Miss Traill's House

It is now a house museum containing a significant collection relating to Ida Traill's family, including her furniture, horse-racing memorabilia, and artifacts linked to the early history of Bathurst.

European settlement in this region after the first documented white expedition west of the Blue Mountains in 1813 was tentative because of apprehensions about resistance from Aboriginal people.

[1] Governor Macquarie chose the site of the future town of Bathurst on 7 May,1815 during his tour over the Blue Mountains, on the road already completed by convict labour supervised by William Cox.

Macquarie marked out the boundaries near the depot established by surveyor George Evans and reserved a site for a government house and domain.

Reluctant to open the rich Bathurst Plains to a large settlement, Macquarie authorised few grants there initially, one of the first being 1000 acres to William Lawson, one of the three European explorers who crossed the mountains in 1813.

In December 1819 Bathurst had a population of only 120 people in 30 houses, two thirds being in the township of Kelso on the eastern side of the river and the remainder scattered on rural landholdings nearby.

[1] Governor Darling, arriving in Sydney in 1825, promptly commenced a review of colonial administration and subsequently introduced vigorous reforms.

But the town was apparently designed by Thomas Mitchell in 1830 and did not open until late 1833 after Richards had completed the layout of the streets with their two-road allotments.

As a result of childhood contact with her grandfather George Lee and his wife Emily (née Kite) who lived at Leeholme, a large homestead close to Bathurst, she became interested in family history.

The garden's collection of roses includes "Crimson Glory", "Frau Karl Druschki", "Mermaid", "Stanwell Perpetual", "Carabella" and 'Perle d'Or' which was grown from a cutting at Leeholm, the property of Miss Traill's grandparents.

[4] A large area is devoted to woodland, planted with a variety of bulbs, swathes of winter roses or hellebores, dark red tree paeonies, may bush or Spiraea, yellow jasmine and lilac: a mass planting of the succulent Echeveria elegans growing in the shade, a traditional herb garden guarded by an arch of star jasmine, a number of hawthorns and a pink Floridan dogwood tree.

[1] In the hall, studio portraits of George Lee and his wife Emily hang next to a framed photograph of 1899 Melbourne Cup winner Merriwee.

Oil portraits of The Barb, inducted into the Australian Racing Hall of Fame in 2004, and his sister Gulnare, painted by (colonial artist) Joseph Fowles (1810–78), are highly significant in the collection, and once a year, the 18 carat Sydney Cup (1870) won by Barbelle at Randwick Racecourse is displayed under guard at the property.

[1] The Black Demon's memory lives on at Miss Traill's House, among memorabilia and artefacts relating to four generations of the Lee family in Bathurst, bequeathed to the National Trust of Australia (NSW) along with the house and grounds, by Miss Ida Traill in 1976[6](Le Seuer (2015, 6) notes the bequeath date as 1978).

[1] With funding from local and state governments and the Central West Women's Committee (of the National Trust of Australia (NSW)), volunteers carried out considerable maintenance works to structural cracks, re-wallpapered Miss Traill's mother's room (with a wallpaper copied from the original), exterior repainting.

[1] A Museums and Galleries NSW grant in 2015 allowed the Trust to progress storage and display facilities and conservation of Miss Traill's collections.

[1] Features of the country styled garden include a courtyard, wishing well, sundial, stone benches, pergola, greenhouse, a drying yard with clothes prop, shed and garage.

[1] The contents of the house include English and Australian furniture dating from c. 1810, family memorabilia such as photographs, china, racing times, trophies, early Australian items, enameled pottery, ceramics, metalwares (trays, vases, candle sticks), glassware, rugs, books, and notable landscape and portrait paintings.

These include two early nineteenth century portraits of children apparently by Tinier, a painting of a "coach hunting party" by W. Williams, and a European landscape by Charles Leslie (1879).

[1] Other significant artefacts include; The Sydney Cup won by Barbelle in 1870, Silver cups presented in the 1870s to George Lee for show success with Durham cattle, and an invitation to Mr and Mrs Lee to the 1901 opening of the first Australian Commonwealth Parliament[2][1] The physical condition of the house was reported as good as at 3 July 2000.

A descendant of two of the region's main pastoralist families, Miss Traill was strongly influenced by her grandfather, George Lee, who bred horses legendary in Australia's equine history.

[1] Through the association with a range of people including Reverend Thomas Sharpe, William McLean, Mary Newton, Robert Gilmour and the Lee, Kite and Traill families the house, grounds and collections provide evidence of the ways of life in the Bathurst districts.

Miss Traill's house is technically significant as it is contributing to the historical, social and environmental construction of Bathurst in the mid-eighteenth to nineteenth centuries.

The unique architectural design of the house in conjunction with the extensive collection of artifacts relating to the history of one influential family provides a strong foundation in representing the construction of the Bathurst districts.

Miss Traill's House displays an accurate representation of class and era through a complete collection of furnishings and memorabilia associated with Kite and Lee families.