The John Baptist Fountain returns

One of Sydney’s oldest fountains is being reinstated in Hyde Park next year, following a lengthy restoration.

The John Baptist fountain, which was built in the 1860s, is undergoing repairs in Lidcombe due to damage from vandals about 20 years ago.

Sydney historian, Dr Lisa Murray, said the community will welcome the return of the sandstone fountain as a showpiece for the park.

“I think it will be well-received. It’s a lovely, human-scale, nineteenth century fountain,” she said.

“It’s really nice when these fountains, which have such strong historical connections in Sydney’s history, are restored.”

The fountain’s clamshell bowl was broken off in the late 1980s but the structure was first damaged in 1912, by upsurging tree roots in the city’s park.

The project to reconstruct the fountain has required consultation between the council, descendants of the John Baptist family and conservators over a few years.

Lord Mayor Clover Moore said the structure was worthy of restoration however, due to its history, deeming it a “rare and historic treasure.”

“John Baptist had an award winning nursery in Redfern which was once regarded as the ‘show-grounds of Sydney’,” she said.

Dr Murray said the Baptist family garden nursery, which extended for 30 to 40 acres, was monumental for Sydney residents.

“Baptist opened them up on the weekend as a public pleasure ground and that was quite significant at a time when Sydney had very few public parks of its own,” she said.

“There was of course The Domain in the Botanic Gardens but, apart from that, there were very few landscaped, beautiful public gardens around so a lot of people actually made the trip out to the public gardens in Redfern.”

Before the fountain was donated to the trustees of Hyde Park in 1888, it was originally installed in the Redfern gardens.

The council expects City of Sydney stonemasons to finish the repairs and install the fountain in Hyde Park by mid-2011.

By Olivia Leeming