Daytime, close view of the court's three-arched portico under a pediment with oculus, inscription POLICE COURT and SUMMONS COURT, curved glazed entrance enclosures, coursed cream and orange sandstone.

Justice & Police Museum

4-8 Phillip Street, Sydney

Edmund Blacket, Alexander Dawson and James Barnet. 1856 to 1886. Victorian and Federation, Sydney Sandstone.

Size
One and two storeys
Material
Banded sandstone ashlar, slate roofs, timber verandah with cast iron
Status
State heritage listed

This small group was the Water Police’s base near Circular Quay. In 1853 work began on quarrying sandstone for it at Bennelong Point, where the Opera House now stands, but the gold rushes drove up prices and drained away labour, and the job dragged. Blacket’s first court, with its three-arched portico, was finished in 1856. Dawson’s police station followed in 1858, cut down by the same shortages to a plain building with four water policemen and their families living upstairs. Barnet added a second court in 1885 to 1886, repeating Blacket’s portico.

The courts were never grand. They heard petty crime, harbour and shipping offences and small debts, and later became the traffic courts, staying in use until 1979. The Water Police moved to Dawes Point in 1913. The museum’s collection began as a 1910 police teaching collection of criminal implements.

The stone

Look at the banding: cream and orange beds alternate through the walls, which makes it a good place to see the iron colouring in the rock. The stone came from Bennelong Point for the first building, and from Pyrmont for the station.

Read about Sydney Sandstone

Sources

  1. Justice and Police Museum, Wikipedia
  2. Water Police Court, Dictionary of Sydney (archived by State Library of NSW)
  3. Justice and Police Museum, Destination NSW (sydney.com)
  4. Water Police Court 1886, Sydney, Will's Hub