An Antipodean Attica

ABSTRACT

The Lady Franklin Museum at Ancanthe, near Hobart, is a pivotal building. It represents a conscious attempt by Jane Franklin to evoke Attica in Australia, an important essay in the Greek Revival by James Blackburn, and a key element in Hardy Wilson’s interpretation of classicism in Australia. In its conception and its realisation it was enmeshed with two other projects—the unrealised scheme for St John’s College, New Norfolk, and the realised but mauled portico on the Government Offices in Hobart. All three were involved in the conflict between Blackburn’s Greek Revival and the collegiate Gothic espoused by the incoming Colonial Architect W. P. Kay. Historically the Museum, which was first conceived as a “glyptothek” and then as a natural history museum, is a core element in the development of the Tasmanian Society of Natural History and its successor the Royal Society of Tasmania.

KEYWORDS:

• Ancanthe
• Greek Revival
• Jane Franklin
• James Blackburn

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. These exceptions would make an interesting study in their own right, and the most relevant in this context are those where settlers sought to evoke the conditions of British colonial India. “Australind” in Western Australia was designed to appeal to Calcutta investors. Individual houses like “Denbigh” and “Horsley” in New South Wales were built in bungalow form. In Van Diemen’s Land the same can be said of the Commandant’s house at Port Arthur, built for Captain C. O. H. Booth, who had once served in Madras. A text which has yet to receive appropriate scholarly attention is T.J. Maslen’s The Friend of Australia (Hurst, Chance and Co, London 1830), which argues the applicability of colonial Indian planning and architecture to the Australian colonies, and even suggests the importation of elephants and camels.

2. Courier (Hobart), 18 March 1842, 3.

3. Jane Franklin to Mary Simpkinson, 7 September 1840, in George Mackaness, ed., Some private correspondence of Sir John and Lady Franklin (2 vols Sydney: D. S. Ford 1947), I, 102. Mackaness mistranscribes Weales as “Meales” and Loudon as “London,” the reference being to J. C. Loudon, An Encyclopædia of Cottage Farm and Villa Architecture (London: Longmans, 1833).

4. Jane Franklin to Captain J. C. Ross 20 July 1841, MS.248/174/4, Scott Polar Research Institute.

5. Extracts from the Van Diemen’s Land Company records, Tasmanian State Archives, “Circular Head Memorandum for Dr Hutchinson on taking charge,” 11 April 1833, p 95.

6. The Blackburn library is somewhat speculative. A substantial number of books were put up for sale upon the death of James Blackburn junior in 1889, and the presumption is that most of those with early publication dates were his father’s, See Catalogue of the Library formed by the late James Blackburn, C.E., for private sale (Fitzroy [Victoria]: Robert Barr, 1889).

7. F. J. Woodward, Portrait of Jane: a life of Lady Franklin (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1951), 222.

8. Jane Franklin to Mary Simpkinson, 18 July 1841, in Mackaness, Correspondence of Sir John and Lady Franklin, 1, 102.

9. Courier (Hobart) 6 May 1842, 2.

10. Jane Franklin to Mary Simpkinson.10 September 1842, MS.248/174/15, Scott Polar Research Institute.

11. W. P. Kay to Sir John Franklin, 3 October 1843 [?1842?]: Australian Joint Copying Project reel M378.

12. Jane Franklin to Mary Simpkinson.10 September 1842.

13. Jane Franklin to Mary Simpkinson.10 September 1842.

14. Courier (Hobart), 28 January 1842, 3; 4 March 1842, 3.

15. Courier (Hobart), 18 March 1842, 3.

16. Courier (Hobart), 18 March 1842, 2.

17. Hobart Town Advertiser, 15 March 1842, 2.

18. James Broadbent, “James Blackburn,” in Howard Tanner [ed], Architects of Australia (South Melbourne: Macmillan Australia, 1983), 33.

