The Quartz Roasting Pits Complex is one of the oldest goldrush sites in Australia and represents one of the first attempts to process gold bearing ore.

With kilns for roasting gold bearing quartz, a sophisticated battery and dam system for crushing and washing the ore and houses for workers, the Complex provides tangible evidence of technological, social and domestic relationships during this very early stage of Australia's goldmining history.

[1] Despite its impressive technological achievements, the operation, managed and probably designed by Alfred Spence, was short-lived, closing in 1856, only eighteen months after it opened.

The placement of the Battery on Fighting Ground Creek provided an area for tailings run off and access to a ready supply of water which was fed from the Dam further upstream.

It is oriented approximately north-south along its long axis, roughly parallel to the creek bank and across the slope leading down from the Roasting Pits.

[1]Other features are scattered throughout the surrounding bush including house remains and a large earth dam to the north-east of the battery.

[1] The Hill End Quartz Roasting Pits is nationally significant as one of the earliest surviving reasonably intact gold mining related sites in Australia.

It represents the oldest surviving stamper battery building erected for gold mining in Australia, being substantially intact and interpretable as a working structure.

[1] Quartz Roasting Pits Complex was listed on the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999 having satisfied the following criteria.

The Hill End Quartz Roasting Pits are of national historical importance for their role in demonstrating the initial stage of the gold rushes that transformed the nineteenth century Australian economy.

The nature and pattern of technological transfer and experimentation during the early gold rush period can be understood by historical analysis of the site.

[1] The place is important in demonstrating aesthetic characteristics and/or a high degree of creative or technical achievement in New South Wales.

[1] The appearance of the Battery, the Roasting Pits and the other cultural features within the complex is evocative of the romance of the historical period of gold mining.

The Quartz Roasting Pits Complex represent an early stage of the development of the association that Hill End and Tambaroora had with gold.

The link has been strengthened through the management of Hill End by NPWS since 1967 as an exemplar of nineteenth century gold mining landscapes and townscapes and has significance to the current local community.

It reflects the first decade of gold mining in Australia, where lack of knowledge of the material was matched with a poverty of suitable equipment.

[1] There are gaps in our knowledge of the layout and design of the complex, its corporate history, the details of its operation and its success which are able to be investigated by archaeology and no other source.

[1] As a largely intact site it has the potential to reveal the social relationships between different levels in the mining hierarchy, and the interrelationships between human and technological systems.

The Quartz Roasting Pits Complex is extremely rare in its technical/research and historic significance[1] This Wikipedia article was originally based on Quartz Roasting Pits Complex, entry number 01006 in the New South Wales State Heritage Register published by the State of New South Wales (Department of Planning and Environment) 2018 under CC-BY 4.0 licence, accessed on 2 June 2018.