| Historical notes: | Laurieton 1840-1910: The first two Schools of Arts
Port Macquarie, established as a penal settlement in 1821 and only 30 kilometres away has always played a major role in Laurieton's history. After the departure of the cedar gutters Laurieton town was established with the building of the timber mills on the shores of Camden Haven Inlet, the first Laurie's mill in 1874 and others including Robert and John Longworth's mill in 1898.
The early history of Laurieton is dominated, up until the arrival of the train to Wauchope in 1915, by the timber industry and transport by sea to Sydney. All three Schools of Arts buildings were timber and built on the same site. The first, known as the Mechanics Institute was blown down on 5th May 1898 by the 'Maitland' gale, which claimed a ship of the same name.
By 7th September 1898 the second School of Arts was opened and used until it burnt down on 30th August 1910. These halls were used for dances, church services and meeting and the second hall contained books and a table which were rescued from the fire and used in a temporary reading room and library.1 The second school of arts is shown in photos no 1 and 2.
1 Camden Haven Courier, 2nd July 1954, interview with Richard Bibby.
Current building early years 1911 - 1950's
Federation in 1901 provided the new nation not only with confidence in the future but also a new emphasis towards improvement and recognition of people outside the ruling class. Public buildings such as courthouses were designed in a less autocratic style and Schools of Arts buildings, of which there were many, followed suit.
By 1910 Laurieton had a population of between 700 and 800 people, a school of approximately 160 children, an Anglican church 1899 (still surviving and opposite the School of Arts), a Catholic church 1898, a number of timber mills, a hotel 1900 and a number of stores along Laurie Street.
Less than a month after the previous building burnt down the foundation stone for the current School of Arts building was laid on 20th May 1911 by Mr. Alec Thomson, secretary of the committee as a small compliment in appreciation of his service, and it was opened five months later on 8th September. The architect was Jas H. Bolster, Concord, Sydney.2
This is virtually the building standing today with remarkably little change. Contemporary accounts describe the new building 'as a palatial structure' and one of the finest Schools of Arts north of Newcastle.3 It is described as having a 72 feet x 32 feet hall with glass skylight in the ceiling with provisions for a library reading room, billiard room and several other rooms.
All the hardwood timber framing and Red Mahogany internal lining and weatherboards were provided by Robert Longworth's mill at Laurieton. It is likely that all or most of this timber was donated by Robert Longworth.4 Robert Longworth was President of the Laurieton School of Arts and in 1909 and again in 1920 President of the Hastings Council. According to A. E. Gibson, Robert Longworth was the guiding force behind the project. The guarantors for the bank loan were Robert and John Longworth, Col Arnott, Alex Thompson and A. E. Gibson. The uses of the building were many and varied. A contemporary description by A. E. Gibson includes "There was a main hall and stage with pressed steel proscenium and it is still intact. There was a kitchen with a large stove, and two very large urns (fountains) over an open fire. Each urn must have held 20 gallons. Then there was a huge safe with a gauze door and a fairly large room to prepare the supper for the dancers and diners etc. Then there was a dining room which, from memory, would seat, I would say, 150 people at least, there being three or four full settings for supper. A lot of people would only eat a few sandwiches, passed around the hall There was a library. I used to spend a lot of time then reading local or Australian newspapers, Australian, South American and English magazines, then there was a lending library, quite a lot of books, the billiard room. The ceilings and part of the walls in all rooms were built of red timber, and varnished. It was very impressive on completion". Other memories of A. E. Gibson include, "However there were always people coming and going and commercial travellers with their sample cases, travelling entertainment shows, local concerts and eventually (1918) a travelling picture show which used to show about every six weeks in the Laurieton School of Arts".5 "Original lighting was by candle and hurricane lamp, followed by gas. This was generated on the site with water tanks and carbide. Later an electric plant was purchased for lighting the building." 6 Electricity came to Port Macquarie in 1927.
In 1916 the memorial trees were planted around the School of Arts, this being useful in dating the various photographs. In 1915 the train line was completed to Wauchope, marking a major change of transport method for the region and possibly the growth of Kendall and Wauchope, rather than Laurieton. This slow growth undoubtedly reduced the need for major change in the School of Arts building and allowed its existing rooms to be adapted with little alteration, right up to the present date.
Schools of Arts from the 1920's to the 1950's continued to often be the major entertainment and cultural focus and in Laurieton the School of Arts typically played a major role in the life of the community until the 1960's. Pictures were shown in the hall since 1918 and the travelling picture show was replaced in 1947 with a twice a week program. The projection box was placed on top of the entrance. Cinemascope was introduced in 1957 and in 1959 films ceased when the Laurieton Plaza was opened. In August 1944 Bob Hope, with Jerry Colonna, Pattie Thomas and Frances Longford, spent a couple of days in Laurieton including a concert by Bob Hope in the School of Arts.7 Their Catalina flying boat lost power and crash landed in the Camden Haven Inlet. Bob Hope hasn't been back but Laurieton links have been maintained with the 90 year old plus entertainer. In 1955 Chips Rafferty visited the School of Arts hall to attend a screening of his latest film.8
2 Manning River Times, 27th May 1911.
3 Cape Hawke to Port Macquarie, January 1919.
4 Ray Cooper 2002, from Mary Gibson.
5 A. E. Gibson, oral transcript by Wendy Hagney. A. E. Gibson was born c. 1900 and these memoirs
were made when he was an old man about an era between WWI and WWII.
