Category: Camden Modernism

1973 New Cities Campbelltown Camden Appin Structure Plan · 20th century · Adaptive Re-use · Adaptive Reuse · Architecture · Attachment to place · Camden Council · Camden Historical Society · Camden Modernism · Camden Museum · Community identity · Community organisations · Conservation · Heritage · Local History · Macaria · Modernism · Sense of place · Streetscapes · Uncategorized · Urban development · Urban growth · Urban history · Urban Planning

The Camden Library Museum, conservation through adaptative reuse

camdenhistorynotes

Many layers of history

The Camden Library Museum is an important building in the Camden Heritage Conservation Area, located at 40 John Street, with a complex story. This short post will attempt to peel back the layers of the history of the building complex.

The building is an amalgam of two historic buildings that have been added to, renovated, and altered by a host of occupants, including the Camden Council, the Camden Library, the Camden Fire Brigade, the Camden Museum, and the Camden Red Cross.

The Camden Library Museum Complex at 40 John Street which has integrated the Camden Museum, Camden Library and former Fire Station (CC, 2008)

If the walls could talk, they would tell many stories about events and people who have used the building for nearly 160 years.

In 2006, building renovations integrated the museum, library, and former fire station buildings into the current galleria with a glass roof, following the principles of conservation through adaptation or adaptative reuse.

The Galleria with glass roof in the Library Museum building with the former Fire Station on LHS and the former School of Arts on RHS (I Willis 2024)

Conservation through adaptative reuse

Conservation through adaptation is part of the Burra Charter, the most important document that guides the principles of conservation of heritage places in Australia. It was originally adopted in 1979 as the Australia ICOMOS Charter for the Conservation of Places of Cultural Significance.

Under the Charter, a place’s cultural significance is measured by a set of values that include aesthetic, historic, scientific, social, and spiritual significance for past, present, or future generations.  The Library Museum building incorporates all these values in varying degrees of significance.

The conservation through adaptation for the Library Museum building means that the building has retained its use and been conserved in a way that retains its cultural significance as a place of importance in the Camden town centre.

The former School of Arts

The oldest part of the building complex is the former School of Arts on the southern side of the current building.

The School of Arts was constructed in 1866 on an allotment with a John Street frontage. The building had a two-storey frontage designed by HP Reeves, the Church of England schoolmaster and later Camden mayor, in an Italianate Pallandian style. The brick building was constructed by local firm McBeath and Furner. (Downing, et al., 3)

James Macarthur opened the School of Arts in 1866, and the town’s residents enjoyed a public holiday. The School of Arts consisted of a reading room for a library on the ground floor of the two-storey front and a meeting room upstairs. The single-storey hall at the rear of the building could accommodate around 250 people and held functions that had much larger crowds. The Camden Library and staff currently use this area.

Camden School of Arts, designed by HP Reeves, shows the two-storey Italianate Palladian frontage, with the brick hall at the rear c1880s (CIPP)

In 1900, Sydney architect JE Kemp designed a two-storey extension to the rear of the School of Arts building on the eastern side.

This image from the 1880s shows the Temperance Hall and the prominent two-story Italianate Palladian frontage of the School of Arts (CIPP)

In 1924, the council appointed a full-time town clerk, who moved into the upstairs part of the extension. The Camden Museum now occupies this space.

The eastern end of the Library Museum building faces Larkin Place with the 1900 two-storey extension on the LHS (in a slightly duller brick tone) and the 1998 two-storey extension on the RHS. (I Willis 2024)

Camden Council takes control

The council took control of the School of Arts in 1930 and held council meetings in the rear of the building. The two-storey extensions were used to accommodate the council clerk, who had occupied the rear of the School of Arts, where council meetings were held.

The Camden Town Hall, formerly the School of Arts hall, accommodated the Red Cross sewing circle during the Second World War.

This is the blue plaque on the front of the library museum building that was allocated by the NSW Heritage Office in 2022 to commemorate the activities of the Red Cross Sewing Circles in WW1 & WW2. (I Willis 2023)

Council amalgamations took place across NSW in 1948, and C Riding of Nepean Shire Council was absorbed into the enlarged Camden Municipal Council. The council needed more space, and renovations commenced on the Camden Town Hall, formerly the School of Arts hall. The stage and hall disappeared and became the new offices of the mayor and council staff.

The former School of Arts occupied by Camden Municipal Council in the 1940s (CIPP)

The 75th anniversary of the Camden Municipal Council was celebrated in 1963 by removing the two-storey original School of Arts frontage.  This was replaced with a mid-century modernist single-storey front designed in a colonial Georgian style by Parramatta architects Leslie J Buckland and Druce. The newly renovated building, which accommodated council staff, was opened in 1964 by the NSW Deputy Premier and Minister for Local Government PD Hills.