19. Broadbent, “James Blackburn,” 32–3.

20. Courier (Hobart), 18 March 1842, 3.

21. F. J. Woodward, Portrait of Jane: a Life of Lady Franklin (Hodder & Stoughton, London 1951), 222.

22. Woodward, Portrait of Jane, 222.

23. Peter Bolger, Hobart Town (Canberra: ANU Press, 1973), 27–8.

24. Jane Franklin to Mary Simpkinson 3 January 1839, in Mackaness, Some Private Correspondence, I, 54.

25. TAHO attributes to this a date of ca 1850, but it is probably somewhat later, and was shown in the Art Treasures Exhibition, Hobart, in 1858. Mercury (Hobart), 22 June 1858, 2.

26. Woodward, Portrait of Jane, 222.

27. Van Diemen’s Land Correspondents (Queen Victoria Museum, Launceston 1961), xv.

28. Gardeners’ Chronicle (London), 12 June 1841, 382. The contribution is unsigned but Jane’s correspondence identifies Gunn as the author.

29. Franklin to Gunn, 21 December 1841, MS.489/2/12, Scott Polar Research Institute.

30. Jane Franklin, MS.489/2/11.

31. Woodward, Portrait of Jane, 226.

32. Franklin to Gunn, 21 December 1841, MS.489/2/12, Scott Polar Research Institute.

33. Cornwall Chronicle, 28 February 1846, 168.

34. Eleanor Franklin diary, 26 October 1842, cited by Woodward to AJCP copying project microfilm M379, though this date appears to be incorrect.

35. Jane Franklin to James Ross, 3 April 1842, courtesy of Dr Alison Alexander.

36. Franklin to Gunn, 21 December 1841, MS.489/2/12.

37. W. F. Rawnsley, The Life, Diaries and Correspondence of Lady Jane Franklin 1792–1875 (London: Erskine Macdonald, 1923), 92.

38. J. S. Prout, “‘Ancanthe,’ Lady Franklin’s Museum, near Hobarton, Van Diemen’s Land,” 1844. Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, AG1866.

39. Jane Franklin Diary 27 May 1843, courtesy Dr Alison Alexander.

40. W. H. Hudspeth, Souvenir, Lady Franklin Museum, Hobart (Hobart: Art Society of Tasmania 1949), 6.

41. Hudspeth, Lady Franklin Museum, 6.

42. Franklin to Gunn, 21 December 1841, MS.489/2/12.

43. Jane Franklin to James Ross, 3 April 1842, courtesy of Dr Alexander.

44. Jane Franklin to James Ross, 3 April 1842, courtesy of Dr Alexander.

45. So I am told by June Francis, who has been researching Blackburn.

46. Dr Alison Alexander, by email 7 February 2012.

47. Mercury (Hobart), 2 October 1967.

48. Jane Franklin diary, 9 February 1843, courtesy of Dr Alexander.

49. Jane Franklin, “Leaves from Jane Franklin’s Tasmanian journal,” MS 248/158 BJ Journal, Scott Polar Research Institute.

50. Miles Lewis, “James Blackburn,” in Philip Goad & Julie Willis, eds, The Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture (Melbourne: Cambridge UP, 2012), 86–7.

51. Hudspeth, Lady Franklin Museum, 8.

52. Woodward, Portrait of Jane, 226.

53. Charles Barrett, Heritage of Stone (Melbourne: Arura Writers, no date [c 1943]), 24. The catalogue of the State Library of Victoria (the relevant legal deposit institution) gives an imputed date of publication of 1945, but I have a copy inscribed by R. T. Williams in 1943.

