Takam Yum π€€ Filipino Food Forward #shorts
Published 2024-06-15
Capture the feeling of this old building and visualise the many hundreds of people brought before its bench.
Visiting the courthouse
Hoteliers petitioning for licenses; litigants seeking mediation for disputes; escaped convicts and notorious bushrangers, cattle stealers, sly grog sellers, thieves, and murderers brought to justice, many to end their days in the forbidding walls of the prison next door are just some of the stories that highlight the Courthouse.
As you take the tour through the magnificent building you will see an audio visual βThe Berrima Storyβ which chronicles the village from the 1830s to the present day. Followed by a sound and light show in the Court room of one of the most notorious cases put on trial.
A brief history
In the non-aboriginal population of New South Wales during the 1830βs, there remained a large number of convicts and a community which often viewed the police and legal system with some suspicion.
As the colony began to emerge from its convict origins, proper court houses were needed as places where the administration of justice could be put into effect. They were the symbols, even in the Australian bush, of the central place that law and justice has in our social system.
Australiaβs second Colonial Architect, Mortimer Lewis, designed Berrima Courthouse in the Greek Revival style giving the building its formal and imposing presence. Although the foundation stone was laid in 1835, problems with a succession of builders delayed completion until 1839. Ultimately the courthouse was only a Court of Assizes presided over by a Supreme Court judge from 1839 to 1846 although it was used intermittently for court sittings until 1884.
An important part of the town, the courthouse was also the centre of public administration where licenses were issued to publicans and hawkers and where convicts were assigned as farm workers. It was a venue for meetings, dances, concerts and church services.
Around the turn of the century the library for the School of Arts was kept in the courthouse and during the First World War, German officers who had been made prisoners of war were housed in the building.
In 1927 a public fund helped pay for restoration work and the committee of the School of Arts re-opened the building in 1936.
Other local organisations made use of the building in later years until 1972 when it was again closed.
Careful restoration of the building to something resembling its original state was undertaken by the Department of Public Works and completed in 1976.
Source: berrimacourthouse.org.au/about/