The history of Skellatar House - the Education Era

At the time of Hunter Bowman's death the Skellatar estate comprised about 3,000 acres. It was subdivided into a number of parcels for sale, and the Skellatar homestead and the surrounding 650 acres of land were bought by the Catholic Church at an auction conducted by Edward Higgens Parkinson & Company on 15th November 1952.

The current owners of Skellatar House were very fortunate to be given an original 1952 auction poster, in perfect condition, by Mr Tony McTaggart of Edward Higgens Parkinson First National in Muswellbrook.

Here it is. 'The Noted Skellatar Estate - on the famous Hunter River - at Muswellbrook.'




You can see, in the centre of the first site plan, the large 650 acre homestead block that the Catholic Church purchased. The church quickly sold off a large part of the 650 acres for housing development, but retained some areas for later projects such as St James School on the Skellatar Stock Route, and the Mount Providence Hostel for the Aged in Tindale Street.

Father Fitzgerald, the parish priest, renamed the portion retained by the Church 'Mount Providence'. In 1953 St Mary's High School for Girls was opened in the Skellatar homestead, with an enrolment of 18 pupils, and it was run by the Sisters of Mercy. No-one lived in the house, except the caretakers, the Oakes family, in the flat at the rear created out of the servants' quarters.

In the 1960's the Federal Government introduced the Wyndham Scheme, which set standards for secondary school education and led to today's Higher School Certificate system. To meet the demands of the new curriculum, a science classroom block was constructed on the site in 1964.

However, not long after the building was opened, the science courses were abandoned and it was later used as a chapel. Remnants of the confessional box are still visible in what is now a garage and workshop. The school was forced to close in 1968 as a result of the inability of the existing buildings and staff to meet the growing demands of the new secondary school curriculum, and most of the pupils were transferred to St. Catherine's High School in Singleton.

Although the school had closed the Catholic Church retained the property, and in 1977 the church made Skellatar House available for the establishment of the Upper Hunter Teachers' Centre. It was an equipment and resource library with a full time adviser, for all schools in the Upper Hunter, not just Catholic schools. In 1985 the centre moved from Skellatar House, or 'Mount Providence' as it was known at the time, to the recently vacated old St. James Convent School building in Sowerby Street, Muswellbrook.

Between 1981 and 1983, and possibly at an earlier time in the 1970's, the overcrowding at St. James Convent School made it necessary to relocate the infants' classes to the Skellatar homestead, sharing the building with the Teachers' Centre. But when the new St. James School on the Skellatar Stock Route was opened in June 1983, all the Skellatar pupils were transferred to the new school. From 1985 to 1996 the homestead had various intermittent uses loosely connected with education, such as a ballet school, in the old science block, and a pre-school playgroup centre.

It's probably fortunate that the period of ownership by the Catholic Church coincided with an era in which many old houses were ruined by misguided attempts at renovation. The Church did not renovate, it simply used what was there as best it could. It did not paint over the glorious red cedar, or not much of it, anyway, and it did not rip up the Minton tiles and replace them with lino. The fact that there was no family living in the main residence from 1953 to 1997 may have saved Skellatar House from some of the horrors of modernisation.

In 1997 the church decided to sell Skellatar House and two acres of land around it, and it was sold to the Birnie family, who were already residents of Muswellbrook. The house was in a fairly dilapidated state by this time. There were pigeons nesting in the roof and some of the ceilings had collapsed. The upstairs verandah needed its flooring timbers replaced, and some sections of the cast-iron decoration were missing. Mr and Mrs Birnie took on an enormous task, and during the seven years of their ownership they restored the original beauty of the interior of Skellatar House.

So, to conclude, and to bring us back to our starting point: Mr and Mrs Birnie moved to Queensland in the early part of 2004, and some months later Granville and Yvonne Taylor came along and saw Skellatar House on that very rainy day just before Christmas. And the rest, as they say, is history.


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The history of Skellatar house - the end of the Bowman Era

Let's return now to the twin brothers for whom the house was built, Andrew and Edward Bowman.

Andrew Bowman's first wife died in childbirth in 1878, the second year of their marriage. He remarried in 1883, the year that Skellatar House was built, and it's unclear whether he ever lived at the new house. In any event, Andrew and Edward now divided their share of the estate between them. Andrew took the eastern portion, which he called Gyarran. He built a homestead there in 1900, and it is still standing, near the New England Highway on the top of Black Hill in Muswellbrook. Edward Bowman retained what had been the central portion of the original estate and the Blacket-designed homestead. In 1890, at the age of 50, he married Irene May Purchase, and their family comprised three daughters and a son.
They are pictured above with one of their daughters, Winifred.