This is the mid-century modernist single-storey front designed in a colonial Georgian style by Parramatta architects Leslie J Buckland and Druce for the 1964 council office redevelopment of the former School of Arts. (I Willis 2024)

In 1973, the NSW Government released the New Cities Campbelltown, Camden, and Appin Structure Plan for the area. Camden Council felt the former School of Arts did not meet the council’s future needs with the area’s planned growth. Sydney architects Edwards Madigan Torzella, and Brigg designed a new large open-plan office administration building on the opposite side of John Street at the rear of the Macaria building. It was opened by the NSW Deputy Premier Sir Charles Cutler in 1974. Camden Council moved out of the 1974 office building to a new office complex at Oran Park in 2016.

Between 1974 and 1982, when the library re-occupied the space, it was let to commercial tenants, including doctors’ rooms.

The former Temperance Hall

On the northern side of the current building is the former Temperance Hall, built in 1867 for the meetings of the Camden Star of the South Division of the Sons of Temperance, later called the Total Abstinence Benefits Society.

This image shows a parade outside the Camden Total Abstinence Benefit Society Hall on John Street in 1903 (Camden Images)

Camden Fire Station

The NSW Fire Brigade purchased the former Temperance Hall in 1916, undertook renovations and added the current brick frontage to create the Camden Fire Station. (Camden News, 25 January 1917) The Camden Fire Brigade relocated to the John Street premises from Hill Street. (Mylrea)

The new fire station was opened on 24 January 1917 at 5 pm. when Mr. E.H. Farrer, President of the Fire Board, and three board members officially opened the new station. (Camden News, 25 January 1917)

Camden Fire Station in 1995 showing the 1917 brick frontage. While the date is shown as 1916, the fire station was opened in 1917. (John Kooyman/CIPP)

The Camden Fire Brigade occupied the site until 1993, when it moved to larger premises at Elderslie.

Camden Fire Station 1993 (CIPP)

Camden Museum

With the help of Camden Rotary, the Camden Historical Society opened a local museum in the former council offices in the old two-storey extension at the rear of the former School of Arts off Larkin Place in 1970.

In 1998, a new two-storey extension was added to the museum on the northern side of the building. Building renovations commenced in 2006, and the museum, library, and former fire station buildings were integrated around the current Galleria.

The front of the Camden Museum with the photographer standing in the galleria. (CIPP 2021)

Camden Library

Library services were part of the former School of Arts and were expanded in 1900 into the two-storey extensions. Miss Freestone was appointed part-time librarian in 1935 and made full-time in 1942.

The library moved out of the former School of Arts building in 1967 and moved into the Macaria building across John Street. In 1963, Camden Municipal Council adopted the Library Act 1939 (NSW), which provided free public library services in the area.

The library moved back into the former School of Arts building in 1982 and expanded into the former council offices that were part of the original School of Arts hall and reading room.

The new 1964 modernist brick frontage and front doors of the Camden Municipal Council offices, now the library. (I Willis 2022)

References

Pauline Downing, Peter Hayward, Peter Mylrea, Cathey Shepherd, and Robert Wheeler, Camden School of Arts 1850s to 1930s, Camden Historical Society, 2016.

Peter Mylrea, ‘Camden Fire Brigade’. Camden History, September 2009, vol 2, no 8, pp. 313-324.

The exposed mid-19th century ceiling of the former School of Arts in the current library space (I Willis 2024)

Updated on 1 February 2024. Originally posted on 30 January 2024 as ‘The Library Museum building, conservation through adaptation’.

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Camden modern, the mid-century Camden cottage

camdenhistorynotes

Mid-century modernism

Across the Camden district, many houses were built between the Second World War and the early 1970s.

The period is usually called mid-century modern, mid-century modernist or just mid-century. 

A mid-century brick ranch-style cottage in River Road Elderslie (I Willis 2024)

In Australia, the postwar period was a period with a housing shortage. The Homes to Love website states

While the 1950s was a time of great productivity and a time that saw a boom in the building industry, the war years had taken their toll resulting in a shortage of building materials, skills and equipment. This resulted in many people building smaller, more basic homes, often taking on the work themselves. (Homes to Love)

https://www.homestolove.com.au/1950s-houses-australia-21734

Rachel Griffiths writes in the Architectural Digest that

Influenced by the optimism of the post-World War II boom and by the exploration of a range of materials, including steel, concrete, and newly available insulated glass.

Architectural Digest

Scholars attribute the design style to American architects like Frank Lloyd Wright and designers like Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and LeCorbusier.

The term was coined in 1983 by Cara Greenberg for the title of her book Mid-Century Modern: Furniture of the 1950s (Random House)

Mid-century housing styles

Until 1952, timber houses were restricted to 111.48 m² (12 squares) and brick houses to 116.13 m². Lending institutions were very conservative, only advancing about 50% of the property value. (Lumby, p32)

Mid-century modernism influenced houses in the post-war suburbs of Australia’s large cities. Architects of the mid-century period include Harry Seidler, Hugh Buhrich (Sydney), David Chancellor and William Patrick, Robin Boyd, Sevitt & Petitt (Melbourne), Roy Grounds (Canberra), Robin Spencer (Brisbane) and others. 

