Detail of pen & ink sketch, artist unknown, of the first house erected in Hobart, 1804

At first glance, you wouldn’t think this simple little pen & ink sketch anything too remarkable.

The paper is slightly yellowed & the ink a dark coffee shade of brown. A frame of stiff cardboard encloses the edges. It lies inside its little glass case on the far end of the Colonial Art Gallery of the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery, or the TMAG as it is lovingly known. A red velvet cloth is draped over the top to protect it from unnecessary exposure to light.

I first found out about this priceless pen & ink sketching on Sunday afternoon. Strolling around, camera in hand, through the TMAG, I idly wandered into the Colonial Art Gallery. There I struck up a conversation with Francisca, a TMAG staff member, with whom I shared my passion for Hobart’s early colonial history.

Upon hearing this, she led me across to the far end of the Gallery to two little glass cases draped with red velvet. As she folded the cloth back, my eyes caught sight of the heading, “The first house erected in Hobart town, 1805″ & nearly popped out of their sockets.

Image source:
Title: The First House Erected in Hobart Town, 1805
Description: 1 photographic print
Format: Photograph
ADRI: PH40-1-192
Source: Archives Office of Tasmania
Series: Collection of Photographs, 1860 – 2006 (PH40)
Electronic resources: Series details
Permalink: Permalink to this item

It is a pen & ink sketch from 1805 by an unknown artist, of the first house to be erected in Hobart. This house was built by Lieutenant Edward Lord (1781 – 1859) & Adolarius William Henry Humphrey (1782? – 1829) in 1804 & was completed in June that year. It became known as Lieutenant Lord’s cottage.

From Humphrey’s ‘Narrative of a voyage to Port Phillip and Van Diemen’s Land with Lieut.-Governor Collins, 1803-1804‘, he wrote, “I must inform you that Lieutenant Lord & I have built a small house, the first of Hobart town. We have received, however, much assistance from the governor, who has kindly given us nails, locks, glass, paint, a fire stove, pitch & tar for the top & men to help with an acre of ground, which is much to have in the town.”

I was determined to blog about this, so I went back to the TMAG today to have another closer look at the sketch & its accompanying description & made a new friend there, Damien, also a TMAG staff member, with whom I had an interesting discussion about the recent history of the sketch.

Turns out that the TMAG hasn’t had this sketch for very long. It only came to the museum about a year ago. We have Mr. Henry Baldwin to thank that this precious sketch is now in the care of the TMAG. Mr. Baldwin, who passed away in 2007, bequeathed the whole of ‘Markree’, an early 1920s home, & all its contents to the TMAG. The Baldwins are one of Hobart’s oldest families & the ‘Markree’ is a treasure trove of antiques & artifacts.

When TMAG staff first went in to survey the ‘Markree’, our little sketch here was sitting up in the sun room with the sun coming in on it! So that was the first thing they rescued. We are very fortunate that it still looks in rather good condition & hasn’t deteriorated too badly, besides a bit of fading probably.

Damien & I also spent a bit of time poring over two lines of tiny scribbled words at the bottom right of the sketch. Unfortunately, the digital copy of the sketch here is cropped but you can just see the first couple of letters right at the bottom right corner.

We couldn’t decipher it, so he graciously made a phone call & spoke to Sue Backhouse, an Art Curator at the museum. The handwriting is so tiny & probably a tad faded as well, that she’s not 100% sure but those two lines possibly read, “Sketched in the presence of [3 initials that can't be deciphered] from the circumscription(?) of the bush.” If you look closely at the close up here, you can just make out the first few letters of the word ’sketched’ & the 3 undecipherable initials underneath that.

I was initially puzzled by the word ‘circumscription’. I’d never heard of such a word before! I came home & did a quick Google on it & turns out that ‘circumscription’ has several meanings, of which I think only two could apply here.

In geometry, a circumscription would be the circle formed by joining all of the vertices of a polygon. So in this context, we were guessing that maybe the phrase ‘circumscription of the bush’ here would mean the cleared area of the bush in which the house was constructed? Bearing in mind that this was very early on, the colonists probably hadn’t really gotten underway to clearing large swathes of land for construction yet. They would have still been surrounded by heaps of thick bushland & barely any clear ground. So maybe they were referring to the first bit of cleared land that would have formed a bare, open clearing of sorts, from which vantage point the artist sketched this house?

In taxonomy, however, circumscription is the defining limit that bounds a particular taxonomic group of organisms, keeping each group of taxon clearly distinct from other groups of taxon. So in this context, the phrase ‘circumscription of the bush’ could have meant that this sketch was done in the presence of a person, identified only by the three undecipherable initials, who was conducting some sort of a botanical and / or zoological survey of the bush still not yet cleared around the house?

We may never find out. And yet, we never know, we just may find some obscure reference to this little sketch one day in some other person’s long lost journal. That’s just what makes history so fun, exciting & mysterious all at once!

I wonder how big Lieutenant Lord’s cottage actually was. Humphrey described it as having four rooms, but whether they were big or small, I have no idea. They had an acre of land, which is fairly large, so I suppose they could have afforded to build a slightly bigger house, assuming they weren’t short on materials!

I was also intrigued to note in the accompanying description that the original site is marked by a plaque on Macquarie Street. So we drove down this evening to have a hunt for it. We parked right outside Domino’s Pizza on Macquarie Street & got out to hunt for the plaque. I didn’t know where it was specifically, all the description said was, “The site is marked by a plaque in Macquarie Street, three doors from Victoria Street”.

