The Newnham campus of the Australian Maritime College is a heritage-listed university campus at 100 Newnham Drive, Newnham, Tasmania, Australia. It was formerly a prominent pastoral estate known as Newnham Estate. It was added to the Australian Commonwealth Heritage List on 22 June 2004.
History
The earliest record of European ownership of the land which became the Newnham Estate was in 1822 when Martin Mowbray Stephenson took up a grant of 500 acres on the Tamar River. A significant part of Stephenson's property later formed the Newnham Estate which was bounded by Newnham Creek, George Town Road, the River Tamar and subsequently the Launceston City Boundary. By 1825 he had erected a house, outhouses and barn overlooking a stretch of the River Tamar known as Stephenson's Bend.
Lieutenant Matthew Curling Friend, of the Royal Navy was responsible for first developing the Newnham Estate. In April 1830, as master of the 'Wanstead', he arrived in Hobart Town with his wife and his brothers Daniel, Charles and George. He applied for a grant of land but left for England in May and returned in July 1832 as master of the 'Norval' with his wife and her mother.
Friend's residence, which he called 'Newnham', was built in the early 1830s. A 1833 survey of the Stephenson's Bend area shows four buildings on the major grant which are within Friend's property; and an 1835 advertisement for the lease of Newnham Estate described a substantial house with an extensive series of outbuildings around a courtyard to the north-east of the house. The advertisement also refers to two cottages on the property, which presumably refers to the Riverside Cottage and the Lodge, demolished in 1979.
Friend's Colonial Georgian style residence probably had four principal rooms to both floors, with a verandah to the river front (south-west) elevation. The attic floor within the roof was probably intended for further accommodation. The 1835 description refers to a domestic courtyard group of two buildings with a central well; and a farm courtyard with two sides being enclosed with extensive sheds, cow and feeding houses. Lieutenant Friend only held the property a few years, for he was probably required to relocate his residence due to his Port Officer duties. John Cameron bought Newnham Hall from Matthew Curling Friend in 1836 and lived there for about twenty years.
In July 1837, John Cameron had already paid 1000 pounds to Matthew Curling Friend and had drawn up bills of exchange totalling another 2,800 pounds. Those bills of exchange were due to be honoured at regular intervals from January 1836 until the last one in 1840, giving Cameron absolute purchase of 70 acres, one rood and four perches, being part of two grants of land to Matthew Curling Friend.
The 1837 sale provided for a 'right of way' to the Newnham Estate from the Launceston road to the bank of River Tamar and the Jetty on the south side of the creek at a place called Stoney Point. Three more transactions, in 1839, 1840 and 1848, completed the land dealings between Friend and Cameron. By the early 1850s, it appears that John Cameron had left Newnham and was in the process of selling his various lands to William Gardner. Gardner purchased the core seventy acre property in 1853. This comprised Newnham Hall, outbuildings, park, orchard and farm lands and allowed for 'right of way' from the Launceston road to the jetty on the River Tamar, and provided for the sale of other portions of the property.
William Atkinson Gardner (1815 - 1855) had arrived in Launceston from Manchester in 1851 and purchased Newnham in 1853. He was the Vice-President of the Launceston Mechanics Institute; and the Member of the Tasmanian Legislative Council for the seat of Cornwall from March 1855 to his death, aged forty, on 22 June that year. Newnham was offered for lease, and an advertisement in The Examiner of that date described the property as a first class residence, beautifully situated, with a frontage on the River Tamar. The house contained 18 rooms with numerous outbuildings, kitchens, scullery, wine cellar, stores, and men's huts; a large tank, with force-pump; stables, loose boxes, coach houses, straw yard, stock yard, fowl and pigeon houses. There were seven acres of productive garden ground and orchard, twenty-nine acres of parkland, and forty-one acres in convenient paddocks for agriculture. The 15 ft wide verandah bounded the house on two sides. The house was fitted with a patent water closet, and a force pump, from which water was conveyed to the upper storey. There was also a large reservoir and a good well of water. The gardens were stocked with young and choice fruit trees and vegetables, and in one of them was a comfortable gardener's cottage.
It seems probable that John Cameron, who had held the property for sixteen years, added the large breakfront and pediment extension to the original Colonial Georgian house and erected the north eastern building of the farm courtyard group during his occupancy. With the death of William Gardner, the entire property, now 126 acres, was put up for sale on 12 November 1855.
By 1855, the Newnham Estate was one of the grandest estates in the north of Tasmania; and the Hall itself was one of the largest Colonial residences in Tasmania. The gracious 15 ft wide verandah extended symmetrically across the River front facade, and the ornamented verandah pilasters were relieved by light treillage arches which spanned between the posts. The ground floor French doors, and upper bedroom windows, were all fitted with external louvred shutters. In architectural terms, the Cameron additions to the principal (riverside front) elevation added Classical Revival detailing in the pedimented breakfront and elaborate verandah decoration.