Mid-century brick cottage with low-pitch roof in Luker Street Elderslie (I Willis 2024)

Features of the mid-century modern houses

The Australian Homes to Love website states

 Open-plan living was really embraced during the 1950s to encourage easy flow of people and conversation. Homes were often well-oriented and featured expansive windows, low-pitched gable roofs with corrugated iron or steel decking, vertical weatherboards, light coloured brick or cement sheet exterior walls. Minimalist design was embraced for its clean sleek lines and pastel, Scandinavian, and modern colour schemes utilised.

https://www.homestolove.com.au/1950s-houses-australia-21734

Mid-century modern is a period in the mid-20th century in which design that was characterised by

Sleek, cool, clean, sophisticated, functional, colourful, mod, and curvy—those are apt words to describe the mid-century modern design. This term encompasses the trends that influenced architecture and interior design in prosperous, post-war America.(Dengarden)

https://dengarden.com/interior-design/A-Pocket-Guide-to-Mid-Century-Modern-Style
Mid-century brick flats in Purcell Street Elderslie (I Willis 2024)

The mid-century Camden cottage

There are several recognisable residential housing styles in the Camden area across this period. These range from postwar fibro cottages of the 1940s (Edward Street) to the triple-fronted brick veneer cottages (Camden South) of the 1970s, and those in-between like 1950-1960s ranch style houses (Hennings House, Elderslie)

Many houses were a type of simple and low-cost housing to cope with material shortages and demand from buyers,especially in the post-war years. 

What does the mid-century Camden cottage represent?

The mid-century Camden cottage represents a number of changes in the Camden ocal area.

The most important influence in this period was the growth of the town and district from the economic boom generated by the Burragorang coalfields. Mining production increased progressively across this period and created many jobs.

Former Camden mayor Bruce Ferguson made the point at a conference in the Hunter Valley in 1977 that in 1949, a share farming family made around £1/15/- a week, while a miner was making £10 per week, a multiple of six times. (Ferguson)

In 1960, there were 150 mine workers in the Camden and Elderslie area. (Sankey, p29) By 1971, this had increased by 1800 people were employed in the mines, washeries, and the maintenance and administration of coal. (Sankey, p18) In contrast, dairy farmers fell from 109 in 1950 to 90 in 1974. (Sankey, p6A)

Camden’s population grew from 3934 in 1947 to 6377 in 1961, 8661 in 1966, and 11,155 in 1971. (Sankey, p10) A new high school opened in Camden in 1956.

Former Camden High School John Street Camden was established in 1956 (Peter Mylrea/Camden Images 2004)

The mining boom contributed to the end of the Camden the country town based on agricultural services. This challenged community identity and sense of place and contributed to the creation of Camden’s ‘country town idyll’ as Sydney’s urban fringe approached the town and heralded the end of modernism in the local area.

There was a shift from the designation of country town to the metropolitan urban fringe when the 1976-1977 NSW Local Government Grants Commission changed the classification of the Camden LGA from ‘non-metropolitan’ to ‘metropolitan’. (Sankey, p40)

The end of the mid-century period in the Camden area is is book-ended by the release of the 1973 New Cities of Campbelltown, Camden, Appin Structure Plan by the State Planning Authority of New South Wales.  

Examples of the mid-century Camden cottage

The Hennings House, built in 1960 on Macarthur Road, was part of the subdivision of the Bruchhauser vineyards of the Elderslie area. It was an excellent example of a house chosen by a local businessman from a pattern book supplied by a local builder. The house was ranch-style, of which there are a number in the Elderslie area with open-plan rooms to the interior. The house was demolished in 2011.

The Hennings House, built in 1960, was located at 64-66 Macarthur Road Elderslie. It was demolished in 2011. (I Willis, 2011)

  • 110 Lodges Road, Elderslie.

This house is a similar design to the Hennings House and has been approved for demolition.

A mid-century timber ranch-style cottage at 110 Lodges Road Elderslie has been approved for demolition. (CRE 2022)

  • Triple and double-fronted cottage

There are many examples of these styles of homes in the local area, particularly south of the town centre, Elderslie and Narellan.

A mid-century triple-fronted brick cottage in Harrington Street Elderslie (I Willis, 2024)

Jacqui Thompson writes on Domain that triple-fronted houses were

are simple buildings that feature a double or triple staggered façade, with a bedroom at the front that steps back to a lounge room and/or the front door. Brick veneer replaced double brick construction, and mass-produced building materials such as glass and cement tiles were embraced. There are wrought iron railings and fencing painted white and wire mesh screens on doors. There can be interconnecting rooms, lower ceilings, and cheaper materials, e.g., melamine benchtops, linoleum and rubber floors and mass-produced sheet materials on walls.  

https://www.domain.com.au/advice/post-war-double-and-triple-fronted-homes-in-australia/

  • Low-pitched roof style

There are a number of mid-century cottages in the Elderslie and Camden area with low-pitched roof styles. They are a mixture of brick and timber construction. In Elderslie, they were built for the coal mining company executives and were more expensive than other stripped-back designs. This design was influenced by West Coast USA styles of the mid-century period.

