By the late 1820s, the handsome tower had begun to weather badly and was soon bound with five iron hoops to hold its massive stones in place. The building endured until the 1880s, but was then condemned as structurally unsound. In addition, its lamps and reflectors were by then outmoded, and the New South Wales Government decided to replace the Macquarie Tower after more than 60 years of service. In 1881 work began on a new building just 13 feet to the west of Greenway’s tower.
In an act of remarkable deference for the time, the James Barnet–designed structure more or less copied Greenway’s, with its domes, elegant tapering tower, strict symmetry and austere simplicity. The new South Head Lighthouse began operation in 1883 and for a time the two buildings stood side by side. Piecemeal demolition of Greenway’s tower began in 1884. Today, the gleaming white replica tower still stands proud on South Head – an enduring Sydney landmark and a symbolic reminder of the light that Lachlan Macquarie shone into the gathering dawn of modern Australia.
PAIN AND HUMILIATION: THE BARRACK SQUARE INCIDENT
Greenway’s appointment as acting civil architect heralded a flurry of public works, but whether his engagement was the impetus for such activity, or he was simply swept up by Macquarie’s galloping enthusiasm is impossible to judge. The governor obviously felt a growing confidence in his architect and was soon entrusting Greenway with a formidable list of tasks. As well as involving the Macquarie Tower and reports on the hospital and colonial secretary’s house, 1816 and 1817 became busy years of projects commenced and projects imagined.
Down by Sydney Cove a stretch of ground was levelled and cleared ready for Greenway’s embellishing touch, and rather predictably would soon be named Macquarie Place (see chapter 16). Additions were planned to the military barracks fronting what is today Wynyard Park, while new fortifications were begun in a climate where ships of other nations arrived under suspicion of hostile intent. West of Sydney at Parramatta there were additions and alterations to the nearly 20-year-old Government House, and a new parsonage built for St John’s Church on the opposing hill. New churches were wanted for the embryonic settlements of Windsor and Liverpool, and a new public wharf was proposed on the Hawkesbury River at Windsor. Two earlier wharves had been swept away by floods.
The St John’s parsonage was Greenway’s first significant work in the colony, and it also held the distinction of being the first complete house by a professional architect in Australia.1 The building also brought Greenway into contact with the Reverend Samuel Marsden and his favoured builder, James Smith (or Smyth), both of whom would soon be in conflict with the architect.
An austere two-storeyed brick building of fine proportions, the parsonage had a severity that suited the character of Marsden, the colony’s principal chaplain. By the time it was built, Marsden had been in New South Wales for much of the previous 20 years, and in that time had acquired significant landholdings and a flock of merinos second only to that of John Macarthur. An energetic evangelical preacher who saw salvation in industry and material advancement, Marsden was an enemy of Macquarie’s emancipist policy, and no friend of the convict population. His status as a prominent landowner attracted criticism that his attentions lay more with the temporal than the spiritual, and in his role as a magistrate at Parramatta, he displayed a fondness for corporal justice that was severe even by the standards of the time. Through his ‘detestation of sin and his conviction … that morality could be preserved only by the most rigorous disciplinary measures’, Marsden earned the infamous epithet ‘the flogging parson’.2
Greenway was ever the stickler for fiscal rectitude in others, and dutifully reviewed the contract for the parsonage before work commenced. But as Ellis noted ominously, ‘he was living the most dangerous role that could be allotted to one of his position and temperament – that of self-conscious virtue in a sea of vice’.3 Marsden had agreed to a contract price with Smith that was twice what Greenway considered reasonable. The architect claimed that ‘every trick was resorted to, to make it appear that my bill of quantities was wrong’. Pressure was applied to Greenway to force him to ‘swerve from his duty’, but he held firm. Denied his contractual windfall, Smith simply chose to disregard much of the building’s internal detailing, and carried his resentment to the next encounter with Macquarie’s architect.
