Barton Vale at Enfield: with Keith Conlon in the City area of Adelaide
Is it a grand old pastoral mansion or a major institutional building? Truth is, it has been both, and when we talk about South Australian secrets we'd have to include this suburban surprise. Barton Vale is a beautifully restored thirty-nine room tall Gothic grand home less than eight kilometres from the GPO in the middle of Enfield.
Pastoralist Edmund Bowman began its construction in 1850 and it could be a copy of a manor in England's Lakes District. He came via Tasmania to the infant colony in 1838. Thrifty he was and so this is no dressed sandstone edifice. He quarried limestone from close by to build his base for sheep runs that extended from Dry Creek just down the hill all the way through to Pt. Wakefield and Crystal Brook. And Mintaro, where the famous Martindale Hall was built by his son, Edmund Bowman (junior), but only after his pioneering father had drowned when he fell off a log crossing the swollen Wakefield River nearby. Other Bowmans built the picturesque Poltalloch homestead on Lake Alexandrina at about the same time as the mid-north gentleman's residence. The lakeside outbuildings are also on the heritage B & B circuit.
Back at Barton Vale, Edmund Bowman struggled to complete it in 1851 when almost all the building workers joined the gold rush to Victoria. Since then it has notched up a colourful history including a felicitous escape from the wrecker's ball.
A palatial residence simply has to have a ballroom, and Barton Vale's is copious and complete with two marble fireplaces. With its French doors and windows flooding the space with late golden light from the western verandah and giving direct access from outside, the family who now own it make the ballroom available to community groups for meetings. They see the mid-nineteenth century look here as its 1990's restoration involved careful scraping of paint layers to reveal the original delicate ceiling decorations. The climbing vine motif has been emulated all round inside the elaborate cornices. The house was given added grandeur and all the high Victorian trimmings in 1879 when the late Mr. Bowman's widow married a Mr. Brooks, a wealthy Hindley Street draper. Historical photographs reveal that the old couple refitted the ballroom to become a very cluttered sitting room.
About eighty years ago Barton Vale changed hands… and direction. Perhaps some of the wayward girls from Redruth Gaol in Burra swapped a cell for a mansion when the Salvos shifted their home for them here. It was later taken over by the state to become Vaughan House Training School for Girls and finally sank into disuse and disrepair in the 1980's. The transformation from graffiti to grandeur again is strikingly evident in the spacious and richly decorated upstairs master bedroom.
It happened in stages. The Enfield Historical Society campaigned successfully for a National Trust listing and then inclusion on the National Estate register and that made it hard for the government to knock it down. They decided to fix it up for use as government offices, and that looked after the structural side. But the restoration of the Victorian décor became a labour of love for the purchasers Peter and Marilyn Smith. They now run their aerospace and business consulting and Barossa Vineyards and B & B's from a glorious upstairs office. They fell in love with it, bought it, and seven years on they are nearly there, always finding original colours and treatments where they can.
The gothic 1850 exterior of Barton Vale is striking enough in suburban Enfield, but it is left behind once you are in the cavernous two storey entrance hall. The giant coloured glass set of windows that span the broad spiralling wooden staircase hall survived the girls' reformatory years and the all - round walking gallery above the adjoining entrance hall once saw Bowman children peeping down on guests entering the ballroom. Much later, a false floor covered the view. It's said it was to prevent the wilder Vaughan House inmates from jumping from a great height onto the staff below.
In its happily restored state, the Barton Vale hall is a grand monument to the master craftsman skills of Barossa Valley painter, Lyell Rosenweig. His expert wood grain finishes on the giant plaster skirtings and doorframes are award winners. Off the dramatic hall, the drawing-room's colours are stunning - and nineteenth century originals. In the equally huge dining room next door next door, the greens, ochres and burgundies are combined in different and delightful ways, and particularly in the multi largered ceiling cornices.
A set of interior photographs from the 1890's bore precious clues for this careful restoration by Peter and Marilyn Smith, but they don't have servants to keep it all going. Consequently, they're acutely conscious of the acres of floors and ninety-seven windows to clean. And then there are the chandeliers that add four hundred light bulbs.
The tower atop Barton Vale soars to about eight storeys, or more than twenty four metres. There's a panoramic view along the Adelaide hills and the city buildings about eight kilometres to the south would have been visible from its completion more than 150 years ago. From his high platform, Edmund Bowman could easily see the Port River - where he'd arrived in 1838 - and his sheep paddocks at Dry Creek. Perhaps that is why the tower was added.
On the downhill side below an added wing of Vanghan House was demolished in the early 1990's, when several acres of the estate were sold off for a defence housing project that now provides friendly low key architectural neighbours for an historic mansion.
The dominating tower has a secret, however. It's almost all fibreglass ! Barton Vale had been truncated in the 1940's. It had lost its tower because its weight was causing serious cracking. During the government's renovations, a new lightweight structure was constructed on the front lawn and hoisted into place, with picnicking neighbours applauding the crowning glory.
The meticulous restoration of almost all of its 39 rooms is all but complete, thanks to a five - year plan of its new owners. Peter and Marilyn welcome a noisy flock of lorikeets to their garden fountain every morning, and they also very kindly open their home to groups interested in its past and its present splendour. The Enfield and Districts Historical Society runs occasional tours, for instance. You can call in anytime, however, to the little park that's been created in front of it and admire its handsome Gothic façade. Come off main North Road past Enfield Primary School and look for the high tower of historic Barton Vale.
Barton Vale
20 Walker Court
EnfieldIf you have any further questions please email info@postcards.sa.com.au
Enfield and Districts Historical Society
C/o Secretary, Enfield Heritage Museum
Gallipoli Grove, Regency Park
South Australia 5010Ph. Dennis Robinson 08 8263 9521
