The Parramatta Female Factory and Institutions Precinct is a heritage-listed conservation site in Parramatta, in the City of Parramatta local government area of New South Wales, Australia. The site was used as the historically significant Parramatta Female Factory from 1821 to 1848. After its closure, the main factory buildings became the basis for the Parramatta Lunatic Asylum (now the Cumberland Hospital), while another section of the site was used for a series of other significant institutions: the Roman Catholic Orphan School (1841–1886), the Parramatta Girls Home (1887–1974), the "Kamballa" and "Taldree" welfare institutions (1974–1980), and the Norma Parker Centre (1980–2008).
Designed under the influence and direction of Francis Greenway, James Barnet, William Buchanan, Walter Liberty Vernon, Frederick Norton Manning, Henry Ginn, and Charles Moore, the imposing Old Colonial, Victorian Georgian, and Classical Revival sandstone structures were completed during the nineteenth century.
The precinct was added to the Australian National Heritage List on 14 November 2017, and its constituent parts (with separate listings for what was then the Cumberland Hospital and Norma Parker Centre) were added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
History The site is located on the Parramatta River in a transitional area between the Wianamatta Shale and Sandstone group soils. The topography is one of alluvial flats (flood plain) dropping away at the river.
The Burramuttagal clan of the Eora Aboriginal people occupied and used the area for its rich resources – in game, fish, timber, plant foods and fibres.
After Governor Phillip navigated the Parramatta River and reached the site of (later) Parramatta, he established a new settlement including a Government stockade, convict huts and areas for farm cropping and gardens slightly south and west of the subject area (in what would be the Government or Governor's Domain, later Parramatta Park.
Early attempts at mechanised flour milling were unsuccessful in both Sydney and Parramatta. In 1800 Governor Hunter announced his intention to try a water mill at Parramatta. The site selected was the eastern bank of the river, near the Norma Parker Centre, where flat river stones formed a natural weir and causeway. Work digging the race and mill dam started in 1799. The mill took years to build. The Rev. Samuel Marsden was superintendent of public works at Parramatta and supervised its construction until 1803. Governor King brought from Norfolk Island a convict millwright, Nathaniel Lucas, and Alexander Dolliss, master boat builder, to assist in that year. They found the earlier construction poor and had to rebuild it. It finally opened in 1804.DPWS, 2000, 48–9
Indigenous history
The Burramatta people have lived on the upper reaches of the Parramatta River, including the land of the Parramatta Female Factory and Institutions Precinct, for at least 60,000 years. The Burramatta are part of the Darug clan who occupy the Cumberland Plain and nearby areas of the Blue Mountains. The Darug consists of coastal, hinterland and mountain groups of which the Burramatta form a border grouping between coastal and hinterland communities.Comber 2014, p. 18.
Prior to their dispossession and displacement, the Burramatta travelled seasonally across their land in groups of between 30 and 60 people with the Parramatta River being an important source of food, including eel, from which Burramatta (and later Parramatta) are etymologically derived ('place where the eels lie down').
Early colonial history
The British settlement of Parramatta began soon after the arrival of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove in January 1788. Governor Phillip, acutely aware of the agricultural deficiencies of the area surrounding Sydney Cove and seeking to achieve self-sufficiency for the colony, explored parts of Sydney Harbour and nearby rivers, finding Parramatta the most suitable local for agricultural settlement, where he established a settlement in November 1788.Kass et al 1996, p. 9.
British settlement of Parramatta from 1788 began the marginalisation of the Burramatta people from their lands, as occurred with other peoples throughout the Sydney Basin. Contact between the Burramatta and British was limited at first, but gradually some trade took place. Violence became more common as the British settlement grew larger and both groups clashed over resources and control.
Conflict between the Darug clan and the British settlers escalated in the 1790s. This included several clashes close to the Parramatta settlement, most famously between an Indigenous group led by Pemulwuy and a settler force following a raid on Toongabbie in 1797.Kohen, 2005. Pemulwuy was wounded in this confrontation but later escaped from hospital to continue to be a leading figure in Indigenous resistance until being killed in 1802. Dispossession, disease and displacement led to widespread disruption of the lives of Burramatta people and their culture along with the rest of the Darug clan, contributing to the decline in armed resistance in the early 1800s.
The first known British use of the area now known as the Parramatta Female Factory and Institutions Precinct was a land grant to former convict Charles Smith in 1792, who farmed wheat, maize and pigs for approximately a decade. Sometime in the early 1800s Smith sold his land to Reverend Samuel Marsden who would later be instrumental in the establishment of the Parramatta Female Factory.Yarwood, 1967. Marsden, a pastor, magistrate and farmer, had previously supervised the construction of the Government Mill, close to what is now the Norma Parker Centre, with mill races extending north-west, through Smith's and now Marsden's land grant. The Government Mill was eventually finished but was never as successful as was initially hoped and was eventually sold and dismantled due to financial insolvency.Kass et al 1996, p 61; Casey & Lowe 2014, pp. 41–42. Marsden himself also built a competing Mill on land acquired from Smith.
