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Revised 13.5.99
From the time that work began on building St. Matthew's Anglican church in Windsor in 1817, a rectory (known then as a glebe house or parsonage house) was seen by the government as an essential adjunct. Governor Macquarie commented in a despatch to London in 1817 that "I shall not fail to avail myself of your Lordship's permission given Me for Erecting Glebe Houses for Clergymen ... there is only one Glebe House now Wanting. . . namely at Windsor... which shall be commenced as soon as the Church at that Station has been erected."1
Since every minister was dependent upon a horse to conduct his parochial duties, stabling was an essential element of such a parsonage house and did not require specific mention: it is taken for granted. The stabling, moreover, had to be sufficient to hold the minister's gig or other horse-drawn vehicle and sufficient stallage for the horse of a visitor. Stabling of the sort eventually built at St Matthew's Windsor had been erected, for example, in 1813 at the Revd. Henry Fulton's glebe house at Castlereagh, in very much the same relationship to the house as at Windsor (Fig.1). 2
Two architects were involved in the building of St Matthew's church at Windsor. Henry Kitchen had in his late teens studied at the Royal Academy in London and had been a pupil of the celebrated James Wyatt just before Wyatt's death in 1813. Kitchen came to New South Wales in December 1816 with the encouragement of Lord Bathurst, Secretary of State for the Colonies.3 Two years previously, however, in 1814 another architect, Francis Greenway, had been transported to New South Wales, and was already being patronised by Governor Macquarie, who appointed Greenway acting Government Architect in March 18 16.4 Kitchen's initial successes in the colony - the contract, it seems, for building Captain Piper's major house, Henrietta Villa, and the contract for erecting St Matthew's, Windsor - created a focused rivalry between Kitchen and Greenway. In the context of St Matthew's stables, it is highly relevant that Kitchen's sponsors for his work at St Matthew's were John Piper (of Henrietta Villa) and William Cox the leading building contractor on the Hawkesbury, operating from his large, self-contained estate at Clarendon, between Richmond and Windsor.5 Cox had already in May 1816, fifteen months before tender documents had been issued, provided 220,000 bricks for the proposed church,6 and Kitchen in 1821 was still seeking reimbursement from the colonial government for the £188 he had paid Cox for 171,319 bricks.7
The church partly built under Kitchen's supervision, using Cox's bricks, was condemned by Greenway and a small committee in 1818, Kitchen was dismissed, replaced by Greenway and placed in financial jeopardy. Piper and Cox do not appear to have been helpful to their protégé, Kitchen.8 On the other hand, there is no evidence of animosity between Cox and Kitchen such as became more and more evident between Kitchen and Greenway, culminating in Kitchen's evidence to Commissioner Bigge in 1821 and 1822.
Kitchen's principal patrons after 1818 were John Macarthur and his family. In 1821 he designed and built Hambledon Cottage, including its stables, at Elizabeth Farm, Parramatta, for the Macarthurs.9 Kitchen had already, on 9 May 1820, provided William Cox with another design for stables: the end and front elevation and the plan of this stables (together with some preliminary doodles) were also given to John Macarthur, in whose archives they survive.10 (Fig. 4). The copy is signed by Kitchen and its authenticity seems certain. No location for the projected stables is given, although the slope on the site for the stables (similar to the slope at Windsor) suggests that it is not an abstract design. Unlike the plan and elevation from the Hambledon stables (Fig. 5) (not signed but convincingly attributed to Kitchen), which are based on John Plaw's pattern-book published in London in 1795 (Fig. 6),11 the 1820 stables for Cox are more homely. On the left of the double-storeyed building there are the double doors of the coach-house, on the right there are two barred windows flanking the stable door, with three rectangular windows for an attic floor above. Both windows and both doors have shallow arches above. The internal arrangements for the horses provides stalls for two horses, allowing 6 foot for each horse, well above the minimum stipulated by Loudon in his later pattern-book.12 The stalls in Kitchen's sketch lie parallel to the frontage of the stables on the left-hand side, leaving the area adjacent to the front wall and the rest of the right-hand section for the storage of harness and fodder.
This 1820 plan demands attention because Helen Proudfoot regarded this stables as 4very similar (with elements transposed) to that at St Matthew's Rectory, Windsor'.13 Kitchen gives dimensions for his planned stables (Fig. 4): it is a simple rectangle, with a coach-house 16' x 9' at one end and the stables 16' x 22'. There was a simple pitched roof with projecting eaves, on walls some 11' high. As in Kitchen's plan for Hambledon stables, no indication of the usual drainage system is given.
