Old Toowoomba Court House
| Old Toowoomba Court House | |
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Old Toowoomba Court House, 2000
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| Location | 90 Margaret Street, East Toowoomba, Toowoomba, Toowoomba Region, Queensland, Australia |
| Coordinates | 27°33′46″S 151°57′45″E / 27.5629°S 151.9624°ECoordinates: 27°33′46″S 151°57′45″E / 27.5629°S 151.9624°E |
| Design period | 1840s - 1860s (mid-19th century) |
| Built | 1861 - 1864 |
| Official name: Toowoomba Court House & Old Toowoomba Gaol Wall (former), Austral Museum, De Molay House, Toowoomba Courthouse | |
| Type | state heritage (archaeological, built) |
| Designated | 30 June 2001 |
| Reference no. | 601315 |
| Significant period | 1860s, 1880s (historical) 1860s, 1880s (fabric) |
| Significant components | court house, wall/s |
 Location of Old Toowoomba Court House in Queensland
Location of Old Toowoomba Court House in Queensland
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Old Toowoomba Court House is a heritage-listed courthouse at 90 Margaret Street, East Toowoomba, Toowoomba, Toowoomba Region, Queensland, Australia. It was built from 1861 to 1864. It is also known as Old Toowoomba Gaol Wall, Austral Museum, and De Molay House. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 30 June 2001.
The central brick rectangular core of the former Courthouse was constructed as the first Toowoomba courthouse between 1861 and 1863. The section is a two-storey with a hip roof with clerestory. In front of this is a symmetrical closed-in veranda which also has a steeply pitched corrugated iron hip roof. A small single-storey cottage is located at the rear of the hall. The complex has been added to and modified to serve as a female reformatory, museum, boarding house and community hall. The external boundary wall of the Toowoomba Men's Gaol was constructed using local stone and bricks on government land behind the courthouse in 1864.
Drayton was surveyed as a town in 1849 and it was there that the assizes for the district were held, and the first courthouse in the area was located. While "The Swamp", as Toowoomba was first called, was surveyed as an agricultural area, it soon proved more suitable for urban living and underwent rapid growth. In 1859 Judge Alfred Lutwyche found the Drayton Courthouse so dilapidated that he declined to use it. The Colonial Architect designed a new courthouse that cost £2,018/6/4 in Margaret Street, the road linking Brisbane to Toowoomba. Work commenced in 1861 and the building was opened in January 1863. This courthouse was low-set with a hip roof, rectangular in plan with a small entrance porch and had an internal U-shaped verandah. One chimney provided a back-to-back fireplace for the Magistrate and Clerk's rooms. A new courthouse, nearer the town centre, was built between 1876 and 1878.
When Toowoomba became an assize town there was a need for a gaol to house criminals arrested on the Darling Downs, the Maranoa and Warrego awaiting trial and for those convicted. The Queensland Colonial Architect's plans for the new gaol to be erected behind the courthouse were completed by 12 February 1862. Godfrey and Johnstone started work on Toowoomba's new gaol in early 1863. By June 1864 the building was ready for occupation except for the completion of the boundary wall and its gateway, this was completed by September 1864. This external wall had a buttressed footings of roughly dressed stone about a foot each in dimension, upon which was built an unrendered brick wall two bricks deep, or about nineteen inches; similar dimension to the Administration Building erected at St Helena Gaol in 1886. The wall was about 12 feet high, with tapered buttresses that stop halfway up the wall, and a sloped coping made of bricks.
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