54. Jane Franklin to James Ross, 3 April 1842, courtesy of Dr Alexander.

55. Jane Franklin to Mary Simpkinson,10 September 1842, MS.248/174/15.

56. Mercury (Hobart), 20 February 1935, 7 citing documentation obtained from the Royal Society’s files.

57. Mercury (Hobart), 20 February 1935, 5.

58. There is no reason to doubt that this is substantially accurate, though it has been copied by Dr Dianne Snowden not from the original but from a transcript in Wilfred Hudspeth’s notes, TAHO, AOT, NS690/72 Wilfred Hudspeth Notes on the Lady Franklin Museum.

59. So it is suggested in the Mercury (Hobart), 20 February 1935, 7 citing documentation obtained from the Royal Society’s files.

60. Hudspeth, Lady Franklin Museum, 10. The original of this letter is held in the University of Tasmania Library Special and Rare Materials Collection.

61. Mercury (Hobart), 20 February 1935, 7. See also Woodward, Portrait of Jane, 222.

62. Mercury (Hobart), 20 February 1935, 7.

63. Hudspeth, Lady Franklin Museum, 10.

64. The text in the six languages is now held in “‘Ancanthe,’ Miscellaneous papers relating to ‘Ancanthe,’ Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land”. University of Tasmania Library Special and Rare Materials Collection, The English is reproduced in Hudspeth, Lady Franklin Museum, 8. A strangely different and/or inaccurate English version is reproduced as “Supplement to a letter” in Mackaness, Correspondence of Sir John and Lady Franklin, 2, 47.

65. Jane Franklin, leaves from Jane Franklin’s Tasmanian journal MS 248/158 BJ Journal, Scott Polar Research Institute.

66. Launceston Examiner, 21 October 1843, 4.

67. Hudspeth, Lady Franklin Museum, 10.

68. Woodward, Portrait of Jane, 222.

69. Courier (Hobart), 3 February 1853, 2.

70. W. Bryden, Centenary of the Opening of the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery Building, 2, cited in E G Robertson, Early Buildings of Southern Tasmania (2 vols, Middle Park [Victoria], Georgian House, 1970), 1, 132.

71. Woodward, Portrait of Jane, 222.

72. Hudspeth, Lady Franklin Museum, 11.

73. Mercury (Hobart), 25 April 1884, 1.

74. Mercury (Hobart), 24 June 1910, 1.

75. Annotation by R. T. Williams on my copy of Barrett, Heritage of Stone, 24.

76. W. H. Wilson, Old Colonial Architecture in New South Wales and Tasmania (Sydney: author, 1924), 8. Wilson spent years on this work and completed it in 1923, so he could have found the apples either before after its use for fodder in 1921–2. Hudspeth, Lady Franklin Museum, 11 referred to this dubiously, saying that the building “was said to have been” used as an apple shed, or as a storehouse for potatoes and other produce.

77. Wilson, Old Colonial Architecture, 9–10.

78. Barrett, Heritage of Stone, 24–5.

79. Clifford Craig et al., Priceless Heritage: Historic Buildings of Tasmania (Hobart: Platypus Publications, 1964).

80. Robertson, Early Buildings of Southern Tasmania, 2, 406–7.

81. Mercury (Hobart), 20 February 1935, 7.

82. “Day by Day. Cherished ‘Ancanthe’ Lady Franklin’s foresight,” Mercury (Hobart), 10 May 1935, 8.

83. Barrett, Heritage of Stone, 24.

84. Mercury (Hobart), 20 February 1935, 7.

85. Hudspeth, Lady Franklin Museum, 11–12.

86. Mercury (Hobart), 20 February 1935, 7.

87. Mercury (Hobart), 20 February 1935, 7.

88. Report of Hobart City Council Reserves Committee, TAHO MCC 16–2/1/364 vol 2, as reported by Dianne Snowden.

89. Mercury, 7 August 1939, 5.

90. Brendon Bowes, “Greek Temple in the Bush,” Sunday Tasmanian, 18 May 1997, 60.

91. Brendan Lennard, “Development Appraisal, Heritage Assessment, 270 Lenah Valley Road, &c,” Hobart City Council, 7 November 2011, unpaginated.