Helen Proudfoot's suggestion that the plan supplied to Cox in 1820 was used for the rectory stables cannot be supported. The attached drawings by Graham Edds and Associates showing the plan and elevation of the existing stables (Fig. 8) show conclusively that the differences in lay-out go well beyond mirror reversal, as suggested by Helen Proudfoot. The room arrangement, door and window openings, detailing of arches, the nature of the upper storey (which was restricted to one part of the building in Kitchen's plan), all are so different that it is not feasible that an experienced builder like Cox would have used the 1820 plan as a base from which minor changes might be made.
It is not at present known whether Cox used the Kitchen plan elsewhere. Certainly he did not employ it when he came in the early 1830s to build his own stables and coach-house at his new house of Fairfield in Windsor. 14
St Matthew's church was sufficiently rebuilt under Greenway to be used for a service in September 1821 but was not consecrated until 18 December 1822.15 Macquarie had reported to London in July 1822 that the 'new Parsonage near the said church is now in progress' but this can refer only to the drawing up of the plans. 16 When tenders were finally invited in the Sydney Gazette on 30 October 1823 and on the four following Thursdays, to be received by 1 December 1823, 'a Plan and Specification' of the rectory were available at the Sydney Engineer's Office.17
The call for tenders in 1823 was presumably answered by William Cox by the closing date. Fencing for the rectory was delivered at the end of August 1824 and Cox was paid the first two instalments (of at least four) for building the rectory during the 1824 accounting year (the calendar year). 18
It is clear that this first tender in 1823 did not include the stables, for on 7 and 14 October 1824 the Sydney Gazette published another notice from the Engineer's Office dated 28 September, seeking tenders before 20 October 1824. 'for the Building of Office-houses, to be attached to the Parsonage-house at Windsor, according to a Plan and Specification of the same, to be seen at this Office [the Engineer's], and at the Chief Constable's at Windsor.19
This tender document, which has not previously been cited in discussions of the rectory and its stables, is of the first importance. Its reference to 'Office-houses' is regrettably imprecise, but these buildings must be the kitchen (which was physically attracted to the rectory) and the stables (which was attached to the rectory in a real, though less literal, sense). No other buildings are shown on the 1841 plan of Windsor (Fig. 3) discussed in 2.1 below. It is normal to refer to both kitchen premises and stabling as 'offices' in nineteenth -century pattern-books.20 Accordingly it seems certain that the contract for building the stables was not issued until after 20 October 1824, presumably to William Cox who was already well advanced in the completion of the front rectangle of the rectory.
A third instalment of payment was made to Cox sometime before September 1825 but no record of this has been found. On 14 September 1825, however, a fourth (not necessarily final) instalment 'for building a parsonage house at Windsor etc.' was paid to Cox.21 'Etc' presumably refers to the kitchen and stables. The first two instalments in 1824 had totalled Spanish $4800,22 the fourth instalment $2566.25. Presumably the third had been in the vicinity of $2400, making a payment over 1824-5 for all works at the rectory and its offices of almost 10,000 Spanish dollars.
The stables seem to have completed in 1825 and the building contractor was almost certainly Cox. But who supplied the design? Helen Proudfoot suggested Henry Kitchen, on the sole evidence of the 1820 plan given to COX.23 Certainly when Cox began work late in 1824 or early in 1825 he had available that four or five-year old plan. Kitchen had been dead for over two years (he died on 8 April 1822);24 Greenway, the other architect often proposed for the rectory, had been dismissed from his position as government architect on 15 November 1822.25 Who drew up the plans and specifications for the rectory which the Chief Engineer had in October 1823? and who drew up the other set of plans and specifications of the kitchen and stables, in the Engineer's hands in September 1824? the rectory was claimed by Greenway as his design: it did not figure in a list of his plans in 1820 but he was approached by Bigge (despite Bigg's general hostility) about designing the rectory also in 1820 and near the end of his life, Greenway claimed in an article in the Australian Almanack for 1835 that he had furnished plans for 'a parsonage house at Windsor', presumably in 1821-2.26
It can therefore be accepted that Greenway drew up the plans for the main rectangle of the rectory which were finally put to tender by the government Engineer, Major Ovens, in October 1823.
The plans and specifications for the kitchen and stables can be attributed either to Greenway or to his successor as government architect, Standish Harris. The case for Greenway is two-fold. His claim to have designed the rectory might imply not just the central residence but also its usual offices: that fact that the two sections of the operation were then put out to tender separately, a year apart, is, however, curious. The second argument for Greenway is the similarity between the brickwork and the internal roof supports at the stables and Windsor Court House (which is certainly by Greenway):27 the way in which the walls of both buildings are initially four bricks thick, narrowing to three bricks thick and the complex way in which the stresses on the roof beams at the corners of the two hipped roofs are managed by triangulation suggest a common architect. The counter--argument is, however, that they also suggest a common builder, who was William Cox. The argument from the physical evidence, though very important and suggestive, requires further comparative testing on buildings constructed by Cox without Greenway and on buildings, such as Hambledon Cottage stables, known to have been designed by Kitchen, or other 1820s buildings, particularly those with hipped roofs.
