Eskbank House is a heritage-listed former mine owner's residence, iron and steel works manager's residence, school and boarding house and now museum, event venue and community resource centre at 70 Inch Street, Lithgow, City of Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by an unknown architect and built from 1841 to 1842 by Alexander Binning, a stonemason, using convict labour. It is also known as Eskbank House and Moveable Collections and Esk Bank House; The Grange. The property is owned by Lithgow City Council. The residence was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 24 August 2018.
History Aboriginal custodianship While the Lithgow area lies within the traditional lands of the Wiradjuri people, it appears that the valley itself was predominantly inhabited by the Wywandy (or Wallerawang) clan of the Gundungurra people. European incursion after 1814 exerted substantial pressures on local Aboriginal people, who strove to maintain their way of life amidst the progressive dispossession of their lands.
Beginnings of European settlement The Lithgow Valley was so named in 1827 by explorer Hamilton Hume in honour of William Lithgow, secretary to Governor Brisbane. The value of the Lithgow Valley was greatly accentuated by the presence of easily accessible coal, although in the absence of suitable transport links this resource could not be fully exploited. Still, it was suitable for local use, which was increased by the opening in 1837 of a substantial flour mill on Scottish-born Andrew Brown's Cooerwull Estate.
Thomas Brown of Esk Bank It was to the Cooerwull Estate that another Scotsman, Thomas Brown, journeyed in the late 1830s. Brown, a native of Craigend, near Inverness, arrived in Sydney with his wife, Mary (née Maxwell) and several of her relatives. Two months later he took a two-year lease over the Cooerwull Mill. While Andrew Brown and Thomas Brown were not related, Mary Brown was related to John Maxwell of "Liddleton", via Hartley. Thomas is said to have supervised the construction of the initial element of the Cooerwull homestead, which became known as Cooerwull House. Brown, Mary, and some of Mary's relatives are thought to have lived during this time in a small cottage on the estate. Thomas clearly understood the potential of the area, and in 1840 purchased 210 acres (85 hectares) adjoining Cooerwull. Over the next few years he added considerably to his holdings, circumventing the Lands Act 1861 (NSW). This he did through the use of a "dummy", or proxy, a local carpenter named Robert Pitt. Brown named his lands the "Esk Bank Estate" after a village on the River Esk, near his birthplace.
In 1841–1842, just east of what is now the Lithgow city centre, Brown built a well-capitalised homestead complex named Esk Bank House. Situated on a low rise, it consisted of an elegant single-storey sandstone ashlar-coursed dwelling and outbuildings. Its construction appears to have been supervised by Alexander Binning, a Scottish stonemason. The stone for Esk Bank House appears to have been quarried at Burton's Quarry, located on the eastern ridge of the Lithgow Valley. Construction was assisted by convict labour. The homestead's water supply was by agency of a subterranean tank fed by roof water. The grounds of Esk Bank House were, at this time, characterised by a sweeping, wide, circular gravelled carriageway, linked to the front and side verandahs by paths between ornamental garden beds. Fencing constrained the domestic livestock and protected extensive vegetable gardens, as well as ornamental garden beds, from intrusion. Plantings were characterised by English deciduous trees, as well as by evergreens such as conifers.
Brown's early prosperity is illustrated by his appointment in 1852 as a Bench Magistrate; three years later he became a Police Magistrate. Brown and Mary did not have children, although from 1864 until 1871 they cared for their ward, Isabella Lunn, whose parents had purchased "Liddleton" from John Maxwell. Brown found diversion as an amateur geologist and naturalist. It may have been to house his "fine museum" that Brown constructed at Esk Bank a stone outbuilding now known as the Garden House, a visually surprising building which, with its pinnacles, may owe something to Scottish ecclesiastical architecture. Brown is known to have donated gems and fossils to the Australian Museum. These, stored in the Museum's space within the Garden Palace, Sydney, were lost when in 1882 that building was destroyed by fire. In 1872 Brown resigned from the bench. The next year he was elected to the Parliament of New South Wales.
The coming of the railway In 1869 the Great Western Railway opened as far as Bowenfels. Brown's Esk Bank Colliery greatly increased production after the installation of a railway siding named after Brown himself. Here, in 1874, a passenger platform, the genesis of Eskbank Railway Station, was constructed. The coming of the railway was a spur to local development. In late 1874, again using Robert Pitt as a "dummy", Brown won a tender for the supply of government locomotive coal. Yet success turned to disappointment when, in February 1876, the propriety of the tender was questioned in Parliament. This ultimately resulted in Brown's disqualification as an MP; yet his business interests continued to burgeon.
Industrial and urban development Brown's attitude to alienation of land was very conservative; but leasing of land allowed the development of local industries, including the pottery and brickworks of the Lithgow Valley Pottery Company; two other brickworks; two copper smelters; the refrigeration works of the NSW Fresh Food & Ice Co. Ltd; and, yet more ambitious, the iron works of the Lithgow Valley Iron Company Ltd. To all of these he supplied coal on an expensive monopoly basis. Brown also leased land for residential and commercial purposes. His sale to William Gray of six acres led to the foundation of a new township which came to be identified as Lithgow proper. Eskbank and Lithgow became rivals, with Brown donating the sites of the local Church of England, Eskbank Railway Station and the first and second Lithgow public schools. He also endowed the Lithgow School of Arts and St. Mary's Presbyterian Church.
