Relics under The Parbury

Below the footpath around The Parbury apartment building at Windmill and Pottinger Streets, pedestrians often notice several mysterious windows.

Two display fragments of blue-and-white china teacups, plates and glass bottles which were used by mid-19th century occupants of a stone cottage that was built on this site, probably during the 1820s. Another window shows a dark view into the circa 2000 archaeological excavation of the ruined cottage and its additions.

The original cottage was built of sandstone blocks, hewn by convicts from the local quarry around lower Kent Street. These were mortared with red soil and lime made from the ashes of burnt shells of local oysters and cockles.

When the cottage was built, the local shoreline was close to the northern side of Windmill Street, which then was a dirt track that led west from the artillery area at Dawes Point (Tar ra Park) towards the quarry, windmill and wharves at the eastern head of Cockle Bay (today’s Walsh Bay and Barangaroo Park).

Also excavated was a stone kitchen with a large fireplace, that was built after the cottage. High on one wall was a series of holes that might have held hardwood beams supporting an upstairs room. Nearby, a horse trough was carved from the sandstone base of Observatory Hill.

Beside the original one-room dwelling, archaeologists also found remnants of a verandah and a water well. These were filled in with rubble dating from the 1830s to the 1860s.

Old maps suggest that this dockworker’s dwelling was probably demolished in the late 1860s or early 1870s, when new wharves and bond stores were developed by local import and export merchants, including Charles Parbury and his son Frederick. Millers Point street plans drawn by City of Sydney surveyor Percy Dove c. 1880 showed this corner of Windmill Street as a vacant site.

— Visits to the Parbury dig site can be arranged with Manage Meant, 18 Hickson Road, Walsh Bay, phone +612 9247 7878.