Soon a town was proposed and, with large numbers of convicts working in the area, the need for a government detention and judicial centre was recognised (at that time no such place existed in all the country between the Nepean River and Bathurst).

[1] The railway arrived in the region late in the 1860s and while it led to the growth of places like Lithgow, Hartley declined owing to the reduction in road traffic.

After the World War II, however, improvements in vehicles and the highway saw a decline as increasing numbers of tourists travelled through town without stopping.

[1] St John's Anglican Church, built in 1858-59, was designed by leading Colonial Ecclesiastical Architect, Edmund Blacket.

[1] St Bernard's Catholic Church, c. 1842,[2] and the adjacent presbytery, c. 1858-61, reflect Hartley's substantial Irish population in the nineteenth century.

Michael Cavanagh, who decided in 1838 that a church should be built to serve the large population of Irish Catholic settlers in the area.

It catered for the needs of the men and women en route to and from the gold fields of Hill End, Sofala and the Turon workings.

[1][3] In 2016 St. Bernard's Presbytery, after major internal restoration now hosts overnight stay guests, along with nearby Old Tralee, for the first time.

Hartley consists of a fine array of government, church, hotel and residential buildings, displaying a range of forms, materials and styles (several of the following are registered individually).

A modest yet harmonious church, St John's is built of sandstone and the roof, originally shingle (as were most in the village), is clad with corrugated iron.

The presbytery is built of sandstone and granite and is single storey on an above ground basement, with a steeply pitched hipped roof.

[1] Built c. 1843 is a single storey, roughcast rendered brick building with a gable and skillion roof, and a verandah with end rooms (which were fairly typical of early inns).

The village has an extremely high level of intactness and it contains a rich range of building forms, materials and architectural styles.

Hartley contains good examples of the work of important colonial era architects, Mortimer Lewis and Edmund Blacket.

Owing to the form, materials, styles and alignments of its various buildings and its rural setting above the River Lett, Hartley with its pervasive mid nineteenth century character has significant aesthetic qualities.