A mid-century cottage with a low-pitched roof on Sunset Ave. There are a number of cottages of this style in the Elderslie area. (I Willis 2024)

  • Cottage with gable

There are cottages that have a gable design.

A mid-century gabled cottage in River Road Elderslie (I Willis 2024)

The fibro cottage was seen as a modern and affordable housing style. There are many examples in the local area south of the Camden town centre, Elderslie and Narellan, that were built in the postwar years.

Mid-century fibro cottages in Purcell Street Elderslie (I Willis 2024)

References

Robyn Sankey, Camden and the Coal Industry. MA(Hons) Thesis, University of Sydney, 1984.

Bruce Ferguson, ‘The Coal Mining Industry in Camden’. Paper presented at Coal and A Country Town Seminar, Singleton, 1977 published in proceedings, JE Collins (ed), Singleton Shire Council.

Roy Lumby, ‘Modern Movement Architecture In NSW’, in The Modern Movement In New South Wales A Thematic Study And Survey Of Places. HeriCon Consulting (eds), NSW and the Office of Environment and Heritage, Sydney, 2013.

Jacqui Thompson, ‘Post-war double and triple fronted homes in Australia’. Domain, 15 June 2025. Online @ https://www.domain.com.au/advice/post-war-double-and-triple-fronted-homes-in-australia/

20th century · Aesthetics · Architecture · Built heritag · Camden Modern · Camden Modernism · Collective Memory · Community identity · Cultural Heritage · Domestic Architecture · Elderslie · Heritage · History · History of a house · Housing · Local History · Local Studies · Memory · Mid-century modernism · Modernism · Place making · Sense of place · Storytelling · Urban development · Urban growth · Urban Planning · Urbanism

The Hennings House: lost mid-century modernism in Camden

camdenhistorynotes1 Comment

64-66 Macarthur Road

The ranch-style Henning House was set back high on the ridge in Elderslie across two building allotments and a good example of mid-century modernism.

Fronting Macarthur Road, the prominent position provided an appropriate site for the handsome residence of the Camden business family Peter and Barbara Hennings.

The house’s integrity remained intact until its demolition in 2011 to make way for a preschool.

Built in 1960, the Hennings House was one of the first residences of several houses on the Bruchhauser farm subdivision along Macarthur Road. (Hennings 2010)

The Hennings House, 64-66 Macarthur Road, Elderslie. The integrity of the house was still intact before its demolition in 2011. (I Willis, 2010)

The Hennings House was one of several ranch-style residences in Elderslie.

Ranch style housing

Architect Robert Irving has noted the housing style as an Australian domestic architecture. Parramatta City Council has recognised the housing style of heritage significance. 

The ranch-style house is an example of mid-century modernism.

The original house style came from California and the South-west of the USA, where architects in these areas designed the first suburban ranch-style houses in the 1920s and 1930s. They were simple one-storey houses built by ranchers who lived on the prairies and in the Rocky Mountains. 

The American architects liked the simple form that reflected the casual lifestyle of these farming families. After the Second World War, several home builders in California offered a streamlined, slimmed-down version. They were built on a concrete slab without a basement with pre-cut sections. 

The design allowed multi-function spaces, for example, living-dining rooms and eat-in-kitchen, which reduced the number of walls inside the house. The design was one of the first to orient the kitchen/family area towards the backyard rather than facing the street. 

The design also placed the bedrooms at the front of the house. The marketing of the ranch-style house tapped popular American fascination with the Old West. (Washington Post, 30 December 2006)

The Hennings House

Bracken ferns covered the site when the Hennings bought the two blocks and then filled the site to provide the house with an elevated position with a stone batter to the garage end of the house.

The wide frontage ranch-style house was set back on the double block in a high position, which is uncommon in Elderslie, although typical of this style elsewhere in Sydney (Parramatta Development Control Plan 2005).

Peter Hennings has always been interested in design and was careful in selecting the plans for the house. The couple were in their early 20s when they built the house.

The front of The Henning House, 64-66 Macarthur Road, Elderslie. The house’s integrity had not been compromised before its demolition in 2011. (I Willis, 2011)

The builder, Ron McMillan and Sons of Camden, had a catalogue, and the Hennings chose the house design from amongst those. 

According to Peter Hennings, the design of the house was considered relatively modern. (Hennings 2010)

The house was an open-planned three-bedroom double-brick ranch-style residence. The house had 10-foot ceilings, a stone fireplace, timber sash windows and a separate bathroom and toilet.

This image shows the detail of the timber-sash windows, front door and verandah of The Hennings House, 64-66 Macarthur Road, Elderslie. (I Willis, 2011)

There was a detached garage completed after the house was built. 

