Wash House Facing West

The workers' wash house at Portland Cement Works is a long, wide room built to a standard familiar in Federation-era industrial sites: white glazed brick to shoulder height, a concrete floor pitched for drainage, timber bench seating along the wall, and steel lockers ranked across the far end. Glazed roof trusses run the length of the building, pulling light down through the roof and spreading it evenly across the floor. The room is in good condition relative to much of the precinct, which ranges from well-preserved to dangerously deteriorated depending on the structure. Portland Cement Works Precinct sits on Williwa Street in Portland, City of Lithgow, approximately 170 kilometres west of Sydney. The Commonwealth Portland Cement Company registered in December 1900 and commenced cement production on 4 August 1902. By 1911, the works employed 608 people at peak, and the town's population reached 2,376. By 1912, the company was producing approximately 40 per cent of all Portland cement manufactured in Australia. The wash house served the workforce across that entire operational arc, from the Federation-era expansion through the transition to wet-process manufacturing in the 1950s and on to the closure of cement production in November 1991. The precinct was added to the NSW State Heritage Register on 3 August 2012, listed as SHR #01739. It meets all seven significance criteria under the register. The condition of the Locker and Shower Room is recorded as good in the heritage assessment, which is visible in the photograph: the glazed brick is intact, the trusses are uncompromised, and the lockers remain in place against the wall. This photograph, made in 2018, records the room as it stood nearly three decades after the last shift ended. The bench is still there. The lockers are still there. The light comes in exactly as it was designed to.