Scarce, early c.20th colour collotype of Riversdale, Goulburn by Hardy Wilson (1881-1951), “regarded as one of the most outstanding Australian architects of the twentieth century“.
Riversdale was built on land originally owned by Matthew Healey, who operated the Old Goulburn Inn before selling the property in 1837 and retiring to Appin. Around 1840, John Richards purchased the site and constructed Riversdale, to use as a coaching inn. Richards died before the inn’s opening. His wife Ann managed the business and later married Benjamin Gould. Louis Levy became the first licensee, followed by Gould in 1843. During this period, Gould and Levy were noted for assisting travellers crossing the dangerous Wollondilly River and rescuing passengers from accidents involving the nearby bridge.
Between 1850 and 1856, Riversdale operated as the Goulburn Grammar School under David Patterson, a former Sydney College headmaster remembered as both scholarly and kind. In 1855 the property was advertised for sale, describing a large residence with stables, coach houses, gardens and extensive storage facilities. Ownership later passed to Henry Wilson, who reopened it as the Criterion Hotel, before John Fulljames acquired it as a family residence.
The Fulljames family lived at Riversdale from the early 1860s and were likely responsible for naming the property. John Fulljames, a stock agent and landowner, raised a large family there, and two of his daughters married into the Badgery family.
In 1875 Riversdale was purchased by the Twynam family after several years of leasing the property. Edward Twynam, an English-born surveyor, became Surveyor-General of New South Wales in 1888. His wife Emily Rose Twynam was an accomplished artist and craftswoman whose embroidery, botanical drawings and carved furniture became well known. After Edward’s death in 1923, their daughters Edith, Alice Joan and later Phoebe Wesche continued living at Riversdale. Following Alice Joan’s death in 1967, the property was transferred to the National Trust of Australia, which still owns and operates it today.
Dated at lower left in the image, ‘1919‘ but published 1924.
Hardy Wilson commenced his systematic survey of the early colonial architecture built between 1790 to 1840 in New South Wales and Tasmania in 1912, completing the project a decade later in 1922. At the time, no comparable architectural survey had been undertaken in Australia. The resulting body of work became an important documentary record of colonial buildings, many of which were subsequently demolished. Wilson’s drawings and written observations therefore preserve detailed evidence of architectural forms, construction methods, and domestic buildings that would otherwise have been lost. It was the first major psurvey dedicated to the documentation and conservation of Australian buildings.
From: Hardy Wilson, Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania. Sydney, 1924.
