Parramatta Archaeological Site

The land at Parramatta was the traditional home of the Burramatta people of the Darug language group who had lived there for some 60,000 years before the arrival of the English colonists. The Burramatta people were a coastal or salt water people, a group boardering the area between the coast and the hinterland. Their traditional lands were a place where the hinterland and coastal groups met to trade and perform ceremonial battles and hold corrobores.[1][2]

The word Burramatta means place of the eel and the eel was the totem symbol for the local people. Each year eels gathered at a particular place where the salt water meets the freshwater to "lie down" and fatten up for their journey north to the Coral Sea to spawn.[3] During this time the eels made a significant contribution to the Burramattagal diet. Women fished from boats and men speared fish from the riverbanks or hunted possum in the woodland areas and yam and fruits were gathered from the land. Grass seeds were collected and crushed on stones and later processed into a dough for cooking. Other stones found in the Parramatta area were large and rounded.[1][2]

In April Captain Arthur Phillip sailed up the Parramatta River and declared the land around present day Parramatta to be suitable place for a 'gaol town and farm." By September Phillip declared a settlement at what was then called Rose Hill. Initially there was some bartering between the Burramattagal and the colonists but with increased settlement and the alienation of more and more land by the colonists relations soured. The farms destroyed the yam beds and settlement did not allow the local people to freely move through their lands. Facing the diminishing of traditional foods sources, the Burramattagal took to harvesting the new crops of corn which met with retaliation from the farmers.[1][3]

In 1789 another blow to the indigenous population occurred when their population was decimated by the outbreak of smallpox. While the population was reduced the many indigenous people of western Sydney including the Burramattagal continued to resist the colonial settlers. From 1790, Pemulwuy was widely seen to be the leader of the conflict and resistance against settlers in outlying settlements including Parramatta, Toongabbie, Georges River and Brickfield Hill. In 1797 he was severely wounded during a raid on the government farm at Toongabbie. He was taken to hospital where he subsequently recovered, escaped and continued to fight. Four years later in 1801, Governor King declared that Aboriginals near Parramatta, Georges River and Prospect could be shot on sight and in the following year Pemulwuy was shot by a group of settlers.[1][4]

While first contact resulted in the reduction of the Aboriginal population all over NSW, many people of the western Sydney area including Parramatta, survived and their descendants still live in the area today.[1]

The following historical overview has been sourced and summarised primarily from the excavation report prepared by Edward Higgenbotham and Associates with historical research by Terry Kass, which provides a comprehensive historical background for the site.[1]

The site is in an area of early European settlement in Parramatta, or Rose Hill as it was originally known, which began in late 1788 as a farm to provide much needed crops for the new colony. The Rose Hill farm was converted into a town in 1790 and renamed Parramatta in June 1791. Initial development in the town centred on what are now George, Macquarie and Church Streets, with the construction of several public and government buildings.[1]

While some early town leases were granted to prominent free persons, such as civil servants or members of the NSW Corps, most of the town allotments were occupied by convict huts. The allotments on which these stood generally measured 100 feet by 200 feet and the convict huts were usually 24 feet by 12 feet, containing two rooms one slightly larger than the other to house between 10 and 14 convicts. The large allotment size was to allow for the convict residents to establish household gardens for fruit and vegetables. In November 1790, Watkin Tench described the town has containing 32 completed convict huts occupied by men on either side of the main street (now George Street), with an additional nine huts for women on what is now Church Street, and several other huts occupied by convict families. By the following year, there were approximately 100 convict huts in Parramatta.[1]

While the town was primarily at this stage a goal town it was not long before town leases were occupied by free persons. In 1796 the first town lease in Parramatta was let to John McArthur for 14 years and was occupied by a former convict who was pardoned in 1794, James Larra. The number of town leases granted to free persons (both emancipists and free settlers) gradually increased between 1800 and 1809.[1]

After his establishment as Governor of New South Wales, Macquarie escalated this trend. Macquarie took the view that the township of Parramatta and other towns should be the domain of the free settler and that convicts should be housed in a way that the government could keep a tight rein on the supervision and control of the convict population. To this end, by 1821, a new convict barracks was constructed at Parramatta, removing the need for convict huts on the allotments within the town.[1]

Governor Brisbane granted new town leases in Parramatta in 1823, and on 30 June over 300 leases were made, with many of the town's inhabitants gaining secure title. With the increase in the free population and the laying out of several new streets, Parramatta soon grew from a penal, gaol town into a fully-fledged market town.[1]

The archaeological site at 45 Macquarie Street contains the remains of a convict hut which was built around 1800. This hut on Allotment 16 was inhabited by a John Paisley until 1823. In 1823 it was occupied by John Walker who was a wheelwright, an Australian born man who married an Australian born woman.[1]

It seems he may have started his working life as a wheelwright working for a Hugh Taylor and later went on to run his own successful business. During the 1820s there is evidence the convict hut was used as a bakery and then in the late 1820s Walker added a wheelwrights workshop to the western side of the hut.[1]

In 1839 the permissive occupancy for allotment 16 was converted to a Town Grant in John Walkers name and between the years of 1836 and 1844 the original convict hut was replaced by a brick cottage comprising two large rooms flanking a central hall way with a skillion at the rear and attic rooms above. Evidence of various extensions over the life of the house are revealed in the excavation.[1]