The lounge room had two pairs of ¼ inch-bevel glass doors and two single glass bevel doors. 

The site’s street frontage had a 1960 front fence of Chromatex bricks, and several mature trees added to the site’s aesthetic quality. (Hennings 2010)

The Hennings sold the house in 1980 to Dr Charles McCalden, who had a medical practice in Hill Street, Camden. He moved away from Camden in the mid-1980s.  

In recent years (1999-2009), the house was owned by school principals Joan and Frank Krzysik. 

The 1960 front fence of Chromatex bricks in original condition on the Macarthur Road frontage of the Hennings House, 64-66 Macarthur Road, Elderslie. (I Willis, 2011)

Kalinda, a Whiteman house

The state government’s 2000 Elderslie Urban Release Area plan resulted in the demolition of Kalinda, another ranch-style house. The timber-constructed home was located off Lodges Road Elderslie and owned by Andrew Whiteman. 

The Whiteman House Kalinda was high on the ridge with a pleasant outlook facing west over the Narellan Creek floodplain. Visitors approached the house from Lodges Road by driving up to the ridge’s top along a narrow driveway. The Whiteman family owned a general store in Camden that operated for nearly a century.

The same ridge was the site of Tarn House, a ranch-style house owned by surgeon Dr Gordon Clowes on Irvine Street, off Lodges Road.

 Other Elderslie mid-century homes

The 1960s Elderslie land releases produced some houses that were an expression of mid-century modernism. The house designs were usually taken from a book of project homes of the day, for example, Lend Lease, and were quite progressive. Some of these homes were built by the miners who worked in the Burragorang coalfields.

Houses in Luker Street are characterised by low-pitched rooves, open planned but restrained design, with lots of natural light streaming in full-length glass panels adjacent to natural timbers and stone. There are also ranch-style houses on River Road with open planning and wide frontages to the street, which some architects designed.

Two blocks of flats on Purcell Street use decorative wrought iron railings. Sunset Avenue in Elderslie is a mix of 1960s modern low-pitched roof open-planned houses interspersed with New South Wales Housing Commission fibro construction homes.

The New South Wales Housing Commission built fibro houses in Elderslie, some located on Burrawong Crescent. Architects, including Robin Boyd, were expressing Australian modernism elsewhere in Australia. Housing developers like Lend Lease commissioned these architects to design their housing estates.  One such development was the Lend-Lease Appletree Estate at Glen Waverley in Melbourne. Another Lend Lease land release and show homes were at their 1962 Kingsdene Estate in Carlingford.

Demolition of The Hennings House

The demolition of The Henning House took place in 2011 in preparation for the preschool construction.

Demolition of The Hennings House at 64-66 Macarthur Road, Elderslie in preparation for the construction of a preschool (I Willis, 2011)

I lodged an objection to the demolition of The Henning House in 2010 Camden Council, which approved the DA for the preschool on the site.

The objection to the demolition was the first time there had been any formal recognition of the heritage value of a post-World War Two domestic architecture style in the Camden LGA.

Peter Hennings said he would have been happy for the house to be preserved. (Macarthur Chronicle, 23 March 2010)

Newspaper article with my image and telling the story of The Hennings House (Macarthur Chronicle, 23 March 2010)

References

Peter & Barbara Hennings, 2010, Camden, Interview, February.

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Interwar Camden, the heritage of a country town

camdenhistorynotes5 Comments

The interwar period

The interwar period in Camden was a time of economic development and material progress. The prosperity of the period was driven by the local dairy industry and the emerging coal industry. The town’s population grew by over 35 per cent between the end of the First World War and the beginning of the Second, so that in 1939, the town was the centre of a district that covered 455 square miles (1180 square kilometres) and had a population of over 5,000.

Central Camden c1930s (Camden Images)
Central Camden showing the intersection of Argyle St (Hume Highway) and John St. View west along Argyle St, WH Anderson fountain in the middle of the intersection, c1930s (Camden Images)

Camden was one of the most important commercial and administrative centres between Sydney and Goulburn. The town was the centre of the police district, it had the regional hospital, it was the largest population centre, and it was a transport node of a district that spread from Campbelltown to the lower Blue Mountains.

 

Hume Highway

During the interwar period, one of the most important economic arteries of the town was the Hume Highway (until 1928, the Great South Road). Most understood the value of the rail connection to Camden, most obviously because you heard it, smelt it and saw it. Yet few understand the significance of the Hume. The highway had run up the town’s main street from colonial times until 1973 when it was moved to the Camden Bypass and then subsequently moved in 1980 to the freeway.

The highway and railway were the conduits that brought the international influences of modernism and consumerism to the town and the goods and services that supported them. These forces influenced the development of the local motor industry, the establishment of the local cinemas and the development of the local airfield. All important economic, social and cultural forces for the time.