6 ibid.
7To be advised.
8 Camden Haven Courier, 11th February 1955.
1950's to 2003
Many of the current members of Camden Haven Historical Society have vivid memories of the wide and varied use of the hall, particularly in the 1950's and 1960's. There were balls, juvenile dances for the teenagers, amateur vaudeville shows, tap dancing, Slim Dusty travelling shows, political meetings, bingo and card nights. The use of the hall was such that the flooring had been sanded down to joints and had to be replaced in the 1980's.
The pictures were run by Bruce Longworth on behalf of Peter Hatsatouris of Port Macquarie up until the building of the Plaza Cinema in 1959. In 1954 an ex-serviceman, Alfred Baker, started a hairdressing salon in the service verandah and took over as manager of the billiard room.9 He and his patrons played much billiards, and the hairdresser was also likely to have been a bookie. It is likely the kitchen was modified at this time, including an outside door.10
In 1956 the billiards stopped and the room was leased to the Country Women's Association (CWA) who occupied the room until 1980.
The Laurieton Returned Servicemen's Club was established in the 1950's and by 1960 television had arrived in the town. The society began to change and patronage of the Hall dropped off. In addition, in about 1957 the myriad of small local mills that had previously existed ceased trading, all of them bought out by one mill. In 1965 the exterior of the building was re-painted. The library and reading room continued to be the town's library, run voluntarily, until 1981.11 In the late 1970's the building transferred from the Department of Education to the Department of Sports and Recreation.12
In 1996 the entrance partition with ticket office was removed and put understage. There is a similar intact entrance at the Frederickton School of Arts. Between 1971 and 1980 the main function of the School of Arts building, apart from the CWA and some patronage of the hall, was as a library. Miss Sylvia Longworth was volunteer librarian from 1948 to 1971. In 1975 the library expanded into the reading room, and in 1978 into the supper room and also into the entry hall.
By 1980 there were 31,790 books with a membership of 913. The Hastings Council took over the management of the building in 1981 and, in addition, opened a local office in the old billiard room.13
In 1981 the Hastings Council also took over the library and after this time the librarian was paid. In 1992 the library moved into new premises in Laurieton. Renovation and restoration work carried out in the 1980's included replacing hall doors, replacing of all roofs and gutters, repair of cladding and fascias, repair or replacement of windows.14
9 Jean Baker, December 2002 to Pat Longworth.
10 Camden Haven Courier, 19th February 1965.
11 Valley Advertiser, 17th July 1971.
12 P. Longworth.
13 Newspaper, 18th February c. 1981.
14 Cox Tanner Ltd. Restoration before 1981.
The Origin of Schools of Arts in Australia
Schools of Arts in Australia, which also went by the title of Mechanics' Institutes, formed a part of a wider movement that incorporated most of the English speaking world, and can probably trace its roots, as Candy notes, to some combination of the radical middle class culture of the 1780s and 1790s, the "radical mobilisation of the working class" that occurred in the 1820s and 1830s, and even the Methodist and Quaker adult Sunday Schools that appeared in the 1790s, or earlier. 15
In Australia, the first School of Arts was the Van Diemen's Land Mechanics' Institute, which was founded in Hobart in 1827, followed by the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts in Sydney in 1833. Such was the enthusiasm for these institutions that in 1834 the South Australian Literary and Scientific Association was formed in London, two years before the colony had been officially founded. 16
The movement, however, only really gathered momentum here after the gold rushes of the 1850s, which increased both the populations and wealth of many rural communities, and the movement reached its peak between 1880 and 1910.17 Thus, the Laurieton School of Arts was established after the peak of the activity had subsided, although the two earlier buildings indicate that by 1911 the facility was a well established part of the community, with the Manning River Times lamenting in 1898, after the loss of the first School of Arts building that "The loss is felt all around and there is not now a suitable building for either Church or Sunday School purposes".18
15 Candy, P. (1994) 'The Light of Heaven Itself: The Contribution of the Institutes to Australia's Cultural
History' in P C Candy & J Laurent, Pioneering Culture: Mechanics' Institutes and Schools of Arts in
Australia. Adelaide: Auslib Press, p. 2.
16 ibid. p. 4.
17 Laurent J. (1994) 'Some Aspects of the Role of the Institutes in Technical Education in New South
Wales, 1878 - 1916' in P C Candy & J Laurent, op. cit. P. 183.
