‘Making Camden History: local history and untold stories in a small community’. ISAA Review, Journal of the Independent Scholars Association of Australia. Special Edition, Historiography. Volume 19, Number 1, 2023, pp. 23-38.
The history of telling the story of a small community has been interpreted in different ways at different times in the past by different historians.
This area of study is called the historiography.
This is an aerial image of the country town of Camden in the 1940s with St John’s Church on the ridge overlooking the town and the Nepean River floodplain. The Macarthur family-funded church is the community’s soul and was constructed shortly after the private town was established by the Macarthur family at the river crossing into Camden Park Estate. (Camden Images)
I have recently published an article on the historiography of the small country town of Camden, NSW.
The Camden township is located 65 kilometres southwest of the Sydney CBD and, in recent years, has been absorbed by Sydney’s urban growth.
The main streets are a mix of Victorian, Edwardian and interwar architecture comprising commercial, government and domestic buildings.
The town site was originally the entry point into what became Governor King’s Cowpasture Reserve at the Nepean River crossing, part of the lands of the Dharawal people, which then called Benkennie.
Jill Wheeler argues that while local histories are embedded in a long storytelling tradition, new understandings inform our interpretation in a contemporary context.
The historiography of the history of a small country town demonstrates the shifting nature of storytelling and how different actors interpret the past.
This article seeks to examine some of what Wheeler calls ‘the other’ by looking beyond the conventional history of Camden as found in newspapers, journals, monuments, celebrations, commemorations and other places.
I have written an article about the making of the history of Camden NSW to illustrate and explore these issues.
This is the cover of my Pictorial History Camden & District, which tells the Camden story in words and pictures. The book is a brief account of the main events, characters and institutions that were part of the Camden township from its foundation to the present, as well as the Indigenous story in pre-European times and the foundation of the Cowpastures Reserve.
The wonderful Victorian colonial building that was once the Whiteman’s General Store has had a new lease of life through the Burra Charter principle of adaptive reuse. There has been a continuous retail shopping presence on the same site for over 135 years.
While the building has also had new work and restoration, it is an excellent example of how a building can be adaptively re-used for commercial activities without destroying the integrity of the building’s historic character and charm.
The Whiteman General Store in 1923 were a universal provider of all sorts of goods to the town and country folk across the Camden district from Menangle to Burragorang Valley. The store would deliver to your door in town just like parcels purchased online today. (Camden Images)
Adaptive reuse maintains the historic character of the streetscape and the sense of place that is so important to community identity, resilience and sustainability.
Adaptive reuse is not new and has been going on for a long time. In Europe, hundreds of years old buildings continually go through the process of re-use century after century.
The Tower of London – a building with a fantastic history of adaptive re-use
The Tower of London has been re-used over the centuries since the White Tower was constructed by William the Conqueror in 1066 as a fortress and gateway to the city.
Over the centuries, the Tower of London complex has been a royal residence, military storehouse, prison, place of royal execution, parliament, treasury, a menagerie, the home of the Royal Mint, a public record office, storage of crown jewels, royal armoury, regimental headquarters, and most recently a centre of tourism.
The Tower of London has gone through many usage changes across the centuries. (P Pikous, 2006)
Adaptive re-use in Australia
In Australia, the adaptive reuse of historic buildings comes under the Burra Charter, which defines the principles and procedures for conserving Australian heritage places.
The Burra Charter accepts the principles of the ICOMOSVenice Charter (1964) and was adopted in 1979 at a meeting of ICOMOS in 1979 at the historic town of Burra, South Australia.
The Burra Charter has been adopted by heritage authorities across Australia – Heritage Council of NSW (2004).
Adaptive re-use is covered by Article 21 of the Burra Charter and states:
Article 21. Adaptation 21.1 Adaptation is acceptable only where the adaptation has minimal impact on the cultural significance of the place. 21.2 Adaptation should involve minimal change to significant fabric, achieved only after considering alternatives.
The explanatory notes say:
Adaptation may involve additions to the place, the introduction of new services, or a  new use, or changes to safeguard the place.  Adaptation of a place for a new use is often referred to as ‘adaptive re-use’ and should be  consistent with Article 7.2.
In Irish planning, a conservation ensemble is known as an Architectural Conservation Area (ACA). ACA status provides statutory protection to existing building stock and urban features, and applies strict design and materials standards to new developments. Protections prohibit works with negative impacts on the character of buildings, monuments, urban design features, open spaces and views.
The objectives of ensemble-scale heritage conservation can be highly political – sense of place, ownership of space and local politics come together in this process.
Reasons for adaptive re-use for historic buildings
Seasoned building materials are not even available in today’s world. Close-grained, first-growth lumber is naturally more robust and rich-looking than today’s timbers. Does vinyl siding have the sustainability of old brick?
The process of adaptive reuse is inherently green. The construction materials are already produced and transported onto the site.
Architecture is history. Architecture is memory.
[Craven, Jackie. “Adaptive Reuse – How to Give Old Buildings New Life.” ThoughtCo, May. 22, 2018, thoughtco.com/adaptive-reuse-repurposing-old-buildings-178242]
Whiteman commercial building
The Whiteman family conducted a general store in Argyle Street on the same site for over 100 years.
