11 Mark Street

How can we get better at protecting, maintaining and adapting our heritage items?  There are lessons to be learned from what happened to the Schedule 5 heritage listed cottage at 11 Mark Street.

This small timber workman’s cottage became very dilapidated over many years, despite alerts from Council’s Conservation Advisory Panel (CAP) and the Hunters Hill Trust. The owners initially discussed demolition and creating car parking spaces but eventually proposed to demolish the cottage and reconstruct the front portion of it with a new building behind.

1 Ryde Road

The Council of the time ignored CAP’s detailed advice. CAP recommended that the hipped rear section of the building should not be demolished as it could be anticipated that the two storey rear addition would dominate the little house at the front. Sadly, this has proved to be true. The detail of the rebuilding of the front part of the house and the colour scheme have paid little heed to the original details of the fabric of the cottage.  Read the sad case of heritage listed cottage at 11 Mark Street here.

What does this mean today as we stand by and watch the two historic timber cottages steadily deteriorating on Ryde Road?