Window and Boards

A tall multi-pane sash window pulls daylight into a room at the Braidwood Hotel, falling across plaster walls stripped back to bare pink render. Timber boards and panels lean in a loose row against the base of the wall. A heap of broken laths lies across the worn floorboards beneath. No furniture remains in the frame. The room is mid-restoration. The hotel at 180 Wallace Street, Braidwood, was built in 1859. Its construction coincided with the height of the district's gold rush: from 1851, when gold was discovered at Araluen and Majors Creek, Braidwood had become the primary supply and service town for the surrounding goldfields. By 1861, the town's own population had reached 959, while the surrounding goldfields held approximately 8,199 people. The Commercial Hotel, as it was then known, went up in that period of expansion. The building is Georgian in style, consistent with the character of Wallace Street, which the NSW State Heritage Register listing describes as having "a fine collection of 19th century buildings" whose integrity makes it particularly significant. The heritage listing for the individual hotel specifically names the verandah and cast iron lacework as features of significance. High ceilings and oversized fireplaces are characteristic of the Georgian interiors throughout the building. The hotel has operated continuously as a licensed premises since 1859, making it the oldest hotel in Braidwood still licensed. It was listed on the Register of the National Estate on 21 October 1980 and is covered by the NSW State Heritage Register conservation area, "Braidwood and its Setting," gazetted on 3 April 2006, the first entire town to receive such a listing. Trading as the Braidwood Hotel from around 2004, the building has been subject to an ongoing restoration programme across successive ownerships. This photograph, made in 2016, records one room in the middle of that process: plaster gone, boards pulled from the walls, the window framing what remains.