Toilets and Washbasin

The washroom is a small, plain room inside the Kirkbride Complex at Callan Park, Lilyfield. Hexagonal ceramic floor tiles cover the floor, many of them chipped or stained beyond their original colour. A white ceramic sink sits against one wall, its exposed U-bend plumbing still in place beneath it. A cast-iron radiator with visible pipework pinned to the wall stands to the left. Two tall timber-framed windows let in natural light, which catches the grime on light-green wall tiles and rests on a small plastic cup left on the sill. The room reads like a list of what was left behind. The Kirkbride Complex was built between 1880 and 1885 to a design developed collaboratively by Colonial Architect James Barnet, Inspector General of the Insane Frederic Norton Manning, and Charles Moore, Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, who designed the grounds. Ground was broken on 11 February 1880 and the first stone laid on 22 April 1880. The first ward opened on 1 July 1884. Total construction cost was £235,539. The completed buildings were designed to hold 766 patients across 17 freestone blocks arranged in a square, with 30 buildings, 170 single rooms, and 41 dormitories, all linked by a continuous covered veranda. Callan Park was Australia's first purpose-built hospital for moral therapy treatment. The design was based on drawings of Chartham Down Hospital in Canterbury, Kent, which Manning brought back from a study tour of England, France, Germany, and the United States in 1876, modifying the plan for the New South Wales climate with extensive verandah spaces. The site itself, selected by Barnet for its winter sun and summer breezes, fronts Iron Cove at Lilyfield. The hospital was proclaimed a separate institution on 1 August 1878 and remained in operation, under various names, until full closure on 30 April 2008. The Kirkbride Complex holds NSW State Heritage Register listing SHR 00818, gazetted 2 April 1999. This photograph was made in 2015.