Historical Walking Tour of Armidale

The register calls this the oldest surviving public building in Armidale and the New England region. Before it, the town made do with a slab-walled bush courthouse from 1844. In 1856 residents petitioned the NSW Legislative Assembly with 1500 signatures, and 3250 pounds was set aside for a proper replacement. Colonial Architect Alexander Dawson designed the modest but monumental brick building, finished in 1860, and later work by James Barnet and Walter Liberty Vernon is also recorded. It is among the earliest regional courthouses in NSW. SHR 02046.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Armidale's first post office opened in 1843, and the first official premises went up in 1865 on a different site. The present building was completed on 21 May 1880 under Colonial Architect James Barnet, with W. Seabrook and J.T. Brown as builders, and Government Architect W.L. Vernon later shaped its appearance too. The register values it as an outstanding public building on a key corner, unusual for joining a Free Classical palazzo form to an attached stuccoed loggia. It anchors the civic precinct around the Beardy and Faulkner Streets intersection. SHR 01312.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

This building was put up for the Land Board Office in the early 1880s, to a design by James Barnet, and a historical reference dates it from 1882 to 1885, with C.T. Cook as builder. Its arcaded portico echoes the arcade of the neighbouring Post Office, and the register ranks the pair as part of one of the finest groups of civic buildings in New South Wales. It also records the building as a link in the state telegraph network built up in the second half of the nineteenth century. SHR 00433.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Armidale's Lands Office was built in 1887 to a design from the Colonial Architect's Office, where James Barnet was in charge. The register's short entry describes it as a superbly crafted and designed Victorian public building, and places it among others from the same period of town growth, including the Armidale Folk Museum, the Imperial Hotel and the Post Office. Together they form part of the Armidale Conservation Area. Records for this one are brief, so this stop is mainly about its place in the streetscape. SHR 00963.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Also known as Armidale Anglican Cathedral

Bishop Broughton held the first formal Christian service in Armidale in 1845 and announced a church, and a small timber St Peter's was open for worship by 1850. After Bishop James Francis Turner arrived in 1869 he found it too small and engaged the young architect John Horbury Hunt. The cathedral they designed together opened in 1875, in plain exposed brick laid in patterned courses with a single flying buttress. The register calls it one of Hunt's finest works. His 1892 deanery beside it is one of the few church residences he designed in NSW. SHR 01924.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Armidale's 1846 town plan included reserves, and one appears to have been meant for recreation: the future Central Park. By the mid-1870s it was cleared and fenced, partly by inmates of the town gaol, and locals nicknamed it Dismal Park while stock still grazed there. Sydney Botanic Garden director Charles Moore was consulted on plantings in 1878. The register rates the park an outstanding intact High Victorian town park, with a fine collection of conifers, a rotunda built solely to commemorate the Boer War and a fountain built solely to commemorate the Great War. Both are the only ones of their kind recorded in NSW. SHR 02019.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Also known as Armidale Catholic Cathedral

The first Catholic service in Armidale was held in a chapel in 1848, and a first cathedral of brick, stone and shingle opened on this site in 1872. It was soon too small, and the present cathedral was built in 1911 and 1912 to a design by the firm Sheerin and Hennessy. On completion it was considered the finest Catholic cathedral in Australia, and the register describes it as ornate Federation Gothic Revival. The group is also tied to the Ursuline Sisters, who settled in Armidale in 1882. SHR 01925.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Also known as Armidale Teachers' College

The register calls this the first teachers' college built outside metropolitan Sydney to train country teachers. It stands on the site of Armidale Gaol, which took its first prisoners in 1863 and was demolished in 1929, its bricks reused in the college foundations. Local MP David Drummond became Minister for Education in October 1927 and won approval for the college that December. It later helped lead to the University College of New England in 1938 and the university in 1954. Locals still call the Interwar Georgian Revival building the College on the Hill. SHR 01769.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory

Also known as Armidale Railway Station

The railway reached Armidale on 3 February 1883, extending the line from Uralla, and went on to Glen Innes the following year. Edmund Lonsdale won the 1882 contracts for the station, stationmaster's house and other buildings, and the fine cast ironwork was made at the New England Foundry in Uralla. The register calls it a grand first-class station and an excellent, mostly intact late nineteenth-century example. The line north of Armidale has since closed, and the station remains a major civic building in the townscape. SHR 01074.

Source: NSW State Heritage Inventory