In the earliest days of settlement, Parramatta was vital to the colony’s survival. With the soils around Sydney Cove found to be unproductive, Arthur Phillip explored the Parramatta River in 1788 in a desperate search for suitable agricultural land. He ventured as far as the limit of the river’s tidal reaches, where with reliable fresh water at hand, farming soon commenced. The first successful wheat crop in the district was harvested at Parramatta’s Experiment Farm in 1791. Under Phillip’s command, the agrarian future of a self-sufficient colony centred on Parramatta was of more significance than the development of Sydney, a place he viewed as simply an entry port. Consequently, the governor required suitable quarters of his own at Parramatta, and in 1790 a cottage was built on a rise above the river. In 1798 Governor Hunter had Phillip’s building demolished and a more permanent structure erected. Hunter’s Government House was a simple two-storeyed villa, very much in the style of a gentleman’s country retreat. Successive governors preferred its atmosphere and location to the dilapidated vice-regal quarters in noisome and crime-riven Sydney.
But by the time of Macquarie’s arrival in 1810, Government House at Parramatta was in a similar state of advanced decay to the Sydney residence. In 1814, the Macquaries began repairs and extensions under the direction of Lieutenant John Watts, the governor’s newly arrived Irish-born aide-de-camp. Watts, who had received some architectural training in Dublin before taking up a commission in the army, was responsible for the revived villa’s Palladian architectural pretensions. Close to both Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie, Watts also went on to design, among a number of buildings, the massive twin towers of St John’s Church at Parramatta, modelled on those of St Mary’s Church in Reculver, Kent. Elizabeth Macquarie apparently claimed that St Mary’s was the last church she saw as she left England.
According to Broadbent and Hughes, Greenway was unlikely to have influenced the style of Watts’s work at Government House, but the new acting civil architect was, however, responsible for the design of a single-storeyed portico to the building’s front entrance, evidenced in Macquarie’s instructions. In August 1816, he directed Greenway to ‘give his final directions … in regard to putting up and completing the Portico of the Government House … as soon as possible’.4 The significance of the portico transcends the modest extent of the work, as Broadbent and Hughes explained: ‘The result was probably the first example of competently designed classical architectural detailing to be built in the colony. Greenway leavened the plain front of Government House with a handsome, simple but academically correct Roman Doric portico’.
Ten viceroys used the house as their country residence, but by the 1840s, with the seat of colonial administration squarely back in a rapidly growing Sydney, Governors Gipps and Fitzroy were forced to maintain the Parramatta building from their own pockets. The house was vacated in 1855 and leased as a private residence. After extensive renovations in 1909, in which Greenway’s portico was demolished and faithfully rebuilt, the nearby King’s School moved in and used the building as a dormitory for the following 55 years. In 1965, the National Trust of Australia acquired Old Government House.
Macquarie’s diary for 25 September 1816 recorded the start of work in Sydney on the ‘foundation of the 5th Barrack for the Military’. His entry also rather optimistically stated that the ‘Whole will be completed in Four Months’.5 More than a year later the work was still unfinished. Such delays were a common frustration for Macquarie, but for Greenway, attendance at the barracks in the course of his duties would soon cause him more than annoyance. There, he would learn a painful lesson as he came face to face with the colony’s military elite.
The upper ranks of the 46th Regiment o
f Foot were as arrogant and self-important as any among their brother officers garrisoned in the colony since 1788. The coup d’état against Bligh was far from forgotten and, unlike their predecessors among Macquarie’s own regiment, the officers of the 46th felt no particular allegiance to the governor. Grievances ran deep, as the officers consistently sided with the exclusives in colonial society. Ellis rather grimly observed that by early 1817, the regiment ‘had come to be a very centre of rebellion’.6 With a governor justifiably wary of further unrest, and public assembly strictly controlled as a consequence, the malcontents sought sanctuary in what Ellis described as a ‘dark recess in which secret plotting might hide’.