I was expecting to see a rather obvious plaque in the pavement somewhere within 100 metres to the left or right of Victoria Street but on my first pass through, I didn’t see anything. Odd, I thought. I crossed the road, thinking it might be on the other side. Nothing. Very frustrating.

Finally, it was David who found it. It’s a tiny little thing, fixed at the foot of the Genesys Wealth Advisors building, 149B Macquarie Street. It was totally covered with cobwebs too! We dusted it off & I proceeded to get onto my hands & knees to take a photograph of it, much to the curiosity & amusement of passers-by. Oh, for the love of history, the things I do!

I went back to the opposite side of Macquarie Street to take a wider view. I’ve highlighted the position of the little plaque with a red square in the photo below.

I’ve also pinpointed it’s exact location on Google Maps here:

Looking around me at all the high rise buildings made of concrete flanking this extremely busy street paved with tarmac, it’s a wee bit hard to visualize how this place must have looked like just over two centuries ago. The house that once stood here was flanked instead by thick bush that can be seen in the sketch. How wild it must have been back then. How far away it must felt from ‘civilization’. It must have truly felt like the ends of the world here.

Today, cars, buses & trucks roar past & people busily go on their way, most never noticing this little bit of metal stuck in the foot of the wall, commemorating the truly humble origins of our fair town of Hobart.

Photo of the Tue 27 Oct 2009 article in The Mercury

David & I were enjoying a quiet afternoon hanging out at the Museum Courtyard Café. I was organizing material in my trusty UMPC, while David browsed through that day’s edition of The Mercury. Suddenly, he flipped the paper over to me & said, “This may be of interest to you.”

Being pretty preoccupied with what I was doing, I intended to give it a quick once-over, assuming it would probably be nothing much, but not two lines in, I was captivated by the story.

Unfortunately, this particular article was not included in The Mercury online, so I haven’t the actual article to link to. I managed to get a copy for myself by paying for it on Newstext but I’m not allowed to reproduce it here.

St. Margaret’s Church & Cemetery is situated near the start of Saunderson Road in Risdon. That places it less than a kilometer away from the Risdon Cove Historic Site, site of the first British settlement in Tasmania.

The church was built in 1867 but, oddly enough, isn’t on Tasmania’s heritage register. According to the article (which is found on page 9 of the Tues 27 Oct 2009 edition of The Mercury, by Charles Waterhouse), the building “is deteriorating so much it is collapsing”. It doesn’t say when the church was closed down or why.

I was intrigued & very excited. So David & I decided to take a drive down to pay this little church a visit this afternoon.

It was a splendid afternoon for a drive & for photography too. The sky was a brilliant blue with perfect little cotton puffs of cloud scattered about. We pulled into Saunderson Road & I immediately recognized the faded pale paint & red roofing of this historic building.

The road in was loose gravel & there was a sign carelessly tossed on the ground that read, “Notice: We are currently re-developing East Risdon Cemetery. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.” It’s a shame they aren’t doing up the church as well.

According to the article, the owners of the church, Millingtons Funeral Directors, agreed that the church was in a bad state but said, “It’s not high on our priority list at the moment.” Luckily, demolition had not been considered but the owners insisted that the church “needed to have a use”.

Large sulphur-crested cockatoos were twirling & screaming in the air above me as I made my way down the little path leading to the church building. As I rounded the corner to the front of the building, my jaw dropped, aghast. The sandstone staircase leading up to the main door of the church was, literally, crumbling into dust! The capstones of the staircase looked like they were just about ready to tumble right off, they were all askew.

My heart broke. This little church is such a treasure & yet it was clear that it had been neglected for years & years.

As I circled the building, I noticed that the foundation was truly giving way. I wouldn’t dare step foot in this rickety church! Blackbirds were busy flying in & out of the holes & gaps in places where the roofing had come loose, chirping merrily as they nested in the nooks & crannies there.

I had a wander through the cemetery as well. I was surprised to note that this cemetery was still in use; the most recent burial here was just this year, a couple of months ago.

I was particularly interested in the older tombstones. I may be wrong, but I think the earliest one I could find was that of a baby named James Alexander Barr, who died in 1875, 8 years after the church was built, at one year of age. Child mortality was so high in those days.

This particular tombstone was so worn down by time, over 100 years, that someone had come along & tried to preserve whatever was engraved by filling it in with either black paint or marker ink. It even looks like that was attempted more than once. The last line, however, is rather poorly done, it’s quite illegible.

As I moved between the tombstones, some so old that they look like they are near topping over, I was struck by a sense of how seemingly forgotten & abandoned this place was. We were only ten minutes away from the bustling modern streets of Glenorchy, yet this place FELT like it was still out in the middle of nowhere. Isolated. Alone. It’s almost as if it was still in the time space of the past, in the late 1800s.

I came to check out St. Margaret’s Church an an eager & enthusiastic mood, almost bubbling over with excitement really. Yet, I felt my steps slowing down within its grounds, almost out of reverence. For what? I do not know. Perhaps for the implacability of time. As we were readying ourselves to go, I felt almost melancholy. Certainly I did feel sorry for the venerable crumbling church. But it was more than just that. It was just the place & the air about it.

I hope to find out more about St. Margaret’s Church in time to come & learn some of the stories of the people who lived & worshiped here. I hope that, if nothing else, this post may help bring more awareness of this gem of history lying seemingly hidden on quiet Saunderson Road here in Risdon & hope that it will soon be restored & re-take its place in the community here.