Stone Room Staircase

The stone room sits inside the homestead at Mill Pond Farm, Jembaicumbene, in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales. Its timber staircase rises along the left wall, the treads worn smooth, the balustrade plain. Overhead, exposed beams span the ceiling. Underfoot, dark hardwood planks run the length of the floor. Two double-hung windows in the rear wall look out to open ground, with a diagonally boarded timber partition fixed between them. The light falls evenly across the stone, catching the grain of the wood and the roughness of the wall face. The homestead was established in the 1830s as part of the Roberts and Badgery pastoral estate, when William Henry Roberts and his brother-in-law Andrew Badgery took up land in the Jembaicumbene valley. The property moved through wheat farming, gold leasing, and the construction of a four-storey steam flour mill built in 1859 by Charles Dransfield, using bricks manufactured on the property and granite sourced from the farm. The Jembaicumbene Steam Flour Mills opened in January 1860, its engineering supplied by P.N. Russell and Co. of Sydney and its building designed by Sydney surveyor C.E. Langley. Milling operations ceased in 1885. The stone domestic quarters predate the mill by more than two decades. They were built to last: thick stone walls, heavy timber joinery, windows placed to draw light without sacrificing warmth. The Gothic Revival bargeboards on the farmhouse facade carry a different register to the industrial directness of the mill building next door. Inside, the staircase and its room have survived largely intact. This photograph was made in 2022, during a visit to the property for the Mill Pond Farm series. The frame holds what remains: stone, timber, and two windows open to the paddock beyond.