The officers of the 46th had been granted a warrant of the portable Irish Masonic lodge, Social and Military Virtues No. 227. But rather than attracting men interested in universal fraternity, the new Sydney brotherhood became a magnet for the disaffected. Jeffrey Hart Bent, the soon-to-be-dismissed judge of the Supreme Court, and aggrieved hospital contractor Alexander Riley, both became members. Captain John Piper, of Greenway’s acquaintance from the General Hewett, also joined the lodge. Colonel George Molle (the lieutenant governor and commanding officer of the 46th) was a brother, and the lodge’s worshipful master was one Captain Edward Sanderson. Lachlan Macquarie was himself a member of the Masonic brotherhood, having been inducted into a local lodge while serving in India some 30 years before. But as Ellis noted wryly, ‘with this crew of disreputables, that counted for nothing’.7
John Piper’s rich plum was being appointed Sydney’s naval officer in 1813. His responsibilities included the collection of harbour fees, customs duties and excise on spirits. He grew wealthy on the five per cent of revenues flowing through his books of account. Piper was a rare individual in the fractured social milieu of early Sydney. He had formed a relationship with the 15-year-old daughter of a convict and married her only after she had already borne him four children. Yet despite having consorted with what the exclusives deemed an inferior social class, Piper was accepted among their number. Perhaps this was in part due to the largesse he displayed at any opportunity. As a grandee of the colony he sought to emphasise his position by staging lavish entertainments for a large social circle of eager invitees.
Piper would transport his guests by specially decorated barges to his harbourside estate on what was then known as Eliza Point, but which later took the name of its owner and developer. Elaborate fetes were staged on open ground carved from the virgin bush – a sort of cultured Elysium on the edge of the savage wilderness. His guests would feast on the finest fare and sip French wines while being serenaded by liveried musicians, all against the azure backdrop of Port Jackson. Piper’s ultimate self-endorsement of his considerable worth came with the 1816 commencement of construction of a twin-domed mansion on Eliza Point, all planned in the most fashionable style of the time. With a well-directed deferential nod to the governor’s wife through her middle name, Piper’s pile was to be named Henrietta Villa.
In October 1816, Captain Sanderson approached Greenway; his artistic labours were required to decorate a collection of seven Masonic aprons. They were to be worn by members of the lodge at a solemn ceremony to be staged on Eliza Point by their worthy brother Captain John Piper. The laying of the foundation stone for Henrietta Villa was to be the first important event on the new lodge’s calendar. Piper most likely became aware of Greenway’s artistic talents on the General Hewett, and a recommendation to Sanderson almost certainly came from him. At the time of the apron commission, Greenway may even have been involved in preliminary designs for Henrietta Villa itself.
Despite the volume of work under his charge at the time, Greenway took to the seven aprons with alacrity and at first even refused payment for his services – or so he claimed. But in typical fashion, his attention soon wandered and delay was followed by one excuse after another. Within a few weeks the commission soured and descended into violence. By the following April, the New South Wales Criminal Court was hearing a case of assault against the worshipful master of the lodge.
The foundation stone for Henrietta Villa was laid with full Masonic rites one sparkling November morning. A seven-gun salute boomed out over the harbour, and the Masonic emblem flew from the highest mast in the port. With his typically devilish wit, Ellis imagined the slightly absurd scene as the Masonic festivities unfolded down by Port Jackson’s shores:
When the lodge assembled in a glade and marched – no doubt to the great astonishment of the local fauna – down Point Piper to pour their oil and wine and reveal the measure of their charity with six pounds laid on the foundation-stone of Captain Piper’s home for the poor, almost every one of them had his frontal curves coyly concealed beneath shining examples of Masonic art. But the Right Worshipful Master did not share in the general newness of raiment.
Who shall fail to sympathize with him in his plight? The sun struck not a ray from his symbolical habiliments. They were ‘in an imperfect state’, while the umbilical adornments of all the lesser than he glistened in the November sunlight, like sparklets out of the Temple of King Solomon himself.8
It seems that six aprons were decorated just in time for the festivities, although perhaps not glazed for durability and posterity. That of the Right Worshipful Master, however, was in a lesser state of completion. When the matter came to court, the artist proffered complex excuses that barely masked lackadaisicalness and a chronic lack of organisation. ‘I told him that the water colours would not last in this hot country and that I would do it better for him in varnish colours’, Greenway explained.9 He claimed to have promised to gild the apron for Sanderson, but maintained that he was waiting to acquire a bottle of ‘Japan size’ from popular fellow artist and naturalist John Lewin before he could proceed.
