From time to time requests are received for information on various topics, and the process often ends with the results of the research appearing in this column. This week’s is an example. Some months ago a request was received for information about an Armidale builder, Mark Roberts (1860-1939). My interest was aroused and easily satisfied. Thankfully, Jennifer Johnstone (a descendant of old Parson Thomas Johnstone, the long-serving Presbyterian minister) had submitted a story for publication in the Historical Society’s 2010 Journal, and it has details about Roberts and one of the houses he built and lived in.
Born at Clenhonger, Herefordshire, in the United Kingdom, on March 12, 1860, Mark Roberts was a son of William Roberts (whose forebears had been bricklayers for 400 years) and Elizabeth Bourgoyne. About 1880, Mark married Sarah Ann Porter who, having been born in Herefordshire on November 28, 1856, was four years his senior. They sailed to Australia as assisted immigrants on the “Peterborough’, which arrived in Sydney on December 22, 1882 – 129 years ago.
Mark and Sarah made their way to Armidale, where they were newcomers in a town dating from 1839. They bought land in South Armidale from Thomas and Lydia Smith, who had bought it from the estate of Archibald Mosman, who had bought 11 acres on October 26, 1858. Ownership of land in Armidale which was alienated at that time was identified and studied by the late Dr John Ferry. Some Armidale families have all the paper work dealing with the alienation and subsequent sales of our properties right through to the present.
Archibald Mosman died on 29 January 1863, and a clause in his Will resulted in the land in his South Armidale estate not being put up for sale until 1884. Part of it was bought by a bricklayer, Thomas Smith and his wife Lydia, on September 3, 1884, and sold six months later to Mark and Sarah Roberts and a carpenter, John Alfred Bartlett. The Roberts built a solid brick house with an iron roof and occupied it for the next 29 years. It was known as “Wyevale’. The iron had come from England as ballast on a ship and had been transported to Armidale on the newly-opened Great Northern Railway. The railway made possible the easy delivery of many building materials, and there are many house in Armidale which date from that time.
It is generally believed that Mark Roberts was one of the men who built the two-storey house on Soudan Hill in South Armidale. It was the residence of the prominent early settler and publican, Joseph Scholes (Senior). His home had the best view of Armidale and reflected his success as a businessman.
Mark and Sarah Roberts had five children in Armidale: Elizabeth (born circa 1886), Arthur (1889), Annie (1891), Jane (1893) and George (1894). There was a tragic death in November 1897 when Jane inhaled a green leaf she was playing with in the garden and suffocated. She was buried in the Church of England portion of the Armidale Cemetery, but her remains were exhumed six years later and reburied in the Roberts’ family plot, where Mark erected an impressive sandstone monument. Similar work can be seen at the entrance gates to “Chevy Chase’ and the Dangarsleigh War Memorial.
When they sold “Wyevale’, Mark and Sarah Roberts moved to what is now Short Street, where Mark built a two-storey house which they named “Wyevale’. The former house then became known as “Little Wyevale’. It was sold to Donald McDonald in 1914, and was later bought by Roderick McRae, who died in July 1933. His wife Isabella lived there for the next 29 years, until dying in May 1962. Jennifer Johnstone bought the house at auction in 1967, and she is to be commended for her painstaking efforts to record the history of her home.
Meanwhile, Sarah Ann Roberts died on June 28, 1937, aged almost 81, and Mark died on February 25, 1939, aged almost 79. He was survived by three of his children: Elizabeth, Arthur and Annie, and 19 grandchildren. Arthur Roberts, the eldest son, had married the daughter of William Palmer, one of Armidale’s brick manufacturers, and they had five children. Many descendants still reside in Armidale. Among the houses built in Armidale by Mark Roberts are “Chevy Chase’, “Shannon’, Moore Park’, “Braebank’, and possibly “Soudan’ and “Bona Vista’. It is very likely that he also built other houses in Armidale.
My interest in the story is the two-storey house named “Wyevale’ in Short Street. As a boy growing up in Armidale in the 1950s, I was enthralled by the house which was one of the few in South Armidale. Nowadays it is difficult to picture Armidale as it was in the 1950s. All that land in South Armidale was farmland. Indeed, each afternoon I had Milo made from milk from a cow who grazed on a farm at what is now Catherine Street. It is named after Catherine Maguire (née Byrnes), who died in January 1967. She and her husband Jim (who died in July 1972) had lived in Barney Street. Both were descended from old Armidale families.
Stories such as Jennifer Johnstone’s history of her house shed light on people such as Mark and Sarah Roberts, who played a memorable role in the growth of Armidale, and whose names are still recalled in the houses Mark built.
