Convict Housing at Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia: a study in the context of British workers’ and American slave accommodation

Author(s): Harold Mytum

Year: 2017

Summary

Parramatta was even more successful than Sydney in the late 18th century,

during the early days of the British colony. After a short period of ad hoc

settlement around the farm at Rose Hill, Parramatta was laid out as a planned

settlement on a grid pattern. Several early convict cabins have been excavated,

and early maps and illustrations indicate the settlement’s layout and

appearance, with neatly spaced cabins and the Governor’s House as a central

focus. This arrangement can be compared with both planned settlements in

Britain produced in the context of improvement, and plantation slave

settlements usually interpreted in terms of control and display. What were the

motivations of the authorities in Australia and how did the convicts react?

This paper examines the architecture of the domestic unit and the settlement as

a whole in Parramatta over its first decades, and the conflicting visions and

aspirations reflected there.

Cite this Record

Convict Housing at Parramatta, New South Wales, Australia: a study in the context of British workers’ and American slave accommodation. Harold Mytum. Presented at Society for Historical Archaeology, Fort Worth, TX. 2017 ( tDAR id: 435159)

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

Keywords

General
Convicts Housing Planning

Geographic Keywords
United Kingdom Western Europe

Temporal Keywords
18th Century

Spatial Coverage

min long: -8.158; min lat: 49.955 ; max long: 1.749; max lat: 60.722 ;

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 180