Edward was an alderman at Muswellbrook for twenty-two years, and he served six terms as mayor between 1875 and 1901. In 1906 he was elected the first president of the Council of the Shire of Wybong. This official-looking portrait is from the collection of the Muswellbrook Shire Local and Family History Society.


He was a magistrate, a councillor of St. Andrew's College at the University of Sydney, honorary secretary of the Upper Hunter Amateur Race Club, and a First Lieutenant in the Muswellbrook Corps of the New South Wales Volunteer Infantry. Bowman Park on Skellatar Street, Muswellbrook, was established on land that Edward Bowman gave to the people of Muswellbrook. When he died in 1926, Skellatar was inherited by his only son, Edward Hunter Bowman.

Edward Hunter Bowman was born in 1895 at Skellatar. After his father died he established a dairy on the property, and continued grazing the existing cattle and sheep. In the early 1930's he went to England and bought his first racehorse, a stallion named Archcullen. Hunter Bowman went on to become a prominent personality in the world of horse racing. He owned, or part-owned, a number of successful horses, including Allunga, Flying Knight, Cherry Bar and Hesdin. He established a racecourse on the estate, and this later became the Skellatar Park Racecourse. He served as president of the Upper Hunter Amateur Race Club, the Muswellbrook Jockey Club and the Polo Club. The ballroom wing of Skellatar House was constructed for Hunter Bowman in the 1930's, so he must have been a gregarious sort of fellow who enjoyed entertaining. He married Jean McLellan Trotter in 1921, but they had no children. Hunter Bowman died in 1952, and the Skellatar estate was subdivided and sold.

So now we come to the Education Era in the history of Skellatar House, from 1953 to 1997.


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The history of Skellatar House - introducing the Blackets

William Bowman, the older brother of the twins Edward and Andrew Bowman, had occupied for a time the old slab-walled homestead built by Sir Francis Forbes on the Skellator estate, but it was destroyed by fire, possibly in the 1870's. So a new Skellatar homestead was needed for the twins - the bachelor Edward, and Andrew, who had been married but was now a widower. They chose a Sydney firm of architects to design it.

Let's digress from the Bowman family history for a little while here, to tell you something about these architects who designed Skellatar House.

It was an architectural practice called Blacket and Son. Edmund Blacket, born in 1817, was the third Colonial Architect of New South Wales. He was appointed to this position in 1850, but he resigned in 1854 to begin private practice. He became established as a leading architect, designing the Great Hall at Sydney University, several cathedrals and more than a hundred churches, as well as schools, commercial buildings and private houses. His son Cyril, born in 1857, entered into partnership with his father, and he was elected president of the Institute of Architects, New South Wales, in 1903.

Here's an indication of how important the Blackets are considered to be. A book has been written about them by Morton Herman, in a series called "Famous Australian Lives" published by Angus & Robertson.

In Chapter 11 there's a section that deals with the design of Skellatar House, including a sample of the architect's plans. Here's a short extract:

In 1881 the Blackets designed a large country house for Andrew and Edward Bowman at Muswellbrook in the Hunter River Valley. It was very much in the nature of a working farmhouse, and the evolution of the design is curious. Edmund Blacket got out the first design, which was carried through to full working drawings ready to commence building. It was a manifestly Victorian design, but nevertheless controlled and firm in its lines. The quietude of the scheme must have caused dissatisfaction, for the next year Cyril got out a much more elaborate version with heavy ornamental woodwork to the verandas, and chimneys that could only be called wild. Although this scheme, too, was taken to full working-drawings stage it was not built. The final design shown on the contract drawings comprised exactly the same scheme except that all the heavy woodwork was replaced by lacy cast iron.

One of the Bowman twins had produced an early sketch of their requirements for the house, including a polygonal bay window in the drawing room, which was incorporated into all later plans. The original sketch, pictured left, is held in the Mitchell Library.


