Published Resources Details
Book Section
- Title
- Bloodsworth (Bloodworth), James (d.1804), master bricklayer and builder
- In
- Australian dictionary of biography, volume 1: 1788 - 1850 A-H
- Imprint
- Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1966, p. 122
- Url
- http://www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A010112b.htm
- Format
- Description
Published online in 2006.
- Abstract
Quote: "Besides designing many private houses, Bloodsworth can be credited with the first Government House, which lasted from 1788 to 1845, and in 1790 the storehouse at King's Wharf on the shore of Sydney Cove. Governor Arthur Phillip praised 'the pains he had taken to teach others the business of a bricklayer', and his conduct was exemplary at a time when most convicts were noted for indolence or rebelliousness. Bloodsworth worked under difficulties; although there were competent bricklayers among the convicts, they had no proper mortar to bind the bricks together. For the walls of Government House some lime mortar was obtained by burning shells, but elsewhere mud-mortar had to be used. This was far from satisfactory, but by adapting his construction methods to these crude conditions he produced serviceable buildings, which also were by no means unseemly, because he was working within the long-established rules of Georgian architecture."