Ironmaking: inception at Lithgow Perhaps the most remarkable of the industrial undertakings on the Esk Bank Estate was that of the Lithgow Valley Iron Company Ltd, trading as the Esk Bank Iron Company. The six subscribing partners included Scots-born John Sutherland, Henry Parkes' Secretary for Public Works; Thomas Denny; Daniel Williams, an English-born railway contractor; James Rutherford, American-born and a principal of Cobb & Co.; James Phillips; and Robert Kelly. These were advised by the enigmatic Enoch Hughes, an English-born ironsmith who had erected the blast furnace of the Fitz Roy iron works near Mittagong. Shares were taken by William Whitney, and also by Thomas Brown himself. In 1875 the company began to construct a blast furnace and ancillary plant. The blast furnace was in many respects similar to that of the earlier Fitz Roy iron works near Mittagong; but it was small, and of an outdated pattern. The first pig iron was successfully run out in late 1875, yet profitability proved elusive. In an attempt to overcome Lithgow's isolation from the seaboard that Sutherland used his Parliamentary position to secure freight rates favourable to the enterprise. Yet it was Daniel Williams who 'laid the foundations for Australia's modern iron and steel industry', and maintained his efforts until stress and illness forced his departure for England, where he was to die an untimely death.
The Lithgow Valley Pottery The growth of Lithgow brick and pottery manufactures in some ways paralleled that of the local iron industry. It was realised that brick and pottery manufacture was the best way to use otherwise worthless slack coal and waste clay generated by the Lithgow Valley Colliery. To this end the Lithgow Valley Pottery was established. In 1878 the works, located directly opposite the colliery, commenced production of pipes and pavers. During the following year, brickmaker James Silcock, a skilled Derbyshire potter, demonstrated pottery techniques to his employers, encouraging them to venture into pottery manufacture. Silcock later departed for Fieldsend's pottery at East Maitland and later still purchased a pottery near Newcastle. A wide variety of wares, extending from cups and saucers to spittoons, was produced in the Lithgow bottle kilns, although the pottery served a working- and middle-class market and produced only a few limited-edition pieces. Competition from imports gradually affected profitability, leading to the closure of the pottery in 1896, although brick and pipe production continued into the 1940s. In 1905 industrialist Arthur Brownfield reopened the facility as the Australasian Brownfield's Pottery Ltd; yet this failed two years later. The fate of the pottery could only reinforce Lithgow's dependence on coal mining and iron making.
Ironmaking: the Rutherford era James Rutherford, who by this time had become the leading director of the iron company, continued to believe in the potential of the iron works. So it was that, in 1881, he offered to purchase the Esk Bank Estate, as well as Brown's shares, using Cobb & Co. capital. In the event, Rutherford had to raise the 45,000 pounds himself. By now a widower, Brown abandoned his home of four decades and moved to St. Leonards, where he was to die in 1889. Rutherford leased Eskbank House, which became known as "The Grange", to a local businessman Robert Crawford, who lived there with his wife Rosina. The house appears, also, to have been leased by a Mrs Cabot, under whom the property became a girls' finishing school. During this period, the grounds of the house were little changed, but much of the valley floor in the vicinity of the house was cleared.
Identifying a need for workers' housing, Rutherford proceeded to subdivide part of the Esk Bank Estate; but sales were disappointing. He then tried to increase the profitability of the ironworks by means of a workers' cooperative. Rutherford, however, soon fell into despair, and had the blast furnace demolished. The works continued to re-roll iron rails, yet the increasing government preference for steel rails made this activity unviable. In 1886 Rutherford accepted the offer of English- born William Sandford, a former lessee of the Fitz Roy rolling mills, to lease the plant.
Ironmaking: the Sandford era William Sandford, a former employee of John Lysaght Ltd of Bristol, was fortunate that the colonial investment boom of the 1880s increased the demand for iron. In 1890 he offered to purchase the Eskbank Estate, as the property was now generally described. The offer included the iron works, two collieries, and The Grange. Settlement occurred in October 1892. Sandford established a combined plate and sheet mill for the production of corrugated iron. This was the first in Australia to sheet, corrugate and galvanise in the one location. The consequent upsurge in employment, together with a social conscience, encouraged Sandford to prepare plans for a model township of the Eskbank Estate, and to assist his workers to build cottages to his own designs. It has been suggested that Lithgow was 'for most of its life a worktown and a man's town, where women and children had literally no place'. If this is so, Sandford's social attitudes were atypical. Encouraged by the success of his ironworks, Sandford decided to venture into steelmaking, an activity until then restricted to some by-then closed works in Victoria. In 1898 he selected as the basis of his venture two 4.5 ton-capacity Siemens-Martin New Form open hearth furnaces.
Steelmaking: beginnings and development