A non-building to start with. Part of the site of the Separate Apartments, built 1840s (dotted line).
The first block of 102 cells formed a rectangle nearly 85 m by 20.5 m. They were built to keep the worst behaved and suspected homosexual convicts completely separate. Improvements and additions were commenced until, at the very end of 1848, the complex consisted of 205 cells in two tiers. The 1846 cells were 3.05 m high, 2.44 m long and 1.22 m wide whereas the earlier cells were wider, longer but not as high. You can see where the two storey level is indicated by joists in the wall of the Bakehouse close to the oven’s chimney. The building was derelict and housed pigs in 1876. Within ten years, the bricks were used to pave roads or build Bernacchi’s cottages prior to the erection of the Coffee Palace where one complete cell exists beneath the floorboards.
View of inside, outside (long building at front) and plan and elevation.
Bakehouse, on left, and Clothing Store (3), c. 1842
Each mess of ten convicts were entitled to five 1.14 kg loaves per day, with one baker appointed for every 150 prisoners. The oven, still intact, protrudes from the rear of the building. Both baker and cook were appointments for the best behaved. The smaller clothing store was fitted with shelves. Alterations were made in the Industrial Period with the buildings used as a bakery and blacksmith’s shop (later a butchery).
So I guess the bit sticking out perpendicular to the bakehouse is the oven?
There’s a hole over the door. I don’t know there is a hole over the door.
That rear door opens into the clothing store side
It runs up to what I assume is a bricked in door. Also note the difference in the pavers on either side. Related to one of the later uses? Which went on in which room, it didn’t say.
Site of the Solitary Cells (4).
Originally there were 23 punishment cells in a row behind the Bakehouse and Cookhouse. During 1845-46, these ineffective cells were replaced by two blocks of eight double-brick cells, which were soundproof and completely dark. Cells opened alternately front and back so that men could be exercised separately. Only the foundations are visible.
Cottage c. 1929
Built on part of the site of the Solitary Cells one of the foundations stands on a sandstone ventilation block from the Separate Apartments. Note the air-holes.
Workers accommodation?
The small building to the left was a Bread Store (6) but now it’s a toilet block. Now up to the corner behind that.
Prisoners were originally held in a smaller log and bark barracks or in huts. The Penitentiary was erected in 1830 using over 200 000 bricks made at the settlement. At first, the building had six rooms of equal size. Five were dormitories and the other was fitted out as a chapel. The men slept, with feet to the wall, in berths 0.6 m wide, in a tier of three bunks about 1 m apart.
In the second convict era, 66 men slept in each of the six rooms, until part of each dividing wall was removed in 1847 to make one large room guarded by a single officer. The men then occupied 282 berths like ‘bottles in a bin’ separated by wooden battens. In front of the building was a yard with a 3 m high wall and a gate with square brick buildings on either side to hold a prisoners’ library and their bedding.
The building was modified in the late 1880s, and again in the 1920s to provide accommodation. The gables and verandah were added in the 1920s and the room alongside the Day Room became the Town Library.
Now it provides very basic accommodation for tourists.
The leftmost was for the Assistant Superintendents. The middle one was originally the home of the Catholic clergyman but was later home to William Smith O’Brien, and then the leftmost cottage was added for the clergyman.
The middle one there is open and it had a display about O’Brien, but I might keep that for another day.
Photo of them from about 1900.
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