The Lands Board Office is a heritage-listed former government office at 108 Faulkner Street,

Armidale Armidale is a city in the Northern Tablelands, New South Wales, Australia. Armidale had a population of 23,967 as of the 2021 census. Estimated resident population, 30 June 2018. It is the administrative centre for the Northern Tablelands reg ...

Armidale Regional Council The Armidale Region is a local government area in the New England and Northern Tablelands regions of New South Wales, Australia. This area was formed in 2016 from the merger of the Armidale Dumaresq Shire with the surrounding Guyra Shire. T ...

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

, Australia. It was designed by

James Barnet James Johnstone Barnet, (1827 in Almericlose, Arbroath, Scotland – 16 December 1904 in Forest Lodge, Sydney, New South Wales) was the Colonial Architect for Colonial New South Wales, serving from 1862 to 1890. Early life Barnet was born ...

and built in 1887. The property is owned by the Department of Planning and Infrastructure (State Government). It was added to the

New South Wales State Heritage Register The New South Wales State Heritage Register, also known as NSW State Heritage Register, is a heritage list of places in the state of New South Wales, Australia, that are protected by New South Wales legislation, generally covered by the Heritag ...

on 2 April 1999.

History

The Armidale Lands Office was built in 1887 to a design from the Office of Colonial Architect, James Barnet. The establishment of the Lands Office for

New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...

district after the new Lands Act of 1884 was controversial. On the recommendation of Lands Minister,

James Farnell James Squire Farnell (25 June 1825 – 21 August 1888) was an Australian politician and Premier of New South Wales. Farnell was a hard-working legislator who gave much study to the land question and also tried hard for some years to pass a bill ...

, a new Lands Office was set up in Glen Innes in January 1885. As a great proportion of the cases that the Land Board was handling were from the Armidale and Walcha districts, far from Glen Innes, petitions were presented and public meetings called to relocate the Land Office. Following a review in 1886, it was announced that the Lands Office would open in Armidale on 1 February 1887. (DLWC S170 Register)

Description

The building is an impressive two storey Victorian public building built of face brickwork laid in

English bond Brickwork is masonry produced by a bricklayer, using bricks and mortar. Typically, rows of bricks called '' courses'' are laid on top of one another to build up a structure such as a brick wall. Bricks may be differentiated from blocks by s ...

. It is surrounded by an elaborate and elegant

veranda A veranda (also spelled verandah in Australian and New Zealand English) is a roofed, open-air hallway or porch, attached to the outside of a building. A veranda is often partly enclosed by a railing and frequently extends across the front an ...

h with corrugated steel roofing to

balcony A balcony (from , "scaffold") is a platform projecting from the wall of a building, supported by columns or console brackets, and enclosed with a balustrade, usually above the ground floor. They are commonly found on multi-level houses, apartme ...

over. The balustrading and

columns A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member ...

are of cast iron with curved timber roof forms and trussed balcony beams. Six tall

chimneys A chimney is an architectural ventilation structure made of masonry, clay or metal that isolates hot toxic exhaust gases or smoke produced by a boiler, stove, furnace, incinerator, or fireplace from human living areas. Chimneys are typically ...

dominate the simple

corrugated iron Corrugated galvanised iron (CGI) or steel, colloquially corrugated iron (near universal), wriggly tin (taken from UK military slang), pailing (in Caribbean English), corrugated sheet metal (in North America), zinc (in Cyprus and Nigeria) or ...

(originally slate) roof form with ridge roof vents. (DLWC S170 Register)

Modifications and dates

The building was renovated in 1974-5. The slate roof was replaced with corrugated steel in 1975. (DLWC S170 Register)

Heritage listing

The building is a superbly crafted and designed Victorian public building. It is surrounded by others of the same period of town growth such as the Armidale Folk Museum, the Imperial Hotel and the Post Office, forming part of the Armidale Conservation Area. (DLWC S170 Register) The Lands Board Office was listed on the

on 2 April 1999.

References

Bibliography

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Attribution

{{NSW-SHR-CC, name=Lands Board Office, dno=5045068, id=00963, year=2018, accessdate=28 May 2018 New South Wales State Heritage Register Armidale Government buildings in New South Wales Articles incorporating text from the New South Wales State Heritage Register