SYDNEY HERITAGE CONSULTANTS
Specialist Built Heritage Consultants servicing Sydney, the Blue Mountains, and wider New South Wales
Touring the Past Pty Ltd is a specialist independent consultancy that will assist you to achieve sensitive intervention in heritage contexts—managing what makes a place culturally significant while catering for reasonable change, adaptive reuse, and new vitality.
As Heritage Consultants, our core work is guiding change at heritage places, typically through the preparation of a robust and independent Heritage Impact Statement.
We also provide design, conservation, and heritage planning advice, as well as heritage interpretation strategies, conservation management plans, photographic archival recordings, and commissioned history.
We have a deep interest in Australia’s shared, often challenging histories and a broad-ranging proficiency in the ever-increasing variety of places that are viewed as heritage.
We are passionate about working at the diverse historic, character-rich places that underpin the historic environment. What’s more, we believe that smart heritage management practices do not preclude change nor exclude respectful and interpretive contemporary design.
Statutory heritage policy, the application of conservation principles, and the complexities of repurposing an existing building are demanding. An effective response requires an independent, pragmatic consultancy. For us, this equates with the provision of frank and informed advice, fine-grained heritage analysis, inventive solutions, and deft communication—whether the project is small or large.
Touring the Past are leading Sydney Heritage Consultants. All enquiries welcome.
Whatever stage your project is at, we can help
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![Dagmar Terrace, Newtown, circa 1884
Gothic ‘witches hat’ form, delightful but speculative and mean at the same time.
From the early 1840s, the area was referred to as ‘Macdonaldtown' and consisted of larger villa properties with some urban development clustered to the spine of Rochford Street. From the mid-1860s, the subject land was offered as part of a much larger parcel in the subdivision of ‘White’s Estate’ in Macdonaldtown.
By 1883, John Lind (d. 1887)—a builder and alderman for the Borough of Macdonaldtown—utilised a loan of £1,800 from the St. Joseph’s Investment Building Society to purchase land from the White’s Estate that equated with the subject heritage group. It appears that the row of ten dwellings was constructed soon after. That year, he was advertising for tenders for ‘rubble foundations’, ‘labourer[s]’, ‘fencers’, ‘carpenter[s]’, ‘painter’, and ‘bricklayers’ from his residence at the intersection of George and MacDonald streets. These may have been for the subject group and/or other projects of Lind’s in Macdonaldtown/Erskineville, of which there appear to have been many.
During the 1880s, the broader locale consolidated as an a-then outer urban area to the city, with a premodern mixed working-class residential/industrial complexion. The Lind’s family retained ownership until 1920 when the building society resumed control of the property due to payment default and mortgaged the group to a local estate agent.
In 1930, the buildings—likely in a state of dilapidation—were listed for resumption as part of the ‘slum’ clearance programs undertaken by the Sydney City Council, although their demolition did not ultimately occur. The group continued to be sold collectively until the mid-1960s. Historical images from the Sydney Demolotion Book.](https://scontent-den2-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/320824502_139694071967630_4654773553474278423_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_e35_tt6&_nc_cat=110&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=18de74&_nc_ohc=ObEO-lI52x4Q7kNvwFfXKgm&_nc_oc=AdlckfIhfZFjWiFyvd67YVvsq-I5lihuHILgZ3EYgcrwRRNOInw0sXEkxPCKRBwlQGg&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-den2-1.cdninstagram.com&edm=ANo9K5cEAAAA&_nc_gid=kwjyYngngBEbRaUPskmxEQ&oh=00_AfVj-NjmktLoMp358VlTShJhnjkIPCnEjp6Y9Xpcxk_5FQ&oe=68AA50AE)
Touring the Past acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the land and pays respect to Elders past, present, and emerging. We honour First Peoples and their unique cultural and spiritual relationships to Country and their contribution to our society and history. To that end, all our work seeks to uphold the idea that if we care for places, they will care for us.