The altemative to Greenway as the designer of the stables is Standish Harris, who arrived in New South Wales in November 1822, was appointed successor to Greenway in December 1822 and 'held the position until October 1824.28 Harris was therefore in post when the Engineer advertised both the rectory and its kitchen/stables for tender. Greenway had already supplied a plan of at least the main rectory block before his dismissal, though this took a year to be advertised. The plan and specifications of the stable in the Engineer's hands (and in the hands of the Windsor Chief Constable, John Howe) in September 1824 were properly the responsibility of the government Architect. Although Harris was not a very vigorous official Architect, he did draw up plans and specifications: Major Ovens, the Engineer, reveals this date in 1823 when he complained that Harris 'declines explaining his plans and specifications' and therefore sought Harris's dismissal.29 The Engineer called for tenders for only two projects with plans and specifications over the next nine months and one of these was the building of the rectory stables.
Furthermore, Harris knew the Windsor scene well. In 1823-4 he produced a substantial manuscript report, in three volumes, casting a critical eye on existing public works. His comments were severe and self-important but the fact of his close inspection of St Matthews, the Court House and other government buildings in Windsor around the time that the rectory and out-buildings were awaiting the tendering process makes it certain that he was fully aware of what was happening.30 Unfortunately no other public building can be attributed to Harris (other than the wall at Darlinghurst Jail) and his major private achievement, John Dunmore Lang's Scots Church in Sydneyhas long since been demolished.31 There is therefore no physical evidence of his building techniques but there is a strong case on documentary evidence for saying that Standish Harris provided the plans for the rectory stables.
The architect of the stables was therefore either Standish Harris or Francis Greenway.
The earliest plan of Windsor to show the stables is dated 1835, ten years after their likely completion (Fig. 2).32 This plan is not particularly fastidious about details or correct proportions and has to be read in conjunction with the admirable plan of the whole of Windsor drafted in December 1841 (Fig. 3).33
The stable building by 1841, and probably since 1825, was a rectangle with a small projecting room at the south-west corner. This small room was probably the toilet which in 1891 was described as the stable w.c. with its own independent roof,34 immediately adjacent to a fenced garden probably for vegetables. J C Loudon, always full of common-sense, advised that:
the Kitchen-garden of a villa should always, if possible, be on the side next the offices, that the stable dung may be taken to the garden, from the stables, by the shortest and most private route. In general, it is desirable to have the kitchen-garden close to the stable offices, so as to make some use of the walls of the latter for training fruit trees, and to shorten all the lines Of communication for servants, as also the walk to the garden from the lawn front.35
The stable yard was also, on the evidence of both the 1837 and 1841 plans, separated from the house by a fence running south from the west end of the rectory kitchen and terminating in the fence which also enclosed the vegetable garden. Another fence, running north from the east end of the vegetable garden, just west of the stables, defined the square rectory enclosure on the highest point of the glebe land of St Matthews. A well seems to have been sunk at the rectory in 1829 at the request of a new minister, the Rev. J. Docker.36
The easterly section of the stables building was initially an open room with entrance for a vehicle. Physical evidence suggests that this was converted quite early to two-roomed accommodation for a groom and perhaps, his wife, resident servants to the rectory. A chimney was introduced, projecting beyond the 1825 rectangle. This chimney is not shown on the meticulous plan in 1841 but the brickwork suggests a date not long after 1841.
This change must have been the decision of the Rev. Henry Stiles, incumbent at St Matthews from 1833 until 1867. Stiles was a vigorous minister, who installed the organ and added the ball and cross to the tower of St Matthew's in the 1840s. He was, moreover, sufficiently well-to-do to bequeath £200 to the church in 1867: it is improbable that he did not have servants to assist himself, his wife and their five children, born in the 1830s.37 A decision to house a married groom in part of the stables early in the 1840s is an attractive explanation for these alterations.
The entrance for horses and gigs was to the north of the rectory along what is still today the northern boundary of the church property. This is how Samuel Marsden entered the grounds on his last visit to the incumbent, the Rev. Henry Stiles, in May 1838: he drove from Parramatta in his gig and doubtless housed both his horse and vehicle in the stables while he walked into the rectory, nursing the incipient chill which killed him four days later.38
The churchwardens' accounts for St Matthews survive from the year of Marsden's death, 1838 and give a fairly exhaustive guide to expenditure on the fabric of the church and parsonage house but the stables are not specifically mentioned in the volume covering 1838 to 1882. Much more informative are the minute-books of Churchwardens' meetings: these, however, do not survive before 1886. During the incumbency of the Rev. G.A. D'Arcy Irvine from 1890 to 1893 there was intense interest, fostered by D'Arcy Irvine from the chair, in the fabric of both the rectory and the stables.