Whichever one of the twins made the sketch, he must have been a fairly talented fellow. They were lawyers, remember, not architects, but this looks like a very professional effort for an amateur. But it definitely says, above the drawing, 'Mr Bowman's sketch'.
As noted in the extract from Morton Herman's book, both Edmund and Cyril Blacket had a hand in the design of Skellatar House. But Edmund, the father, died suddenly in February 1883, and Cyril was responsible for the final design and acted as superintendent of the construction. The designs show a progression from a more sober Georgian-influenced style, the work of Edmund, to a full-blown late Victorian design, complete with romantic detail, as favoured by Cyril.
All three sets of Blacket plans are preserved in the Mitchell Library in Sydney. There are twelve pages of plans altogether, but here are two examples.

The floor plan is the final version, showing the ground floor of the main house, and the upper floor. Also shown are the separate kitchen and servants' quarters - once again, ground floor and upper floor. As with most houses built in this era, the kitchen is housed in a separate building because of the fire risk, and it was a very wise move, because the servants' quarters did in fact burn down in 1937. When the servants' quarters were rebuilt they were made into an attachment at the back of the house, so that the outside rear wall of the main house became an inside wall. Possibly at the same time as this rebuilding was going on, a decision was made to extend the verandah around three sides of the main house, both upstairs and downstairs - instead of the verandah around one-and-a-half sides that is shown in the floor plan. So the house as it stands today is slightly different from the original construction.

One of the most fascinating things to be found in the Mitchell Library is the original building contract, dated 20th April 1883. Attached to the contract are 18 pages of detailed, handwritten building specifications. There were meticulous instructions for the mason, for the bricklayer, for the plumber, and for the carpenter, the plasterer, the painter and the glazier. Nothing was left to chance. The page shown above gives instructions to the plumber.

There's even a list of instructions for the labourer. Here's an extract from the poor old labourer's list.

- Clear away the grass over the site of the different buildings and 20 feet beyond in every direction.
- Dig trenches for all walls 2 feet below the surface of the ground, stepped where required.
- Dig trenches for foundations of hearths, sleeper walls and verandah walls, 18 inches below the surface of the ground.
- Dig cellar as drawn in dotted lines, to the depth of 8 feet below the level of the top of base course, the trenches for walls to be one foot deeper.
- Dig trenches for 500 feet of drain pipe, 18 inches below the surface of the ground, and for 50 feet of drain pipe, 7 feet below the surface of the ground, to drain the cellar.

Remember they had no mechanical diggers in those days.
But wait, there's more. The labourer's list goes on for another half a page before it gets to the best bit:

- Dig tank as drawn, 17 feet 6 inches diameter and 17 feet deep below the surface.

So the labourer had to dig a hole 17 feet wide and 17 feet deep.
This was the cavity for an enormous brick-lined rainwater drainage tank, with a domed roof. There was a pump installed to lift the collected water into a holding tank in the roof of the house. The underground tank still exists in pristine condition, and, on the rare occasions that it rains, it still retains large quantities of water. We have estimated the capacity to be 90,000 litres. Unfortunately, only a small part of the roof area now drains into the tank.
The first page of specifications also refers to the fact the Bowmans, rather than the builder, were to supply, "all the Bricks, Joists and Rafters required in the erection of the building, also all the Locks, hinges, bell pressers, bolts and door furniture.." Further on there is a note that all stone is to come from "a quarry on the estate", and the bricks were probably made on the nearby Balmoral estate of William Bowman.

It seems that the Bowmans supplied a lot of the material that was used in the construction of Skellatar House. But it doesn't sound as if they were supplying any of the red cedar for the joinery and the kauri pine used for the floors. There's no mention of them providing the slate tiles for the roof, or the glass for the windows and the plaster and paint for the walls. So there's an awful lot of material still to be supplied by the builder, and an army of tradesmen, not to mention all that digging. Want to hazard a guess as to how much John Morrison of Sydney charged for the building of Skellatar House in 1883?

It was £2,800. Probably a small fortune then, but it's still a lot of house for the money.

The agreed completion date was 31st January 1884. The contract was signed on 20th April 1883. So this enormous building was completed in just nine months from start to finish, without all the machinery we have available today. Just sourcing all the materials and transporting them to Muswellbrook must have been a mammoth task in those days. There was no Bunnings in Maitland, no semi-trailers going up and down the New England Highway. Nine months, and just £2,800.