After John Walker died in 1846 his wife continued to live in the house until 1875. At this time the wife sold the property to John Pratt, a local fruit dealer who soon subdivided the land into two parcels and sold the western parcel on and the western part sold for (Pounds)260, indicating that it already had a house on it. A weatherboard cottage had been erected, but was replaced in 1911 by a Federation-style house.. The eastern parcel was later sold to a Coach Maker, who retained the cottage. Subsequent owners up to the early 1950s when it became the premises of three Dr Maloufs, retained the cottage.[1]

Originally there were three convict huts in on the site facing Macquarie Street - on Allotments 16, as discussed above; on Allotment 17, where the basement and drain of the shepherd and Flock is located; and Allotment 18 on the corner of Marsden and Macquarie Streets. The hut on Allotment 18 was the site of the Wheatsheaf Hotel between 1801–1809, making it one of the earliest hotels in Parramatta. Unfortunately the evidence of convict huts on Lots 17 and 18 was so poorly preserved that they could not be preserved in situ and so the majority of the area of Allotment 18 is not included in the SHR listing.[1]

Allotment 18 was, from at least 1823, leased to Thomas Reynolds which had become the Shepherd and Flock Inn by 1825. Reynolds was a convict transported to the colony in 1816 on the Ocean. Recommended for emancipation by Rowland Hassel he became a free man in 1820. He married a colonial born woman, Mary Reynolds in 1820 and by 1823 had leased the Allotment 18. Reynolds purchased the neighbouring property[5] in 1823 from William Sully and extended the hotel into this area. The cellar is associated with this extension.[1]

The Shepherd and Flock Inn closed in 1870.[1]

All buildings on the site had been demolished by the early 1950s, and the area was used as a carpark.[1]

The area was identified as PHALMS AMU 3190. The site is included in the Parramatta Historical Archaeological Landscape Management Study (PHALMS) completed in 2001 as Archaeological Management Unit (AMU) 3190, likely to contain intact archaeological resources of State significance including the sites of convict huts.[1] The area was excavated in 2005. In 2012 construction began on the "V by Crown" development at 45 Macquarie Street, Parramatta. The innovatively designed residential/commercial development was completed in 2015.[1] In mid-2017 the "V Heritage" Archaeology Display Centre was opened and celebrates the completion of the conservation and interpretive display of the archaeological relics.[1]

As at 5 August 2005, of the sites on the Macquarie Street frontage, the remains on former Allotment 16 and the cellar on Allotment 17-18 were preserved in a condition that was suitable for conservation, interpretation and display. Both the cellar and the lower levels of the convict hut presented waterlogged or anaerobic conditions, allowing for the preservation of the timber floor of the cellar and some of the lower timbers of the convict hut. Not all the timbers could be conserved and in some cases modern timbers have been used to indicate the positions of original timbers in the displays.[1]

One of the most unusual features was the depth of stratigraphy on Allotment 16, with over a metre from the original topsoil to the current kerb height on Macquarie Street. Pollen samples were taken from the soil profile, revealing the changing environment over time and the presence of cereal pollen at the beginning of historical settlement, when Rose Hill was a government farm from 1788 to 1790. The depth of stratigraphy also allowed assemblages from each period of occupation to be treated separately, revealing the paucity of material comforts for the early convict occupants[1]

• Initial development of the allotments on the Macquarie Street frontage is dated to c. 1800.
• Allotment 16 was leased to John Walker in 1823. Construction of the wheelwright's workshop.

Other extensions to the convict hut

• Demolition of convict hut and wheelwright's workshop between 1836 and 1844. Construction of new brick cottage.
• Cottage demolished in the 1950s.

Allotment 18

• Site of Wheatsheaf Hotel from 1801–1809.
• Allotment leased to Thomas Reynolds in 1823. Purchase of Allotment 17 by Reynolds in 1823.
• License of Shepherd and Flock Inn from 1825 to 1870.
• Cellar built partly on Allotment 17 as extension of the hotel in the 1820s.
• Two storey terraced house built on western side of Allotment 17 in the 1890s.

Other development postdates hotel.[1]

The depth of stratigraphy on the Macquarie Street frontage of Allotment 16 preserved intact the remains of the convict hut and its extensions, including the wheelwrights workshop. These were overlain by demolition layers and only partially cut through by the later brick cottage, built between 1836 and 1844. The demolition of the cottage in the 1950s also provided protection for the underlying archaeology. Initially it was thought that the concrete piers from the failed 1990s development had destroyed the archaeological remains, but excavation proved their intactness. Because the site had been in a low lying and poorly drained area, there was a historical tendency to build up the ground around the archaeological sites to the level of Macquarie Street, in order to avoid flooding. The preservation of the archaeological remains on Allotment 16 is therefore largely due to this accumulation of layers and to waterlogging of the lower soil profile.[1]

The adjacent buildings on Allotment 17 and 18 were located on higher ground and did not therefore have a similar stratigraphic history. These sites tended to be cut down to the level of the adjacent streets. This resulted in the poor preservation of building remains except for the most recent, but did allow the deep cellar of the Shepherd Inn to survive.[1]

• State of News South Wales (2019). "Government Gazette of the State of New South Wales Number 70" (PDF).

This Wikipedia article was originally based on Archaeological Site and Associated Artefacts, entry number 2027 in the New South Wales State Heritage Register published by the State of New South Wales (Department of Planning and Environment) 2020 under CC-BY 4.0 licence, accessed on 18 February 2020.