page_title: Towrang Convict Stockade
section_title: The Stockade
hierarchical_section_title: Towrang Convict Stockade / History / The Stockade
caption_attribution_description: English: Towrang Convict Stockade: Grave stones
context_page_description: Towrang Convict Stockade is a heritage-listed former convict stockade on the Old Hume Highway at Towrang, Goulburn Mulwaree Council, New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1838 to 1843 by convict gangs. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 1 February 2013.
context_section_description: By the time the Towrang Stockade was established, the stockade system had been operating for nearly half a century in the colony and was used for housing work gangs in settled areas and along major roads. A system of direct surveillance was used to discourage escape until the 1820s when the sites were generally surrounded by high timber paling fences. This became known as stockading. Stockading was officially abandoned in 1837 and the system returned to direct surveillance by troops, although paling walls were known to exist beyond 1837. The road gang was sometimes known as the Marulan Gang after the town being established between the Wingello and Towrang stockades.
  The Towrang Stockade became the chief penal camp in the southern district of the newly founded colony of NSW from about 1838 to 1843 and was noted for its harsh discipline. In 1838 it was reported that Towrang housed seventy men in irons working on the road and twenty one not in irons. Other sources state that the stockade held 250 convicts for most of its history. It is certainly believed to have had the largest concentration of convicts in southern NSW during the period of its operation. The convicts were guarded by soldiers of various British regiments, including the 28th, 31st, 51st and 80th. The first commander of the stockade was Captain J. Darley (1833 to 1836), followed by Lieutenant R. Waddy (1836-39), Lieutenant R. Sherberras (1839), Captain W. Houghton Tyssen (1841), Lieutenant W. Cookson (1842) and in 1843, the last year of the stockade's operation, Lieutenant Owen Gorman. The stockade is believed to have consisted of a small cottage and a number of huts for the soldiers and their families, together with a garden tended by the military, and huts and boxes or timber cells about 4m square for the convicts further down the Wollondilly River. The huts are believed to have been of wooden and rubble construction. A plan by Surveyor Larmer shows the stockade laid out in a hollow square on the ridge running down to the powder magazine. An additional row of huts were located closer to the river and where a row of rubble heaps were still extant in 1907 while another was located on the upper side of the main quadrangle.
  The stockade is said to have housed men of both short and long sentences. Men with short sentences were assigned to work such as looking after officer's horses and quarters, driving the bullock teams and felling trees. Men with longer sentences were placed on the iron gang responsible for packing and rolling sections of road, building the culverts and other heavy labour. It is contended that the Harrow Inn opened in 1840 to serve the Stockade, but no other hotel opened at Towrang until 1855, therefore it was probably to serve the traveller rather than any burgeoning village community.
  The stockade was closed in 1843, and in 1845 Surveyor Larmer drew up a plan for subdivision and sale of 13 allotments in the area where the stockade was located. Evidence of the stockade was located in Lots 4, 10, 11 and 12 of the subdivision. A stockade is clearly marked in Lot 10. Although Larmer made no mention of the powder magazine or the cemetery, he did note ten buildings and four portable lock ups. Later archaeological inquiry revealed a number of these buildings believed to be convict huts without fireplaces and of pise construction. Physical occupation of the stockade area following subdivision was limited with few known accounts of activity there.
  Powder Magazine
  The powder magazine was partly excavated under the bank of the Wollondilly river, and is thought to have been used to store the blasting powder used on the road cuttings and for splitting building stone. The upper part of the entrance passage was restored in 1975 but the remainder is in original condition.
  Cemetery
  Only three headstones remain in the cemetery, those of Private John Moxey of the 80th Regiment (died 1838 aged 38), Elizabeth Whittacker (died 1841 aged 33) and Mary Brown (died 1841 aged 4). Charles Macalister, in his 1907 publication, claimed that both soldiers and convicts were 
caption: Towrang grave stones.
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