Restoration Australia seems to be going for the big ones this time - perhaps they have to ensure the owners have the money to meet the show deadlines and they have something to broadcast. This episode looks at a big rural convent on its way to a new heritage tourism life - the former Inverell Convent - on ABC iview. the McNeils purchased it from a quirky religious North American in a deceased estate auction for over half a million dollars and anticipate another $2 million to complete the restoration. see the trailer
The show seems too long for the amount of restoration they have to fit in. It is 12 minutes in before we see any floor boards being lifted or paint being stripped, and before we know it, Stuart Harrison is already driving back for his next visit.
These shows, including Grand Designs in its various forms, the original Restoration Home from the UK, and all the spin offs and copies, seem to take an interminable amount of time to arrive at the building site to see what progress has been made. and when we do, we often get the feeling that we have already missed the really interesting bits and have to be satisfied with a description of what they did in the proceeding months, or reenactments. I suspect the scissor lift was specially brought in by the producers so a section of balustrade could be pulled out to enable Harrison to lend a hand in fitting in the 'last piece'.
There is more to learn of the restoration process from the project facebook page than the show. even just by perusing the photos and sorting them into a more chronological sequence.
'Restoration', in built heritage terms, refers to the idea of putting back what was previously there. To do this you need to first know what was there. Sometimes it is obvious - the fallen brick, the missing section of balustrade, the original plaster details hidden behind a false ceiling. But other times it requires research.
Harrison keeps pushing the idea that restoration can be made to mean almost anything, even as he quotes the Burra Charter. It's as if all the careful analysis, philosophy and policy development aimed at ensuring the primacy of fabric and authenticity can just be put aside for the sake of an aesthetic of personal stylistic preference.
Jo and Digby have taken on a mammoth restoration task in the group of former convent buildings in Inverell, but they are up to it. They are competent, skilful and motivated by their close connections to the community at Inverell NSW. And they run a hardware business so they are well resourced. They also seem to be able to do the research needed for authentic Burra Charter standard restoration. See for example the historic photo, from their facebook page, probably used as the pattern for recreating the verandah cast iron.
I didn't see the photo used in the show, and its not stated just how the replication of the panels was done, apart from reference to the wheat motive reflecting the local historical associations with grain growing, and a trip to the foundry to show some casting in action. Presumably there were some pieces around to copy, or there was a substantial design effort to replicate what appears in the early photo. I wonder why then, the program focusses on the quite different balustrade panels sitting on the verandah, that don't appear to be relevant to either the original ones, or whatever was in place when the timber framing was put in - presumable panelled in to prevent children falling or getting stuck between the rails, like the verandahs on the 1920s convent buildings.
The project obtained $100,000 from a NSW government Heritage Near Me Activation Grant, evidently to undertake works to the publicly visible parts of the property, presumably for the balustrade, the tuck-pointed brickworks and the tessellated tile verandah floor. so you might expect that authenticity was going to be a requirement. the current colour scheme of charcoal everything seems at odds with whatever might have been original. clearly not the light tones in the historical photo.
They mentioned elsewhere, that they "didn't have many photos of the doors before they started which would have truly shown their derelict state. [They] replaced all the broken miss-coloured glass panes with the closest matching green glass obtainable, replaced eaten out door treads jams, manipulating bending new timbers to make it all fit." so this too sounds like competent authentic restoration. But then they strip out the metal kitchen ceiling. Not a specially nice bit of pressed metal, but perhaps saying something about the frugal nuns who converted the former policeman and cordial maker's house into an additional part of their convent.
The Sisters of Mercy (who incidentally are downsizing in various states and may put their Santa Casa property in Queenscliffe to other uses), commenced building the Inverell convent 1908, while teaching at the local Catholic school. Then in 1922 the purchased the neighbouring two storey Victorian terrace as a boarding house for boys and later music classrooms. It had been built in about 1876 for Charles Egan, "one of the first sheriffs in Inverell" (did Australia have Sheriffs?).
The sisters sold up in 1980 and it became Ireby Lodge, a home for people with intellectual disabilities, and then it was sold again to the American lawyer with a penchant for odd antiques, a tabernacle from Vatican City, Oscar Wilde's bed, a Pharos's throne. the new owners took on all tis for another $50,000 hoping to either decorate with it - of auction it off to help fund the restoration.
Egan House has now become 'Lyndhurst', a luxury period holiday rental, while the couple continue with the much larger restoration job of the convent and children's home buildings. They are employing a sharing community site to attract restorers to help out in exchange for accommodation in a self contained apartment. This shows initiative, and may be a way forward in the perenial problem of preserving the national estate, although the arrangement might turn out to be too unbalanced depending on what they have to give in exchange, like the use of backpackers to pick our fruit to get a visa extension, cheap labour needs to have a motivation.
There are many stories that could be told from the historical evidence that old buildings provide. The Guardian focusses on the absence of an Aboriginal voice in a place half an hours drive from the site of the Myall Creek Massacre. But there is a closer and more immediate untold story about the lives of the children and nuns in what might have been a safe and pleasant home, but recent and not so recent revelations suggest might have been something else.
Restoration continues of the main buildings, with some reference to their past uses such as turning the old altar into an island kitchen bench, but the work would seem geared to development of further commercial accommodation with a heritage theme, rather than preservation and presentation of local history as the primary motive.
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