‘Locals’ travelled to the city for higher-order retail goods, specialist services and entertainment, while the landed gentry escaped to the cosmopolitan centre of the British Empire; London. Conversely, the Sydney elite came to experience the new gentlemanly pastime of flying at the Macquarie Grove Airfield.

Camden Valley Inn, Camden, c.1939 (Camden Images)
Camden Vale Inn & Milk Bar, Camden, c.1939 (Camden Images)

Camden Modernism

For a country town of its size, the town had modern facilities and was up-to-date with the latest technology. The town had two weekly newspapers, Camden News and the Camden Advertiser. There was the opening of the telephone exchange (1910), the installation of reticulated gas (1912), electricity (1929), and the replacement of gas street lighting with electric lights (1932) and a sewerage system (1939), and by 1939 the population has increased to 2394. The town’s prosperity allowed the Presbyterians to build a new church (1938), while a number of ‘locals’ built solid brick cottages that reflected their confidence in the town’s future.

Presbyterian Church, 42 John Street, Camden. (I Willis 2023)

Despite the prosperity of the interwar period, the town was still dominated by the colonial gentry and their estates. Apart from their convict labour in the early years, they established a system of class and social relations that ordered daily life in the town from its foundation until after the Second World War. While the townsmen dominated the early period of local government, by Federation, the landed gentry had usurped their power and had imposed their political mantra of conservatism on the area.

The dominance of Macarthur’s Camden Park over the local economy during the interwar period was characterised by the construction of the Camden Vale milk processing factory (1926) adjacent to the railway. The company developed TB-free milk and marketed it through the Camden Vale Milk Bar, a retail outlet on the Hume Highway (1939), complete with a drive-through.

The interwar years were a period of transition. Increasingly, motor cars replaced horses in town, and on farms, horses were replaced by tractor, all of which supported the growing number of garages in the town. The interwar landscape was characterised by personalised service, along with home and farm deliveries by both horse and cart and motor cars.

The former Bank of NSW, former Westpace building 1938, Argyle St, Camden, the route of the Hume Highway (I Willis, 2023)

Morphology of town centre

The layout and shape of interwar Camden have changed little from the 19th century, and the town centre has a certain bucolic charm and character that is the basis of the community’s identity and sense of place. Strip shopping and mixed land use support the country’s feeling, which has become the basis of the modern ‘country town idyll’.

In recent years, Camden has been targeted by the New South Wales government as one of the growth centres for the Sydney metropolitan area. It has become part of Sydney’s exurbanistion on the rural-urban fringe. City types move out of the city looking for places where ‘the country looks like the country’. This has only served to reinforce the duality of the love/hate relationship the community had with Sydney and the city/country divide that has been part of the rural ideology of the area.

The ‘locals’, for their part, have retreated to nostalgia in the form of an Arcadian view of the world through a ‘country town idyll’. The romance of the idyll is based on the iconic imagery of Camden as a picturesque English village, with the church on the hill, surrounded by rural vistas. The idyll has become a defence mechanism against the onslaught of Sydney’s urbanization and the interwar heritage that is part of the town’s iconic landscape.

Macquarie Grove Airfield 1930s Camden (Camden Images)
Macquarie Grove Airfield 1930s Camden (Camden Images)

Selected Examples of Interwar Architecture in Camden

1. Camden Vale milk processing factory, 11 Argyle Street, Camden. Built in 1926 by the Camden Vale Milk Co, a Camden Park Estate Pty Ltd subsidiary.

2. Camden Vale Inn, Remembrance Drive (Old Hume Highway), Camden (now Camden Valley Inn). Architect: Cyril Ruwald. Builder: Herb English. A milk bar on the Hume Highway was built in 1939 by the Camden Park Estate Pty Ltd to market its Camden Vale milk from TB-tested dairy herds on Camden Park. It was ‘designed in the Tudor style, with walls in attractively coloured brickwork suggesting a touch of modernity’. [ Camden Park Estate Pty Ltd, Camden Vale Special Pasteurised Milk Production and Distribution, Camden, Camden Park Estate Pty Ltd, c.1939.]

Camden Valley Inn, Camden, c.1938 (Camden Images)

3. Cooks Garage, 31-33 Argyle Street, Camden. Built in 1935. Owned by WH Cook. It was built in the Spanish Mission style and was characterised by terracotta roof tiles, front loggia, brickwork rendering, and shaped parapets. Since demolished.

Cooks Garage 1936
Cooks Garage, Argyle St, Camden, the route of the Hume Highway through the town in the 1930s, 1936 (Camden Images)

4. Main Southern Garage, 20-28 Argyle Street, Camden. Built in the mid-1930s.

5. Dunk House, 56-62 Argyle Street, Camden. Built by Harry Willis and Sons, Camden, in 1937, it was a car showroom, shop complex, and professional suites owned by EC Dunk.

