Professor Miles Lewis AM is one of Australia’s most notable Architectural historians and is Professor in the faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. He presented a very interesting address, illustrated with numerous photos and sketches to aid his explanations.
It is a strange notion that people should have to supply their own house when they moved to another place to live or work. But that was the situation in many places in the world where there was not enough available skilled labour.
After Governor Phillip arrived in Sydney and moved from ship to shore in February 1788, he lived in a prefabricated timber framed building. It came with a wooden floor and windows, but it was covered with oil cloth. It is depicted in a watercolour owned by the British Museum in London, titled ‘A View of Governor Philips (sic) House, Sydney Cove.’ (In the linked picture, it is the building at the rear on the right). See: http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an3329075-1
Australia has the largest number of surviving prefabricated buildings in the world, although in many respects this is quite by chance. San Francisco had many prefabricated buildings dating from the gold rush days but due to fires and other mishaps, none survive today.
Victoria had the highest number of prefabricated buildings in Australia as it wasn’t a penal settlement, and thus did not have enough skilled labour. Likewise in the Swan River area (Perth), it was cheaper to bring buildings from Britain. In Sydney there was no point in
importing buildings when they could make them cheaper with convict labour, and eventually Sydney itself became an exporter of buildings.
Police Magistrate, Captain William Lonsdale arrived in the settlement of Melbourne in 1836 and brought with him his own house. Built in Sydney by the Royal Engineers, it was shipped on the Isabella. Several components were washed overboard on the voyage, and the roof was found to be not big enough to cover the house. The building was completed however, and additions added later. Eventually it was moved to Carrum and subsequently acquired by the National trust. Whilst being transported to another site by truck, part of the building fell off and sadly as a result of further mishaps over time, all that remained from Lonsdale’s home, were a few short pieces of timber.
La Trobe’s cottage in Jolimont thankfully fared much better, as a factory built adjacent to the cottage served to protect it. Other worthy buildings to have survived include the Steam Packet Inn in Portland, which was built in Tasmania by convicts.
Woodlands Homestead near Tullamarine is another. It was a large preconstructed timber kit home brought out from Britain. Some timbers were from Jamaica. Panels for the ceiling could be dropped into place and it had lightweight trusses which were easy to transport and assemble.
There were some notable British prefabricators who designed and built timber buildings, including Peter Thompson who exported to Adelaide, Melbourne and New Zealand. Also, Henry Manning, whose father had started a business transporting components that were assembled later in various overseas locations.
The systems used varied. A particular design of house could be ordered from a catalogue, and the parts would arrive with markings showing where timbers had to be matched or fitted together. The markings were usually in Roman numerals because the Arabic numerals were too difficult to make with a chisel. Another method was to order a certain number of components and then design the building yourself. For example, an order might request fifty posts twenty panels, three doors etc.
Another system had panelised sections which were interchangeable. The walls of a building could be made up of doors and windows. All components arrived numbered, and a list of components travelled with the cargo.
The timber itself came from various places. At the time of the gold rush in California there was no railway across the country from the east coast. There was no Panama Canal, and thus timber had to be transported to California and Australia via Cape Horn. This was expensive and dangerous. British factories which were then set up in Hong Kong and Singapore, supplied the market.
It was not uncommon to see timbers marked with Chinese characters. Hong Kong supplied round posts whereas those from Singapore were more sophisticated. Some beams for roofing were designed to be fitted together in the style of a Malaysian building. Sidney Seymore’s gold rush era cottage in Romsey, Victoria, had external walls made completely from
prefabricated doors constructed out of meranti timber from Singapore. Professor Lewis was fortunate to watch a building being dismantled (which hopefully will be reconstructed soon) and he took particular notice of ‘quirked’ board cladding.
Not all the houses were timber. South Melbourne had a significant number of iron houses. The National Trust cares for three iron buildings at 399 Coventry Street, South Melbourne and one of the houses, Patterson House, is on its original site. A much more substantial iron house is Corio Villa in Eastern Beach Road, Geelong.
An interesting concept was formed in the 1970s when the Australian House Museum was created just out of Geelong. A row of portable houses were arranged as if in a street. Although this project has ended it did save a lot of prefabricated buildings in Geelong from being demolished.
Andrew Muir, owner of a Singaporean Cottage at 136 Sackville Street, Collingwood, who has restored 5 Singapore cottages, has joined Professor Miles Lewis and Dr Barry Jones in proposing that 104 prefabricated buildings be placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. These buildings are indeed a very important part of our early history.
For further information visit:
https://www.portablebuildingsaustralia.org
Contributed by Jan Hanslow, PPPG Member No. 1057