Camden Whiteman’s General Store, 86-100 Argyle Street, Camden c1900s. The customer would go to the wide-wooden shop counter with their list of requisites and receive personal service from a male shop assistant who would fill their order. (Camden Images)
In 1878 CT (Charles Thomas) Whiteman, who operated a family business in Sydney, brought produce to Camden. He purchased a single-storey home at the corner of Argyle and Oxley Street and ran his store from the site. (SHI) In 1878 a fire destroyed the business.
CT Whiteman was a storekeeper in Goulburn and Newtown and later married local Camden girl Anne Bensley in 1872. Whiteman was a staunch Methodist and was an important public figure in Camden and served as the town’s first mayor from 1892 to 1894.
CT Whiteman moved to premises in Argyle Street in 1889, occupied by ironmonger J Burret. Â Whiteman modified the building for a shopfront conversion. Â Â (SHI)Â Â The store was later leased to the Woodhill family from 1903 to 1906.
The Whiteman’s commercial building was leased by the Woodhill family as a general store for many years after Federation. A coach service like the one in the image plied a daily service between Camden and Yerranderie, leaving at the corner of Argyle and John Street run by the Butler family. (Camden Images)
From 1889 to 1940, the building was known as the Cumberland Stores. The store supplied groceries, drapery, men’s wear, boots and shoes, farm machinery, hardware, produce and stationery. (Gibson, 1940)
The original Argyle Street building was an early timber verandahed Victorian period store.
The building was a two-storey rendered masonry building with a hipped tile roof, projecting brick chimneys. The second storey had painted timber framed windows shaded by a steeply pitched tile roof awning supported on painted timber brackets. (SHI)
A two-storey addition was constructed in 1936, and the verandah posts were removed in 1939 when this policy was implemented by Camden Municipal Council.
Later shopfront modifications to the adjacent mid-20th century façade street-frontage included wide aluminium framed glazing and an awning to the ground level of the building. (SHI)
The Whiteman’s General Store sold various goods and became one of the longest-running retail businesses in Camden.
By 1978 Whiteman’s General Store had undergone several extensions and provided a range of goods from men’s and boys’ wear to haberdashery. Produce, hay and grain for local farmers could be obtained at the rear of the store from the Hill Street entrance. The mid-20th-century building extension is to the left of the image. Upstairs were several flats that were leased out to local folk. (Camden Images)
The Whiteman’s Store was trading as Argyle Living when it closed in 2006 under the control of Fred Whiteman. On the store’s closure, the Whiteman family had operated on the same site in Camden for 123 years.
On the closure of Argyle Living, the store sold homewares, clothing, furniture and a range of knickknacks and was the largest retail outlet in Camden with 1200 square metres of space.
Current usage of the Whiteman’s commercial building
After 2007 the building was converted, through adaptive reuse, to an arcade with several retail outlets and professional rooms on the ground floor, with a restaurant and other businesses upstairs.
Image Going Upstairs (at Freds) to the restored rooms, once small flats and accommodation above the men’s wear downstairs. The first restaurant was developed by David Constantine, called Impassion, in 2005. David said, ‘I like to think we are just caretakers for a while. I’ll treat it well and ensure it’s here for someone else’s lifetime’. (I Willis, 2018/Camden History, September 2007)
The old flats Upstairs [at Freds] in the Whiteman’s building have been converted into a restaurant and performance space. This conversion was initially completed in 2005 by restauranter David Constantine of Impassion. Here Lisa DeAngeles is entertaining a small and enthusiastic crowd in the room in the restaurant Upstairs at Freds. The front verandah is out through the doors to the left of the room. (I Willis, 2018)
The building has largely retained its integrity and historic character and delight in the town’s business centre.
The Whiteman commercial building adds to the mid-20th century streetscape that still broadly characterises the Camden town centre and attracts hordes of day-trippers.
A quiet function room with a historic flavour in the restored area Upstairs at Freds. The scenes on the left show the Australia Light Horse Infantry on a forced from the Menangle ALH Camp in 1916, marching down Argyle Street Camden past Whiteman’s General Store. The image on the right in the Whiteman’s General Store in 1923. (I Willis, 2018)
The Camden Whiteman’s building is shown here from the street frontage in Argyle Street. The building has undergone adaptive reuse following the Burra Charter (ICOMOS) and continues to be a busy retail outlet as it has done since the Victorian days. This means that there has been a retail outlet continuously occupying this site for over 135 years. The current building usage continues to contribute to the Camden town centre’s delight and charm, attracting thousands of tourists every year. (I Willis, 2018)
The Anglican Church at Cobbitty recently held an open day for the community to celebrate 190 years of the Anglican community in the village. Those who attended could listen to local experts give talks on the history of the Anglican church in Cobbitty, the stained glass windows in St Pauls, and its fixtures, furnishings and artefacts.
The Anglican Church has been the heart and soul of the village since the Hassalls established themselves in the Cowpastures district in the early days of the colony of New South Wales. The church has been central in place-making and developing community identity in the village.
