BY CHRISTOPHER HARRIS
It is one of the oldest houses in one of the country’s oldest streets. But the heritage order on it could not stop it from being irreparably damaged, the NSW Land and Environment Court found last month.
Lloyd Adams bought the house at Argyle Place in 2014 as part of the state government’s sell-off of social housing in Millers Point.
When Mr Adams signed the contract of sale, he also signed a Conservation Management Plan.
The plan identified the ways the building could be used, and elements which must be preserved to protect the heritage significance of the property.
But this didn’t stop Mr Adams gutting the place a week after he got the contract, including “removing internal plaster on walls and skirting boards and other joinery in various rooms”, the court found.
A City of Sydney Heritage officer visited the site and gave Mr Adams an verbal direction to stop work immediately.
Mr Adams didn’t.
Instead he removed further plaster from the walls, a plasterboard ceiling and a lath framing for a ceiling in another room, plaster and chimney in one room, and the skirting boards from two other rooms.
Finally, after receiving a formal stop work order a week later in writing, Mr Adams ceased his work on the house.
The house was the only known example of the layout and detailing from the mid 1840s.
The court fined him $60,000 for destroying the house’s heritage, and ordered him to pay costs of $35,000, and will have a criminal conviction against his name.
But it would not bring back the heritage that is now lost, or compensate for the “diminution in heritage significance caused by the loss of the original fabric and elements of the interiors” as stated in the court’s judgement.
In the judgement, the court said that Mr Adams had cooperated with the council’s investigations and that he seemed remorseful for his actions.
