Bathurst Town Square: future vision with a historical perspective at the heart of Australia's oldest inland settlement

Updated

From the ghastly to the glorious, the soon-to-be revamped Town Square at Bathurst in central west New South Wales is home to a host of stories with significance locally and to the nation.

The Bathurst Town Square, founded in the 1880s, is bounded by Russell, George, Howick and William Streets. The Bathurst Courthouse on Russell Street was designed by colonial architect, James Barnet, and opened in 1880 by NSW premier Sir Henry Parkes.

The Bathurst Regional Council, with its chambers in Russell Street, has been considering the future of the Bathurst Town Square and last year held community consultation. More than 100 submissions have been returned, and the council and Heritage Reference Group will now consider those.



Proposals for the future of the Bathurst Town Square include making it a pedestrian-only area. The design of the area may be opened up to Australian and international planners through a competition.

The Bathurst TAFE Building in William Street, built in 1898 as a place of training for tradespeople, is at the heart of the proposed revamp of the Bathurst Town Square, and its future use is being decided. The ornate building with its decorative ceramic tiles has been disused for a number of years.

This chair in Howick Street is part of a memorial that lists the names of all the people who attended the 1899 People's Convention in Bathurst, in the lead-up to Australian Federation. The 1876 building to the right was a public school and is now the Australian Fossil and Mineral Museum, which houses the internationally-significant Somerville Collection.

George Street makes up the final side of the Bathurst Town Square. 1920s street lamps are part of the historic streetscape that also includes some of the city's best examples of art deco architecture as well as a long stretch of Victorian facades.

Kings Parade was the site of an 1869 market building that was used for fruit and poultry markets, political debates and auctions. Now its expanses of grass and well maintained gardens make it a popular place with office workers, tourists and families, and it is increasingly becoming the venue for events such as a pop-up ice-skating rink, and food and wine night markets. With its War Memorial Carillion, it is also the focal point in Bathurst for Anzac and Remembrance Day ceremonies.

At the heart of Bathurst's Town Square in Kings Parade is the Boer War Memorial, which includes the name of Australian Peter Hancock. He was court martialled and executed with Breaker Morant during the war in South Africa. Britain's Lord Kitchener opened the memorial in 1910 but refused to do so if Lieutenant Hancock's name was included. It was added at a later date.

Laneways run through the Bathurst Town Square. One of them is Ribbon Gang Lane, named after 10 men who wore ribbons on their hats and were hanged there in 1830. Joanne Cunnyghame said she loved the convenience of living in the lane and the sense of history, but she did reflect every year on the anniversaries of the men's executions. "Come November I do think about those men who were hanged and it's sad," she said.

The Bathurst Town Square tells an architectural story of the city through buildings such as these on William Street. The Knickerbocker Hotel was built in the 1930s of art deco style, while behind and to the left is the renovated Royal Hotel, which was built a century earlier.

Information sourced from Bathurst Regional Council, National Trust Bathurst, the Bathurst Town Square group, and Sandy Bathgate of the 2036 Bathurst Heritage Network.

Topics: history, regional-development, urban-development-and-planning, bathurst-2795

First posted