However, perhaps the most spectacular architectural feature was the internal decoration of the three principal Cameron rooms. A 1939 account by a curator from the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Eric Scott, described the ornate Classical Revival style of the Newnham Hall interiors. The interiors he examined comprised two large rooms (drawing room, billiard room) and entrance hall, decorated in the highly ornate Classical Style, characterized by elaborate three-division cornices, ceilings with painted, multicoloured Greek and Etruscan pattern-ornament, highly coloured woodwork. With the rooms maintaining the general appearance they must have presented about a century before Scott's account, he described the interior of this building as representing 'an historical treasure for Tasmania'.
Following William Gardner's death, John Cameron regained control of Newnham Hall. On 1 July 1857, William Dawson Grubb paid 4,200 pounds to become the new owner of Newnham Hall. The purchase of the Newnham Estate by William Dawson Grubb was the final phase of private ownership of the house and much of the land; and the Grubb family became probably the best known of all the Estate's owners.
William Dawson Grubb (1817-1879) had arrived in Van Diemens Land in March 1832, and then returned to England to read law. In 1842 he returned to Launceston, and was admitted as a barrister and solicitor. He undertook various business ventures, and purchased the Newnham Estate in 1857. The couple's youngest son, William Crooks Grubb, inherited the property and when he died in 1918 it was bought by Samuel Tulloch Scott, the husband of William Crooks Grubb's second child, Harley Marianne Louisa Grubb. Scott did not reside there and Newnham Hall was rented out until the State Government bought the property in 1940. The extended period of ownership by one family of the Newnham Estate was imprinted into the fabric of the property.
The creation of a stud for Jersey cows and Suffolk sheep by the Newnham Sheep Stud in 1922 was paralleled by the sale of outlying sections of the original property, probably in response to the encroaching suburban development of the city of Launceston. The stud ceased operation and the tenant, H. von Steiglitz, vacated the property, probably in the early 1930s.
There was considerable disquiet at this time as to the future of the property and its buildings and in 1939, Eric Scott, of the Queen Victoria Museum & Art Gallery, wrote to the state Minister for Social Services, Eric Howroyd, pointing out that if the government acquired the property it would be a splendid opportunity to arrange for its preservation at a relatively insignificant cost. Scott emphasised the need to conserve Newnham Hall and its extraordinary decoration.
In between the sale of the property to the Education Department in 1940 and the restoration of Newnham Hall in the late 1970s, all remnants of the decorations described by Mr Scott were obliterated and all the features that gave the riverside Hall rooms their character were removed.
In 1946, Newnham Hall opened as Newnham Hall Hostel, housing girls from rural areas of Northern Tasmania who were attending Launceston High School. In 1948 Dr Dick Whitford, responsible for the introduction of comprehensive high school systems within Tasmania, established the experimental Newnham Community School. At the time of acquisition, the Newnham property was reduced to just over 178 acres, with a cluster of buildings around the Hall, and two small cottages, one at the Tamar River frontage (Riverside Cottage) and the other between the stables and the dairy (the Early Cottage or Lodge now demolished).
By 1945, the Hall had been radically altered with extensions to the rear, to serve its use as a hostel for High School girls. These additions comprised lean-to extensions to the original Friend building; and the addition of a building to the southeast which was placed hard up against the Newnham Hall walls and required the demolition of the southern end of the Cameron verandah.
In the early 1960s Newnham Hall was becoming engulfed by suburban development. The Tasmanian College of Advanced Education (Newnham Campus) annexed the northern section of the former Newnham property; and in 1962, the Newnham Hostel was adapted for use as part of the G. V. Brooks High School, renamed Brooks High School in 1964. In 1965 and 1966 new science laboratories and a gymnasium were built close to Newnham Hall and in 1972, a new School administration building was added. Further additions in the 1970s included additions to the north of the Hall and the removal of the early domestic courtyard buildings, the dairy and kitchen.
In 1977, a proposal was put forward to annex the former Newnham Hall property as a new campus for the Australian Maritime College (AMC). This was part of a Federal Government initiative in the late 1970s to decentralize and relocate scientific and ocean based research activity to Tasmania. Other facilities established at this time were the Australian Antarctic Division at Kingston and the CSIRO Sea Fisheries Research Laboratories in Hobart. In 1978 the Newnham property was gifted to the Federal Government for use as the AMC. The extent of the transferred property was 13.25 hectares.
In 1979, the adaptation of the stables and house was undertaken to allow the use of these buildings by the college. Further college buildings were constructed around the Hall and, the former Brooks High School laboratories were modified.