6. Clintons Motor Showroom, 16 Argyle Street, Camden. Mark Jensen built the car showroom in 1947 for Clinton Motors, the Holden dealership in Camden. According to the Camden Heritage Inventory, it is a rare masonry Art Deco building with large shopfront windows and a wraparound awning.

Clintons Motors at 16 Argyle Street Camden in 1983. The business was the Holden dealership for the Camden area. The premises opened in 1948. (Camden Images)

7. Stuckey Bros Bakery, 102-104 Argyle Street, Camden. It was built by Harry Willis and Sons in 1939. In 1940, Stuckey Bros, bakers and pastry cooks, occupied the premises and fitted it out. According to the Camden News, it was ‘fitted with every modern device’.

Stuckey Bros Building Bakers Argyle Street Camden c1941 (I Willis 2012)

8. Bank of New South Wales (Westpac), 121-123 Argyle Street, Camden. Built by Harry Willis and Sons in 1936, this two-story building has a residence upstairs and a banking chamber downstairs. According to the Camden Heritage Inventory, it is in the Georgian Revival style.

Camden's Argyle St (Hume Highway) in 1938 with Rural Bank on left looking east (Camden Images)
Camden’s Argyle St (Hume Highway) in 1938 with Bank of New South Wales and Rural Bank on left looking east (Camden Images)

9. Rural Bank, 115-119Argyle Street, Camden. Built by Harry Willis and Sons, Camden in 1937. The two-storey building had a residence upstairs with a banking chamber downstairs. Art Deco style. There is trachyte stonework on the facing of the building.
Churches

10. Presbyterian Church, 42 John Street, Camden. Built in 1938. Architect: George Gray, R.Vale. A brick church, which, according to the Camden Heritage Inventory, has a Gothic Revival (Gothic Interwar) style.

11. Camden Inn (Hotel), 105-107 Argyle Street, Camden. Built by Harry Willis and Sons, Camden in 1933. Tudor style refurbishment. Formerly the Commercial Hotel.

Camden Hotel, 105 Argyle Street, Camden (I Willis, 2023)

12. Front, AH&I Hall, 191-195 Argyle Street, Camden. The brick front of the building was added to the weatherboard hall in 1936. The original hall was constructed in 1899 by George Furner for JW Macarthur Onslow as a drill hall for the Camden Mounted Rifles.

13. Paramount Theatre, 39 Elizabeth Street, Camden. Built-in 1933. It was owned by DJ Kennedy who had interests in other suburban movie cinemas in the Sydney area. It was designed in the Spanish Mission style.

Paramount Movie Theatre, Elizabeth Street, Camden built in 1933. (Camden Images)

14. Cottage, 25 Elizabeth Street, Camden. Built in the 1930s by Mel Peat.

15. Flats, 33 Elizabeth Street, Camden. Built in 1930.

16. Cottages, 1-3 Menangle Road, Camden. According to the Camden Heritage Inventory, they are a group of Californian bungalows built between 1924 and 1925 by Harry Willis and Sons, Camden.

17. Methodist Parsonage, 24 Menangle Road, Camden. Built in 1935.

18. Cottage, 26 Menangle Road, Camden. Built by Mel Peat in 1931 for N Freestone.
Murray Street, Camden.

19. Cottages, 24-28 Murray Street, Camden. Built by Mel Peat in 1937. According to the Camden Heritage Inventory, a group of Californian Bungalows.

20. Extension, Camden Hospital, Menangle Road, Camden. Built by Mel Peat in 1939.

21. Bellman Hangers, Camden Airfield, Macquarie Grove Road, Camden. Built in 1941. The Federal Government acquired the airfield from Edward Macarthur Onslow in 1940 for a central flying school under the Empire Air Training Scheme. The RAAF erected the hangers as temporary accommodation for aircraft. They were designed by NS Bellman in 1936 (UK) as temporary buildings.

Bellman Hangar at Camden Airfield 1941 (I Willis)
Bellman Hangar at Camden Airfield 1941 (I Willis)

References

Archives, Camden Historical Society.
Tropman & Tropman, Camden Heritage Inventory, Camden, Camden Council, 2004.

Updated 3 May 2024. Originally posted on 28 May 2026 as ‘Interwar Camden’.

1920s · 20th century · Adaptive Re-use · Aesthetics · Architecture · Attachment to place · Built heritag · Camden · Camden Cottage · Camden Modern · Camden Modernism · Camden Story · Coal mining · Cultural Heritage · Cultural icon · Design · Elderslie · Heritage · History · History of a house · Holidays · House history · Housing · Housing styles · Interwar · Lifestyle · Living History · Local History · Local Studies · Macarthur · Memory · Mid-century modernism · Modernism · Place making · Placemaking · Sense of place · Storytelling · Streetscapes · Uncategorized · Urban development · Urban growth · Urban history · Urban Planning · Urbanism

The Camden Fibro Cottage: a not-so-humble abode

camdenhistorynotes3 Comments

The Camden Fibro Cottage

The humble fibro cottage of the 1950s and 1960s in Camden is integral to the town’s 20th-century history. The fibro house is representative of the baby-boomer era, when drive-ins, Holdens, Chiko rolls, black & white TV, rock & roll, and vinyl LPs were the norm.

