Sydney has many important buildings made of locally quarried sandstone.These masonry tools, used to work that sandstone, signify an important aspect of Sydney's working and industrial past that continues today in the refurbishment of old buildings and some current decorative use of sandstone. The tools complement other objects in the Museum's collection that relate to Sydney's building industry.
Tradesmen were needed in the colonies to help build housing and to work in industry. By the early 1800s, Pyrmont and Ultimo were becoming the industrial heart of Sydney and home to the men and women who worked in its quarries, factories, abattoirs, wharves and woolstores.
Stonemasons were a highly organised workforce; in 1858 they were the first tradesmen to win the right to an eight hour day. They dressed formally, wearing white linen aprons, and the head mason wore a waistcoat.
The Pyrmont peninsula was one of the major sources of sandstone, and of employment for stonemasons. Quarries were started there by the Saunders family in 1853. The three main Saunders quarry sites, said to have been nicknamed by Scottish workmen in the 1860s, produced stone with distinctive qualities. Hellhole was located north-east of Wentworth Park on Wattle Street; it was a deep hole some six metres below street level which filled to the brim with every heavy downpour. Purgatory, adjacent and further north, produced a very hard stone with a grey streak which could crack. Paradise, or Half Way, was less than a kilometre north of Hellhole and produced the best stone, yellow block.
These tools belonged to Alf Pires, currently head stonemason for the NSW Department of Commerce. Alf Pires used these tools from 1971 to 2006. Although they are over 100 years old, they are very similar to tools still in use today.
The NSW Department of Commerce repairs old Sydney buildings using stone retrieved from building sites in Pyrmont and other suburbs. Tools like these would be used on the more detailed work.
References
Fitzgerald, Shirley and Golder, Hilary, Pyrmont & Ultimo: under siege, Hale& Iremonger, Sydney, 1994.
Irving, Robert, Paradise Purgatory and Hellhole:the story of the Saunders sandstone quarries Pyrmont media masters, Singapore, 2006.
McCaig, Ian, The architecture of Pyrmont and Ultimo, Thesis 1980's.
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/exhibitions/paradise.asp
Anni Turnbull, Curator, 2008
These tools were used by Alf Pires, head stone mason, NSW Department of Commerce. Alf Pires believes they are over 100 years old. He purchased them from stone masons who retired from the Department of Commerce in 1971. Alf used these tools until 2006, when he lent them to the Museum for the exhibition 'Paradise, Purgatory and Hellhole: a history of Pyrmont and Ultimo' in 2006.
While contemporary technology is used for cutting and lifting large pieces of sandstone, masons doing detailed work still use tools like these.
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