The church’s presence is why the village exists and is closely reminiscent of a pre-industrial English-style rural village. The village even had its own blacksmith, an essential traditional trade in all rural villages. Working over their hearth with hammers and anvils, making and crafting the farmers’ tools to make decorative work for the church graveyard.
The Hassalls were the de-facto lords of the manor. The development of the village was their fiefdom. Long-term local identity and font of knowledge of all things Cobbitty John Burge recalled in his talk on the ‘History of the Cobbitty Anglican Church’ that the Hassall family owned pretty much all of the farms up and down the Nepean River in the vicinity of Cobbitty.
The Reverend Thomas Hassall, the son of missionaries Rowland and Elizabeth Hassall, who arrived in New South Wales in 1798, was appointed the minister of the Cowpastures district in 1827.
Thomas Hassall built The first chapel in the area, called Heber Chapel, and opened in 1827, with Thomas as rector. It was named after the Bishop Heber of the Calcutta Diocese, where Cobbitty was at the time.
This image is of Thomas Hassall’s 1827 Heber Chapel Cobbitty, taken by John Kooyman in 1997, who was commissioned by Camden Library to document important heritage sites across the Camden District (CIPP)
As its first school and church, Heber Chapel became the centre of village life. The chapel was used as a school building during the week and for religious purposes on weekends. Schooling at the chapel continued until 1920.
The Heber Chapel was constructed of hand-made bricks with a shingle roof. Its simple design perhaps reflected the rustic frontier nature of Cobbitty of the 1820s when Pomari Grove, the site of the church and chapel, was owned by Thomas Hassall.
Recent renovations and restoration were carried out in 1993.
There was the opening of St Paul’s Church in 1840, with consecration by Bishop William Broughton. The community supported the construction of a Rectory in 1870 and a church hall in 1886.
This Charles Kerry image of St Paul’s Anglican Church at Cobbitty is labelled ‘English Church Cobbitty’. The image is likely to be from around the 1890s and re-enforces the notion of Cobbitty as an English-style pre-industrial village in the Cowpastures (PHM)
St Paul’s Anglican Church was consecrated in 1842, designed by Sydney architect John Bibb in a neo-Gothic style with simple lancet-shaped windows, typical of the design. These windows originally had plain glass and, over the decades, were changed for stained-glass
The church was built with plain glass windows. Stained glass became popular again in the mid-19th century as part of the Gothic revival movement in England and New South Wales. Stained glass was originally installed in medieval churches and cathedrals and then fell out of popularity. (Dictionary of Sydney)
There are 10 memorial windows in St Pauls, the oldest dated 1857 and made by English glass artist William Warrington. It was donated by the Perry family in memory of their daughter Carolyn. There is one original window dating from 1842 with small glass panes in the period’s style.
Well-to-do members of the church community preferred to donate a window as a memorial rather than a wall plaque or other church object to commemorate their loved ones.
This image of one of the memorial stained glass windows in St Paul’s Anglican Church Cobbitty was taken by J Lummis of Cobbitty and donated to the Dictionary of Sydney in 2011 (DoS)
The current presentation of the church is different from the 1840 St Pauls. Today’s church represents the many changes that have occurred over the years.  The changes in the building reflect changes in style, technology, tastes and support, as well as periods of neglect.
A presentation by John Burge on ‘The History of the Cobbitty Anglican Church’ illustrated the many lives of the church, from periods of solid support by the local community to relative neglect. During the 1980s, the graveyard became overgrown, and graves were hidden under bushes.  John’s images showed numbers of past symbolic trees, mainly cypress, that were planted and grew into large trees. Sometimes these were planted too close to the church building endangering its safety and stability.  They were removed.
When you look at the church, you see a slate roof and automatically assume this was original. It is not. The slate roof is a recent addition in 2014 and was installed as part of the church restoration when work was done on roof trusses, barge boards, and guttering. The church initially had a shingle roof with a plastered interior vaulted ceiling. Now it has a slate roof with a maple timber-lined interior ceiling. The walls are quarried sandstone from Denbigh.
Electricity was installed in 1938 after originally being lit by candles and then kerosene lamps.
The pews and pulpit are unchanged and are Australian red cedar timberwork.
Music is provided by an 1876 Davidson organ from Sydney after the music was initially provided by violin, then harmonium.
The Anglican story of Cobbitty continues to evolve around the Heber Chapel, St Pauls, the Rectory and the church hall. The village continues to grow, as does the life of the church community, with a host of activities under the current church leadership.
Updated on 6 June 2023. Originally posted on 8 October 2017 as ‘A little bit of England celebrates 190 years at Cobbitty’
![Camden Whitemans General Store 86-100 Argyle St. 1900s. CIPP[1]](https://camdenhistorynotes.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/camden-whitemans-general-store-86-100-argyle-st-1900s-cipp1.jpg)
![Camden Whitemans Store 1978[1] CIPP](https://camdenhistorynotes.files.wordpress.com/2018/10/camden-whitemans-store-19781-cipp.jpg)
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