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SYDNEY & MELBOURNE HERITAGE CONSULTANTS
Touring the Past is an independent heritage consultancy working across Sydney and Melbourne. We help custodians of historic places sustain, adapt, and re-imagine the past.
Heritage is never fixed — it is layered, contested, and always evolving.
We believe the past must be in a dialogue with the present to create outcomes that endure. Our work is grounded in cultural history, local context, and clear-eyed analysis.
Purposeful. Proportionate. Principled. We deliver insight, clarity, and workable outcomes across projects of every scale.
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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-iad3-1.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.29350-15/320824502_139694071967630_4654773553474278423_n.jpg?stp=dst-jpg_e35_tt6&_nc_cat=110&ccb=7-5&_nc_sid=18de74&efg=eyJlZmdfdGFnIjoiQ0FST1VTRUxfSVRFTS5iZXN0X2ltYWdlX3VybGdlbi5DMyJ9&_nc_ohc=-isSbX2rNMsQ7kNvwGexaOZ&_nc_oc=AdkU3r40DWHX3l2hhFv-RlLtQDb9lsXtlj14MF0TsfhiQbHDJU1xF_v7hljBsDXRU1c&_nc_zt=23&_nc_ht=scontent-iad3-1.cdninstagram.com&edm=ANo9K5cEAAAA&_nc_gid=ea6v2IVkxJRQELuALFA18w&oh=00_AfiTN8jAWxxDzWuFGMaWzaHIu7G5cU4cpa_oudcEKAQmvA&oe=6928A86E)
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.
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