[2] European incursion after 1814 exerted substantial pressures on local Aboriginal people, who strove to maintain their way of life amidst the progressive dispossession of their lands.

The value of the Lithgow Valley was greatly accentuated by the presence of easily accessible coal, although in the absence of suitable transport links this resource could not be fully exploited.

[1] In 1841–1842, just east of what is now the Lithgow city centre, Brown built a well-capitalised homestead complex named Esk Bank House.

The grounds of Esk Bank House were, at this time, characterised by a sweeping, wide, circular gravelled carriageway, linked to the front and side verandahs by paths between ornamental garden beds.

[1] Brown's attitude to alienation of land was very conservative; but leasing of land allowed the development of local industries, including the pottery and brickworks of the Lithgow Valley Pottery Company; two other brickworks; two copper smelters; the refrigeration works of the NSW Fresh Food & Ice Co. Ltd; and, yet more ambitious, the iron works of the Lithgow Valley Iron Company Ltd. To all of these he supplied coal on an expensive monopoly basis.

These were advised by the enigmatic Enoch Hughes, an English-born ironsmith who had erected the blast furnace of the Fitz Roy iron works near Mittagong.

[26][27] Yet it was Daniel Williams who 'laid the foundations for Australia's modern iron and steel industry', and maintained his efforts until stress and illness forced his departure for England, where he was to die an untimely death.

It was realised that brick and pottery manufacture was the best way to use otherwise worthless slack coal and waste clay generated by the Lithgow Valley Colliery.

In 1886 Rutherford accepted the offer of English- born William Sandford, a former lessee of the Fitz Roy rolling mills, to lease the plant.

The consequent upsurge in employment, together with a social conscience, encouraged Sandford to prepare plans for a model township of the Eskbank Estate, and to assist his workers to build cottages to his own designs.

In addressing a celebratory banquet, Joseph Cook MLA, an erstwhile Lithgow coal miner and a future Prime Minister of Australia, ascribed Sandford's success not to protection from imports but to his "industry, energy, and business capacity".

[45][46][47] It was fitting that Sandford's successful production of the metal considered the very basis of naval and military might should have occurred on the eve of Federation, itself a movement largely induced by anxieties as to the protection of Australian and Imperial geopolitical interests.

[57] By 1911 market prospects had improved, not least due to the commencement of work on the Australian Government's Small Arms Factory, in the establishment of which Sir Joseph Cook was instrumental.

The Mortlocks found the house cold and impracticable, to ameliorate which William infilled the courtyard and constructed a gable-roofed addition providing an area more easily kept warm during the Lithgow winter.

The closure of the Lithgow iron and steel works caused lasting bitterness in a city which had hoped to become an Antipodean Birmingham or Pittsburgh.

It was joined by a Buffalo Pitts traction engine from Neubeck's colliery and sawmills, and by a Lithgow City Council steam road roller.

[78] In the 1970s, and in accordance with the Bush Garden philosophy popular at the time, a Grevillea hedge, which has since been removed, was established to the front of the house, while Eucalypts were planted along the Inch Street frontage.

It appears to have been built as a small museum, housing Thomas Brown's collection of geological, natural history, ethnographic and historic items.

Roofed in galvanised iron and situated between the main house and the stables, the building is hexagonal in plan and is executed in ashlar-laid sandstone with margined and rusticated quoins and similarly detailed single square-faced stones.

The collection, of which many items have been donated by local residents, comprises domestic wares illustrating the everyday lives of working-class and middle-class people of its period.

The collection includes Bristol-glazed stoneware and Rockingham-glazed, Majolica-glazed and cane-glazed items, and is said to demonstrate the full range of the Lithgow Pottery's catalogue.

It is also of state heritage significance for its strong association with the Eskbank Estate, a cradle of NSW industrial development and particularly that of iron and steel making.

Eskbank House is also of state heritage significance in demonstrating the manner in which nineteenth century NSW homestead complexes have been adapted to serve evolving social and economic requirements, including those associated with changing land use and the development of new industries.

The complex is also of state heritage significance for its aesthetic and architectural values, together with its demonstration of the high quality of materials and artisanship available to a well-connected NSW settler during its period of construction.

It is also of state heritage significance for its ability to provide further information as to social and technical aspects of the NSW iron and steel industries of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as demonstrated by the three so-called Lithgow Black Roses, which are themselves items of great interest and artisanship.

It is also of state heritage significance in providing information as to the life and career of Sir Joseph, especially in its incorporation of unique items such as the document commissioning him as Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.

Sir Joseph became Prime Minister of Australia, and afterwards helped to establish an important new political party before being appointed Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom.

Eskbank House is of state heritage significance for its potential to provide information as to the life and scientific endeavours of Thomas Brown, founder of Lithgow.

Eskbank House is also of state heritage significance in demonstrating the high quality of materials and artisanship available to a well-connected NSW settler in the period between the termination of the convict assignment system and the onset of the economic depression of the 1840s.

Eskbank House is of state heritage significance as a fine example of an early 1840s Victorian Georgian-style homestead complex, constructed with the assistance of convict labour under the supervision of a highly skilled stonemason, and demonstrating the principal characteristics of its type.