Click here for the conclusion of the Bowman Era of the history of Skellatar House

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The history of Skellatar House - the Bowman Era

Between 1846 and 1848 a family named Bowman gradually purchased the entire Skellator estate. The patriarch of the family was George Bowman of Richmond. He was born in Scotland in 1795, but at the age of three he was brought to the colony of New South Wales, where his father, John Bowman, received a land grant on the Hawkesbury River near Richmond. John Bowman is interesting because he commissioned the famous 'Bowman flag', shown here, to celebrate Nelson's victory at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805.

The flag was on display at the Mitchell Library in Sydney during 2005, to coincide with the Trafalgar bicentennial. It's important because it's the earliest evidence of the use of the symbolic Australian fauna, the kangaroo and the emu, and it's widely regarded as the inspiration for Australia's national coat of arms.

When George was a young man, about the year 1818, he decided to do some exploring. According to various sources, he either joined an overland expedition led by John Howe of Windsor from Richmond to the Hunter River, or he later followed in Howe's footsteps along what is now the Putty Road. He is thought to be the first European to follow the course of the Hunter River from Singleton to Muswellbrook. He was very impressed by the fertility of the land he saw, so he decided to buy as much of it as he could afford, in the areas we now know as Singleton, Muswellbrook and Scone, and he received land grants as well. He was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Assembly in 1851, and in 1872 he became Mayor of Richmond.




Here's a portrait of George Bowman,
looking very much like the patriarch he was.





George Bowman needed plenty of land because he had 9 sons and 2 daughters to provide for. In 1848 he took the 12,560 acres of land he had purchased as the Skellator estate, and divided it into three portions.

The western side of the property was given to his third son, William, who was 25 years old, and this became the estate known as 'Balmoral', on the Denman Road out of Muswellbrook. Andrew and Edward, the 8th and 9th sons born in 1840, were twins. Their share was the eastern and central portion of the estate, for which the name, Skellator, given by Sir Francis Forbes, was retained. But they began to spell it with an 'a-r' at the end, instead of an 'o-r'. George Bowman also settled other sons on Hunter Valley properties, including Archerfield and Oaklands in Singleton, and Arrowfield and Strowan in Jerrys Plains.

Andrew and Edward were only 8 years old in 1848 when they received their property settlement, and so of course they were much too young to farm their lands themselves. After completing their secondary schooling they both went to study law at the University of Sydney, and then they went to England to continue their legal studies.



Here's a photograph of each of them looking like dashing young men about town. Andrew is on the left, and Edward on the right.

Andrew was apparently completely deaf, so perhaps his twin helped him with his studies. They both obtained their bachelor degree in law from the University of London, and returned to New South Wales in 1869.


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The history of Skellatar House - the Forbes era

A male child called Francis Forbes was born on the island of Bermuda, on the edge of the Caribbean, in 1783. He was the elder son of Doctor Francis Forbes, a man of Scottish descent. Francis Forbes, the son, travelled from Bermuda to England at the age of 19 to study law at Lincoln's Inn in London. Later he returned to Bermuda and was appointed Attorney General there in 1810. In 1816 he became Chief Justice of the British colony of Newfoundland in North America, and then in 1823 he was appointed Chief Justice of New South Wales. He was the first Chief Justice of New South Wales - that is, the position didn't exist until he was appointed - and he arrived in the colony with his family in 1824. Around this time the British government was starting to encourage free settler migration to the colony, and the settlement of the Upper Hunter began in the following year, 1825.

Francis Forbes received a land grant of 2,560 acres from the governor, Governor Darling, and he was allowed to purchase a further 10,000 acres The original 2,560 acre Crown grant included the site of Skellatar House, although it was built long after Forbes' death. But the name comes from the name Francis Forbes gave to his estate. He named it Skellator, that's Skellator ending in o-r, after a Forbes estate near Aberdeen in Scotland. The current spelling, Skellatar, a-r, was not adopted until the lands passed into the hands of the Bowman family. Francis Forbes' brother George also came to New South Wales at this time, and he named his own nearby estate Edinglassie, after another Forbes estate in Scotland.

Francis Forbes is a very significant figure in Australian history. He was responsible for converting the legal system of New South Wales from that of a penal colony, with total legal power vested in the Governor, to that of a free settlement. He was a member of the first New South Wales Legislative Council from 1824 to 1836. And he was one of the first persons to be knighted for services to the colony. There is an historical society, based in Sydney, called 'The Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History'.



