Plan of Parramatta Gaol.

Very rare, c.19th plan of Parramatta Gaol dated 1861.

From his arrival in 1831, Governor Richard Bourke appealed to the Colonial Office in London for a new gaol, and colonial architect Mortimer Lewis submitted a design for the third gaol in 1835. However, it was a design by the new commanding royal engineer Captain George Barney that was used by the builders James Houison and Nathaniel Payten at a new site to the north of the town. In 1842 economic depression halted construction of the gaol, however a perimeter wall, a governor’s house-cum-chapel, and three of the proposed five double-storied radiating wings had been finished. Governor George Gipps proclaimed the incomplete prison open on 3 January 1842. The first gaoler was Thomas Duke Allen. He spent most of his 20 years in charge trying to requisition sufficient facilities to make the gaol habitable. His wife Martha acted as matron for the female prisoners. From the late 1850s, with better economic times, the gaol area was doubled, workshops and a cookhouse were built, two of the original cell wings were converted to male and female hospital wings, and a new stone perimeter wall surrounded the enlarged enclosure.   Source; Dictionary of Sydney.