Fibro is evocative of long summer holidays by the beach, with adolescent love, boogie boards, zinc cream and paddle pops.  

Modern fibro cottages in Burrawong Crescent Elderslie were built around the 1960s. (I Willis, 2005)

Fibro was invented in Austria by Ludwig Hatschek in 1900 and, within three years, was imported to Australia. Fibro was made in Australia by 1916, and was only one of a few countries to use it for housing.

Fibro was made and distributed in Australia primarily by Wunderlich and James Hardie. Fibro was cheap and easy to use, and it was modern.

In the 1950s, as the Burragorang coalfields expanded, the town suffered a housing shortage and fibro cottages provided one solution. Several fibro cottages were built by the New South Wales Housing Commission.

These housing types were recognized for features including hot-water systems, running water to the kitchen and bathroom and power-points throughout the house.

Camden’s simple fibro cottages provided affordable accommodation for the working man and his family. Local farms have a host of fibro houses as they were cheap to build, and fibro was a practical building material that sometimes replaced iron cladding.

Many Camden families have nostalgic memories of summer holidays at a fibro beach shack getaway on the South Coast. They were loved for their low maintenance and were easy to repair.

Charles Pickett’s The Fibro Frontier (1997) describes the 1950s fibro home style as austerity modernism. Pickett states that fibro houses combined economy, ease of construction and buyer engagement.

Fibro was a mass-produced manufactured building material that made housing construction cheaper.  Fibro offered the working family the chance to become a homeowner through a cost-effective form of modern domestic architecture.

Camden’s fibro houses had proud owners who kept well-maintained front gardens and mowed the grass with their Victa mowers around the Hills hoist in the backyard.

This image shows the farm cottage at 49 Exeter Street, Camden, located within the Camden Town Farm precinct. These fibro-clad farm cottages were relatively cheap to build in the early 20th century. This fibro-clad farm cottage was restored in 2017. (CTF)

The Powerhouse Museum and Sydney Living Museum have Wunderlich fibro catalogues that provide a valuable record of this style of architecture. Homeowners and builders were offered lots of advice on the advantages of fibro-cladding in magazines like Australian Homemaker, Australian Home Beautiful and Australian House and Garden.

Barry Humphries, the son of a builder, has stated that fibro houses were a bit ‘declasse’ and sometimes they were not ‘nice’ homes, although some in the 1950s described them ‘as modern as tomorrow’.

One characteristic of Camden fibro cottages is the rounded corners and walls, with their streamlined and modern lines, which were first manufactured in 1937.

Fibro was also used in commercial architecture in Camden and several retail and commercial properties in central Camden. Pickett maintains that the peak of fibro’s acceptance was the 1960s, and from there, its popularity declined, and it was replaced by other building materials, for example, brick-veneer construction.

Unfortunately, fibro has poor insulation qualities, and these cottages were cold in winter and hot in summer, and today there are health risks from asbestos.

Fibro-clad houses represent an essential period in Camden’s historical development, and examples are listed in Camden’s local heritage list. Interestingly filmmakers and artists have adopted the fibro house to signify a form of ‘retro-dagginess’ and a re-evaluation of suburbia, according to Pickett. 

Compressed fibre board has been returning as a successful building material in recent years.

Renovating a fibro cottage needs care with the dangerous asbestos fibres. For more information click here

This is an image of Chesham Cottage at 49 Broughton Street, Camden, in 1920, built by the Camden Voluntary Workers Association following the First World War. Fibro-cladding was a relatively cheap housing material compared to brick or timber. (Camden Images)

Facebook comments 4 May 2023

Paquita Bugden  Was a great place to call home.🥰

Russell OwenGrew up no 6 my parents bout one original still there 36 years

Kim Warren – EvansLooks like Burrawong cres…..Grew up at no 13, great memories ❤️

Andrew LundyWe rented a house in this street between 89 and 91. Our place wasn’t fibro though

Rosie RussellSkye SheilSamantha Ferrero I always think of Carol’s house and garden as the ultimate perfect version of these houses

Skye SheilRosie Russell so true! She always so on top of it!

Liz HaleRosie Russell I grew up in Fibro cottage 🤩

Kenny LittleRosie Russell no matter the houseHome is home

Darren Poss JamesLittle st Camden was the miners fibro houses down the south endGreat place to grow up 👍

Wendy StaceI grew up in Narellan also. Fibro homes were everywhere.

Anne WatkinsPlenty of them in Narellan too, I grew up in a fibro house.

Paquita Bugden Unfortunately all to be knocked down soon. New ‘old age’ units going up.

Jean Woods MacnaughtonAlistair, your first home in Lerida was like these but full on PINK!😉

Updated 4 May 2023. Originally posted 29 June 2014.