Between 1815 and 1835, annual feasts were held in Parramatta between indigenous people and prominent British settlers, including New South Wales Governors. These feasts would have almost definitely included Burramatta and other Darug people.Coomber 2014, p. 27. At some of these meetings, Governor Macquarie presented breast plates to prominent indigenous men (or at least those the Governor believed or wanted to be prominent), including to Bungaree with an inscription "Boongaree – Chief of the Broken Bay tribe – 1815".Attenbrow 2002, p. 61.
Imperfect and inconsistent British records suggest surviving Burramatta people still living around Parramatta up until the mid-1840s. Despite the British settlement, Darug and other indigenous people still reside in Parramatta today, with Western Sydney more broadly having the largest indigenous population in Australia.
Parramatta Female Factory (1821–1848)
The practical difficulties of establishing a colonial settlement in NSW meant that accommodation for convicts was a much lower priority than essential works such as those relating to food production and transport. Principal Chaplain the Rev.Samuel Marsden had expressed concern over many years at the lack of accommodation for female convicts, thus forcing them into prostitution to pay for private shelter. The problem grew with increased numbers of women sentenced into transportation. The upper floor of the first Parramatta Gaol was used from 1804 to provide a place of confinement and work for convict women spinning wool but they were rarely kept working beyond one o'clock and there were no cooking facilities. Because it provided employment for them, it became known as the Female Factory and this term continued to be used for all subsequent prisons for female convicts.DPWS, 2000, 57
Macquarie announced in March 1818 that accommodation for female convicts would be built. With the foundation stone laid in July work commenced, being undertaken by Parramatta contractors Watkins & Payten. The Factory covered four acres (1.6ha) with the main building three storeys high. Institutional use of the site commenced in February 1821 with the transfer of 112 women from the old factory above the gaol to the new. Commissioner Bigge, investigating Macquarie's administration, was highly critical at the lack of priority given to the project but also critical that it was too elaborate, believing that a walled enclosure of a at the old site with timber buildings for accommodation and a work room would have been sufficient.
The new building, intended for 300 women, was built "at the extremity of a large, uninclosed tract of sterile ground" adjoining the river, which in flood came close to the wall of the new Factory. The cost was A£4,800, increased by A£1,200 for perimeter wall and flood protection measures. Proximity to the river was important because of the intended occupation of the women in spinning flax and bleaching linen, though Bigge doubted that this was sufficient reason to build so close to the river and within of Old Government House on the other side of the river.
Bigge's report included recommendations for managing the Factory, suggesting a married women rather than a married man would be a more appropriate manager and she could live in a house within view of the factory (but not within it). Separation of newly arrived women from those sent to the factory for punishment was essential and he recommended that a new range of sleeping rooms and work rooms be built. Sewing clothing and making straw hats should be added to the spinning and carding work to occupy their time.
The desire to classify and segregate the women led to their division into three classes and construction of a penitentiary enclosure to accommodate 60 women of the third or penal class, in 1826. A two-storey building, probably designed by William Buchanan, was erected for the worst class of prisoners to the north-west of the main building and enclosed with a small yard. Later in the 1860s this building was modified and the first floor removed to make a ward "for imbeciles and idiots", but it survives as the most substantial remnant of the Female FactoryDPWS, 2000, 58 (today this is referred to as Building 105).
Once built, the Parramatta Female Factory had to be administered in a manner that improved convict women's industriousness and morality. Throughout the operation of the Parramatta Female Factory, administration often failed to meet high expectations, as moral purpose came into conflict with personality conflicts and monetary gain. The first superintendent, Francis Oakes, resigned following clashes with the local magistrate, Henry Douglas.Salt 1984, p. 56 Later, husband-wife or mother-son pairs became the norm, providing early Australian examples of middle-class women taking on authoritative positions in colonial society. This male-female collaboration was also temporarily mirrored in the formation of a Board of Management and Ladies' Committee in Governor Darling's colonial administration.Salt 1984, p. 59
This two-person administration system continually ran into problems. The managers Elizabeth and John Fulloon were accused of fraternisation, neglect and maladministration. Matron Ann Gordon was dismissed for her husband's fraternisation and the convict women's immoral behaviour, and a Mrs Leach and Mr Clapham clashed even before they left England and did not stop until they were dismissed by Governor Gipps.Salt 1984, pp. 57–61