This society recognises in its name Sir Francis' contribution to the formation of the legal system in New South Wales, which later became the legal system of the nation of Australia.
There are a number of portraits of Sir Francis in the Mitchell Library
in Sydney, as well as one in the Supreme Court of New South Wales.
He looks splendid in this portrait from the Mitchell Library, every inch
the Chief Justice.


Sir Francis' government duties kept him very busy, and he had to spend most of his time in Sydney. The Skellator estate was used for sheep grazing, but it was run by Sir Francis' brother George, of Edinglassie. However, around about 1830 a slab-walled house was constructed on the Skellator estate. It had three bedrooms, a parlour, and the usual domestic outbuildings, and it stood on land that is now occupied by the Muswellbrook Water and Sewerage Works at the corner of Sydney Street and the Skellatar Stock Route.

Sir Francis was a sick man by this time, and he spent some time at his Muswellbrook house in 1834, hoping to restore his failing health. Unfortunately he didn't recover, and so he was obliged to retire from his position as Chief Justice in 1837.

He returned to the Skellator estate in 1837, and again in 1838, trying to make a success of his farming venture. But it wasn't a success, partly as a result of the Great Stock Depression in the 1830's. He died in Sydney in 1841 at the age of 58, and by 1846 the land of the Skellator estate, as well as the slab-walled house and its contents, were the subject of a mortgagee sale. His widow was left penniless, although she did eventually receive a pension from the Crown in recognition of her husband's services. Sir Francis Forbes' sons had tried to rescue the family fortunes with a plan to create a new town called Forbestown on the South Muswellbrook portion of the estate, but after the sale they moved with their mother to the Darling Downs in Queensland.

Sir Francis Forbes left an enduring legacy in Muswellbrook, which is reflected in a lot of local names - not just Skellatar House, Skellatar Street, Skellatar Stock Route, Skellatar Park Racecourse, but also Forbes Street and Francis Street.


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A virtual tour of Skellatar House - inside

We're continuing our tour of Skellatar house, through the eyes of a Victorian era visitor.

The first sight to greet our eyes would be the tessellated tile floor in the entry hall. They are probably Minton tiles, imported from England.

They are still in good condition, after more than 125 years of wear and tear.

So we're in the entry hall now, and if we looked upwards,
away from the floor, this is what we would see: late Victorian decorative plasterwork, and a cedar staircase leading to the upper storey.


We might then be invited to step into the drawing room, where we could admire the polygonal bay window....



....and if we'd been invited to dinner we'd eventually get to sit in the dining room.



If we were a house guest, invited to stay overnight, we'd go up the cedar staircase and around the turn of the stair.










Eventually, we'd arrive on the upstairs landing.....


....and we might get to sleep in this bedroom.













The bathroom arrangements in 1884 might have been rather primitive by today's standards.

But we can pretend they looked as good as this.










Skellatar House now sits on two acres of land in a suburban street on the edge of the town of Muswellbrook. Back in 1884 it was the homestead of the enormous Skellatar estate, and it was known simply as 'Skellatar', surrounded only by paddocks. The Skellatar estate covered not just the area now known as south Muswellbrook, but also a part of the area around neaby Muscle Creek.

So, in order to understand the history of Skellatar House, we need to go right back to the beginning, to the creation of the Skellatar estate, the large property on which the house once stood.

To make it easier to follow, we can divide the history of the house into three eras.

The first era, from 1835 to 1845, was the Forbes Era. This is when the Skellatar estate was created.

The second era is the longest, lasting from 1846 to 1952. This was the Bowman Era, during which the house was built and lived in as a family home.

The third era, from 1953 to 1997, was the Education Era.


Click here to go to the Forbes Era
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A virtual tour of Skellatar House - outside

Here’s a virtual tour of the outside of Skellatar House.


The part of the building in the left foreground used to be the servants' quarters, and later on it was used as a caretakers' flat.

Now it is the kitchen, with some bedrooms upstairs.





This is what it looks like on the western side.

This is a side view of the old servants' quarters, attached to the main house.

These aren't the original servants' quarters, but there'll be more on that subject later.





This is what it looks like on the eastern side.

Note the ballroom on the left.

This was a later addition.



And this is what it looks like on the northern side.

In the centre is the large and majestic front door, through which the family and their visitors would have entered the house.

They would have had the door opened for them by a butler or a maidservant, because the door can only be opened from the inside.

Click here to continue the virtual tour, this time inside

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