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Building site excavation reveals secrets of early Armidale life

June 08, 2006

WatsonP.thumb.JPGExcavation on an Armidale building site has uncovered the footings of a brick cottage, built about 150 years ago, that will give local historians further insight into the city’s early streetscape and social structure.

Dr Pam Watson, the University of New England archaeologist who has supervised the excavation, said it would provide “an interesting insight into early working-class cottages, and the lifestyle of their occupants, in Armidale”.

Dr Watson, from UNE’s Heritage Futures Research Centre, is an authority on the archaeological resources of Armidale. She is the consultant archaeologist on the site – to be developed as “Armidale Plaza” – on the corner of Dumaresq and Dangar Streets. She watched as the earth-moving machinery revealed the intact basalt footings of the four-room cottage, with several of the original bricks still in place above them. She and a team of UNE archaeology students then took advantage of the 12 days until the scheduled destruction of the remains to examine and record them. “I knew the cottage had been here,” she said, “but was really surprised to find the whole ground plan intact.” (Dr Watson is pictured here during her work on the cottage footings.)

She explained that the house – opposite and facing the Armidale Ex-Services Memorial Club – was on land originally granted to a Frederick Sampson in 1849 for a price of four pounds. The land – complete with cottage – was bought for 125 pounds in 1858 by Robert Scholes, a member of a prominent early Armidale family. Several years later Robert sold it to his father, Joseph Scholes, who was the publican at the New England Hotel. “Joseph Scholes emigrated from England with his family in 1841,” Dr Watson said, “and later built the house ‘Newton Terrace’ in Marsh Street. Another of his sons – Joseph – went on to write a series of recollections of early Armidale. So the cottage is associated with an interesting family.”

The cottage, with detached kitchen behind it (and detached privy behind the kitchen), can be seen clearly in a photograph of about 1910. It survived until about 1970, and its footings were later covered by commercial development. “It’s just terrific to think that this has survived in what was the middle of Armidale’s business district,” Dr Watson said. She pointed out that the cottage – a working-class dwelling – added details on the lifestyle of this social class to the picture of middle-class life she had pieced together in her 2001 excavation on the building site of Armidale’s East End Mall. “We’re getting a view of several different socio-economic strata in early Armidale,” she said.

This picture has been enriched by the discovery of deposits of rubbish – including bottles and pottery – in what was the backyard of the cottage. “It appears to be ‘redeposited’ rubbish,” Dr Watson said, “and some of it could have come from commercial premises such as a pub. The deposits contained a lot of oyster shells – a reminder of the popularity of oyster bars at that time in Armidale.”

Dr Watson is planning to look next week for the remains of an even earlier cottage that is known to have stood on the “Armidale Plaza” site – this one facing Dangar Street.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at June 8, 2006 04:26 PM