His patience wearing thin, Sanderson wrote to Greenway informing him that he would take the apron back and have Lewin finish the work. But rather than meekly comply with the request, Greenway could not help himself and wrote a strongly worded letter in response. Excusing his actions, he claimed, ‘Captain Sanderson did not use any abusive language – only doubted my word … when I wrote that letter I was much hurt at Captain Sanderson stating that he would send the apron to Mr Lewin to finish’.10 Greenway further admitted that ‘I may have wrote [sic] it with too warm a sentiment’. The substance of the letter can only be imagined, and the cryptic inferences of the subsequent court transcripts throw little light on Sanderson’s later violent reaction. But whatever was amiss, the tone of Greenway’s letter was enough to solicit a complaint from Sanderson to John Wylde, the judge advocate.
Duly summoned by Wylde, Greenway admitted that he thought the letter ‘upon Consideration improper’. The judge advocate agreed and ‘said that it was not respectful towards an Officer in His Majesty’s Service’. It seems that the convict Greenway had accused an officer, a gentleman, and a worshipful master of a Masonic lodge, of ‘wanting goodness of your heart and manliness of Conduct’ – although he thought such remarks excusable in the circumstances and not intended as a general reflection on the captain’s character.11
Greenway then composed a further letter, this time in the presence of Wylde, apologising to Sanderson and ‘explaining away’ his conduct. Naïvely, he now assumed the matter was settled. But as Ellis wryly observed: ‘if there were anything more likely to rouse the ire of a sensitive man of honour than a letter in which Mr Greenway attacked him, it would be a letter in which Mr Greenway apologized for attacking him’.12
A week later, the architect was going about his business, making an early morning site visit to the military barracks. He recalled that ‘a soldier came to me saying he was sent by Captain Sanderson who wished to speak to me. I went to Captain Sanderson’s Barrack expecting the letter I had written to him had satisfied him in every point …’13 Greenway was ushered into a bare room and Sanderson closed the door behind him. The architect was now alone with the ‘powerful and athletic’ captain, who was dressed in the full uniform of the officer
of the day.14 Standing assertively with ‘arms akimbow [sic]’ Sanderson immediately asked Greenway whether the letter written at the behest of the judge advocate was his. A little nervous, but still unsuspecting, Greenway readily confirmed his authorship. Sanderson’s angry response was then to call Greenway a ‘damned rascal’, and taking a whip ‘which seemed to be prepared’ seized the startled architect by the cravat. ‘Pressing his knuckles against my throat he cut several times on my legs.’15
Apart from the pain and humiliation of the unfolding assault, as still a ticket-of-leave convict at the time, Greenway was caught in a precarious predicament. Were he to retaliate, his probable punishment would make Sanderson’s attack seem, in comparison, like being flayed with a feather. In a legal regime without trial by jury, Sanderson, or at least one among his brother officers, would surely also sit on the bench in judgment of such a matter. In the heat of the moment, Greenway somehow managed to maintain his passivity. ‘Consider the situation in which I am placed’, he implored several times:
I dare not run the risk of resisting were I able … I then caught hold of the whip … he let go his hand from my cravat and struck me with the same fist … I parried it but it struck me the right side of my face – in parrying the blow I let go the whip and he struck me with the right fist … he struck me on the ear – I was struggling and calling out to him to desist – he seemed exhausted with rage and passion … [and] he used many epithets and names …16
Sanderson shouted at Greenway to get out. Quivering with shock, Greenway hastily complied, but still in a rage, Sanderson followed, calling out to him, ‘damned swindler’. The captain then struck him ‘several times in the doorway and under the awning with a whip’. Unlike the assault within the barracks, there were now witnesses to the ongoing fracas. A number of soldiers and officers were scattered about the barrack yard, and carpenters were framing a roof the architect had come to inspect. But their presence did nothing to quell Sanderson’s temper, and as he chased Greenway away from the building, he again cursed him as a ‘damned swindler’. Of the witnesses among the soldiers and carpenters, only Joseph Wharton, a convict overseer, dared paint a forthright picture of the incident. The others chose to feign lapses of memory or, as Ellis put it, were ‘blind’.17
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