D'Arcy Irvine had not availed himself of the £10 budgeted by the church to provide a suitable horse for the minister, since he had been given his own horse by J R Hardie of Clydesdale. He had also been using horse-harness bought out of his own pocket, because the 'old set of "parish" harness' in the stable, although repaired for 15 shillings in 1890 was too dangerous to use.39 The minister's buggy was housed in the stables and had extensive repairs in 1893.40
In 1890, early in his occupation of the living, D'Arcy Irvine complained of 'the dilapidated condition of a portion of the stable building and of some of the fencing at the back of the parsonage'.41 As a result of the minister's protestations, the entire profit from the 1890 Flower Show, totalling £58, was earmarked in November for use by the wardens in re-roofing the Kitchen [at the back of the rectory] and Stable, and in making other repairs to the Stable Building'. After an unsuccessful attempt by the churchwardens to award the kitchen contract separately from the stables contract, Messrs. Carroll and Cupitt, both members of well-known local families, were given both contracts at a total tendered price of £44.9.0.42
In January 1891, after engaging Carroll and Cupitt to reroof the stables, D'Arcy Irvine and the churchwardens
resolved to expend an additional £5.10.0 for the purpose of painting seven doors in the Stable Building, repairing windows and coating the exterior of the Building with Lime and Copperas.43
It is not clear whether the stables had previously been limewashed or not, although the wording rather implies that this was a new treatment. The limewashing was certainly completed by 12 February 189 1, along with the other repairs, at £1 under estimate.44
The satisfactory re-roofing, repainting, reglazincr and limewashing in 1891 completed the renovations to the stables, except for minor repairs to the roof of the stables w.c. in December. In 1892-3 attention was paid to the larger enterprise of re-roofing the rectory building in iron to replace the old shingles.45 It is not stated whether the new roof on the stables in 1891 was in iron, but it is a high likelihood.
The next climacteric in the history of the stables came in 1936-7. After the death of the rector, Norman Jenkyri, in 1936, it was clear that the rectory and stables had been allowed to deteriorate severely through lack of maintenance. A building contractor, R B Ashley, gave a report to the churchwardens and parish council in August 1936 estimating that repairs would total £730. The council sought advice from William Thompson, who met a committee on 11 August 1936 and recommended that the stables be demolished and a 'new garage' built 'if needed'. (He also recommended demolishing the entire kitchen block of the rectory and erecting instead a back verandah with a laundry).46
The committee sought the further advice of an architect and, through the Diocesan Registry in Sydney, selected Professor Leslie Wilkinson, professor of Architecture at the University of Sydney, who was about to embark on the dramatic remodelling of St Andrew's Cathedral.47
The details of the discussions between Wilkinson and the church body over the stables are not recorded, but clearly it was decided not to demolish. The only works actually recorded at the stables involved the removal of a partition wall early in 1937 by M. Mullen, at the cost of 12 shillin.S.48 This must be the missing partition between two of the horsestalls. It seems likely that little else was done to the stables, while all funds and energies in 1937-8 went into renovating the rectory. The contractor was Ashley, the cost £850, over and above the fees for Wilkinson's architectural work which were paid for by the Diocese.49 Further details about Wilkinson's specifications for the stables as well as the rectory are being sought from the Anglican Diocesan archivist, Dr Louise Trott and from the Wilkinson papers in the University of Sydney Archives.
After 1937 the stables seem to have been neglected. In the 1970s Mrs Rawson paid for the wooden buttresses, added to prevent possible collapse.50 In the 1950s an internal brick wall in the tack-room section was removed to accommodate the minister's motor vehicle.51 A basket-ball net was inappropriately affixed to the front of the building in the 1980s after Canon Rawson retired.
The rectory stables at St Matthew's Anglican Church were built in 1824-25 by William Cox, using a design supplied to the government Engineer either by the then government architect, Standish Harris or by his predecessor, Francis Greenway. The original stable fabric is largely unchanged, with five exceptions:
| 1) | the original, presumably shingled, roof was replaced in 1891, presumably with iron. |
| 2) | the small single-storey addition to the south-west end of the stables was present by 1841 and still there in 1891 but was removed |
| 3) | the exterior was coated with limewash and copperas in 1891 but it is not certain, though likely, that this is the first application of limewash. |
| 4) | a partition wall in the stabling section was removed early in 1937. |
| 5) | a brick interior wall in the tack-room section was removed in the 1950s to accommodate a motor vehicle. |
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