18 Manning River Times, 21st May 1898.
The Philosophy Behind Schools of Arts
Schools of Arts were autonomous and subject to the influences of individuals and the local communities in which they were founded. However, they also followed a pattern of basic philosophies, common to most Schools of Arts in Australia. The earliest Schools of Arts were based on noble intellectual principles of education for the working classes, and their Rules consistently made use of terms such as "useful knowledge" and "mental and moral improvement",19 and their functions included the provision of libraries, classes and lectures to members. However, despite their more altruistic intentions, their domination by the middle classes often lead to more emphasis on the styles of education of interest to them (including classes in subjects such as literature, languages, philosophy and social sciences) rather than the more basic and technical education desired by the "mechanics", or working classes, for whom the Schools of Arts were originally intended. 20
As Laurent notes, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which saw the rise of socialism, Schools of Arts also provided both a forum for these ideas, and a variety of Socialist literature to interested parties.21 This political role also reflects their more general and central importance as a meeting place, particularly in rural and regional communities.22
As the Schools of Arts struggled to adapt to the 20th century, however, they progressively became more entertainment-focused in an attempt to maintain public interest, and this is reflected in the introduction and growth in popularity of pastimes such as billiards, in the place of more educational pursuits.23
Laurieton was built during this latter phase, and as a result is very much a product of this change in philosophy, as features such as the dedicated Billiards Room and the provision of Dressing Rooms and a proscenium arch stage reveal. Despite this, however, some attempt at the original philosophy was still evident in the intentions of the founders, with a newspaper report at the time of the laying of the foundation stone for the current building reports, saying "The consensus of expression was that these institutions were not built only for pleasure, but their main purpose was educational".24 The introduction of the motor car and radios, as well as the Great Depression of the early 1930s all contributed to spark the decline of the Schools of Arts,25 although they have survived as buildings.
19 Candy, P. op. cit., p. 7.
20 ibid., p. 11.
21 Laurent, J. (1994) 'The Meeting is Now Closed: The Social Significance of the Institutes in
Retrospect' in P C Candy & J Laurent, op. cit. P. 373-5.
22 Candy, P. op. cit., p 14.
23 ibid., p. 13.
24 Manning River Times, 27th May 1911.
25 Laurent, J. 'The Meeting is Now Closed ' op. cit. P. 386.
Funding
During the peak of their popularity, Schools of Arts often received funding from the applicable Colonial or, after Federation, State government. Buildings for Schools of Arts in NSW were subsidised, with the government matching local funding pound for pound, and between 1883 and 1932 government schemes provided "subsidy for library purposes in proportion to the amount of monetary support provided by public subscription".26 By 1928, 434 institutions were receiving government funding or subsidies.27
Interestingly, Laurieton does not appear to have received anything near this level of funding and a newspaper report based on original documentary evidence suggests that the Government subsidy for the building was, far from pound for pound, a mere 7 pounds 13s. 10d. towards a building costing 1139 pounds, 19s. 4d. The remaining costs appear to have been financed by a bank loan, for which several leading community figures went guarantor (564 pounds, 4s. 1d.), and community contributions and fundraising. The same source also notes a government subsidy amounting to 10 pound 15s. per annum.28
Although no documentary evidence has been found to either support or refute this claim, several oral accounts have also testified that much of the timber was provided free of charge by local timber millers, once again emphasizing the importance to the community of this building and institution to the local Laurieton community.
26 Raath, T. (1994) 'Foundation and Fortunes of the Mechanics' Institutes and Schools of Arts in New
South Wales' in P C Candy & J Laurent, op. cit., p 232-3.
27 Riley, J. (1994) 'The Movement's Contribution to the Visual Arts: Three New South Wales Case
Studies' in P C Candy & J Laurent, op. cit., p 211.
28 Camden Haven Courier, 4th March 1955, drawing information from information recently discovered:
"the original plans of the Laurieton School of Arts, accounts and a members book dating back to
1907". All of these documents appear to have been lost of destroyed in the intervening half century.
North coast of NSW
Within 80 kilometres of the Laurieton School of Arts there are at least seven other surviving timber Schools of Arts built between Federation and World War 1. For details of these, see following table. The South Grafton School of Art has pressed metal proscenium and rooms probably originally used as a Library. All these halls have stages, all are in good condition, and the halls' stages and entrances are intact. Whilst they all have similarly designed halls and dressing rooms, the Laurieton building stands out for its size, large number of rooms, its relatively sophisticated design and use of timber, and its integrity.
Of the other known (by the author) Schools of Arts buildings in northern NSW, Deepwater, Tenterfield and Inverell, which are all brick construction, the Laurieton School of Arts building is probably the most complete example of a building all under one roof accommodating hall, supper room, billiard room, library and reading room.
Up until the 1940's the communities they served were isolated from each other by poor roads and little transport of populations. Each School of Arts served only that immediate town and hinterland. |