to the courthouse for trials and risk their escape

Wesley Chapel – Built 1847 – Bourke Street – Surry Hills

Walk Bourke Street between the city and the southern suburbs and you still pass a sandstone Classic Revival chapel that looks older than almost everything around it. The façade still carries the inscription “Wesleyan Chapel – 1847.” Dictionary of Sydney credits architect John Bibb; the chapel was built in 1846–47 for Lancelot Ireland on part of his estate and later given to the Wesleyan (Methodist) Church.

For well over a century Methodists worshipped here on what became a busy inner-suburban thoroughfare. The congregation closed in 1979. The historic chapel was then folded into Wesley Mission’s Edgar Eager Lodge — a facility for people experiencing homelessness — with a residential tower added at the rear about 1980. The sandstone front stayed: a rare early religious landmark still reading as a chapel in a street that has otherwise gone high-rise and mixed-use.

Keep the geography straight: this stretch of Bourke Street is Surry Hills in City of Sydney archival captions and in the post title. Heritage NSW’s primary address for the same building lists Darlinghurst (348a Bourke Street) — a border-suburb quirk, not a different chapel.

Former Wesleyan Chapel (1847), Bourke Street, Surry Hills — sandstone Classic Revival façade, later part of Wesley Mission’s Edgar Eager Lodge.

Darlinghurst Gaol – Taylor Square – Bourke Street – Forbes Street – Burton Street – Darlinghurst Road

Darlinghurst Gaol - Taylor Square - Darlinghurst 

Ten Things  You May Not Have Known About Darlinghurst Gaol. 

1. In The Early 1820's, The NSW Colonial Administration Decided To Invest In A New Prison Facility. A Site was Identified At Darlinghurst Hill & The Architect Francis Greenway Was Asked To Design It. Darlinghurst Gaol Was To Overlook Sydney As A Constant Reminder That Sydney Town Was A Convict Settlement. 
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2. In 1822, Construction Of The Walls Began Using Convict Labour. After An Early Flurry, Funds Eventually Ran Out And Work On The Site Stopped. Sydney's Existing Jail At The Rocks Eventually Suffered From Intense Overcrowding & Public Pressure Led The Darlinghurst  Gaol Project To Restart In 1835. 

The Later Designs Of The Prison By Architect Mortimer Lewis, Were Radically Changed by George Barney, Who Then Took Over The Project. After 1841 Even George Barneys Designs Were Changed By The Administration To Fit In More Prisoners In The Complex. 

In The Original Plans, Each Cell Was To Accommodate 1 Prisoner, But That Was Changed To Each Cell Holding 3 Prisoners. Outside The Walls, Near The Front Entrance, Effluent & Sewage Collected In A Big Pond, With The Stench Rising Up To Greet Anyone Who Came Past It.

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3. The First Prisoners Were Housed In 1841. However, The Prison Itself was Not Completed Until 1881. 
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4. Over The Decades, The Darlinghurst Gaol Hosted Some Significant Prisoners, Including - 

Poet Henry Lawson. Lawson, Who Did Time For Drunkeness & Non Payment Of Alimony, Recorded His Experience In His 1908 Poem, One Hundred & Three - His Prison Number 

- Captain Moonlight

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5. Makeshift Public Gallows Were Locates Outside The Main Gate In Forbes Street. A Permanent Gallows Was Located Inside The Main Wall Near The Intersection If Darlinghurst Road & Burton Street. Among The 79 People Executed Was Notorious Bushranger Captain Moonlight In 1880.

Also Executed - John Knatchbull - Hanged in 1844

- jimmy Governor - Hanged in 1901

- The Last Woman Hanged In NSW Was Louisa Collins in January 1889

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6. Conditions In The Gaol Deteriorated & It Was Plagued With Drainage, Security & Disease Problems. The Long Bay Gaol Superceded Darlinghurst When It Opened In 1914 With Such Mod Cons As Cell Lighting & A Prison Library. 
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7. The Jail Was Used As An Internment Camp During World War One. In 1921 The Buildings Were Converted Into The East Sydney Technical College. 
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8. In 1921, The National Art School Also Took Up Residence In The Old Prison Buildings. Students Who Passed Through The NAS Include -

 Margaret Olley, Ken Done, Max Dupain, Reg Mombasaa & The Sculptor Raynor Hoff, James Gleeson, John Coburn, Fiona Hall, Wendy Sharp, Jeffrey Smart, John Olsen, 
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9. Also Within The Complex Is The Cell Block Theatre Which Was Announced In 1955 By Hollywood Legend Katherine Hepburn. Hepburn Made a Speech Noting How Appropriate It Was That A Member Of The Second Oldest  Profession In The Business,  Should Open A Building Which Had Housed Women From the Oldest Profession. 
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10. Darlinghurst Gaol Is The Oldest Surviving Large Jail Complex In Australia. 
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Prisoners Were Marched In Chains From The Decaying Prison In Old George Street North To The Big New Gaol In Darlinghurst In 1841. 
There were 159 fillings in the cavalcade, 119 men and 40 women.
Three years later a crowd of 10,000 were outside the Gaols Great Stone Wall To  Watch Murderer John Knatchbull hang on the public gallows. Until 1852 All Hangings Were public. The last hanging out the jail was in 1907, of the 67th Person to die on the gallows there.
The Gaol Had Been Planned In 1835, was a long time building. 13 years earlier, convicts had begun to dig stone for its wall On Goat Island & in the Woolloomooloo Quarries. Some of the marks they carved in the blocks, So That A Tally could be kept Of Their Quota in the cut stone, Is Still Legible. 
The Gaol Was Planned by Mortimer Lewis, After The Original Designs From Francis Greenway Many Years before.   On An American Model, As A Series Of Curved buildings Grouped Around A Chapel. In 1840, A Time Of Depression, Free Labour Was Used On the Chief Gaoler's House And Two Cell Wings Under A Scheme To Ease 
"The Great Destitution Among The Working Classes."
Strenuous But Not Always Successful Efforts Were Made To Extract  Useful Work From The Prisoners, Who Worked At trades Seven hours A Day. Discipline Was Severe. 
One Of The Few Amenities Was the Fact That No Cell Had A Ceiling Less Than 10 Feet High. 
In World War 1, German Prisoners Of War Were Housed in the Gaol, & Long Bay Gaol Took Over The Criminals. In 1921 The Massive Buildings Threw off their Ugly Past - Darlinghurst Gaol Opened Its Gates To Hopeful youth & Became East Sydney Technical College. 

2022 - The Latest News About The Darlinghurst Site 

 Darlinghurst Law Courts To Become Centre Of New Cultural Precinct