THE IMPORTANCE OF CURTILAGE

PRIVATE COLLECTION

The term ‘heritage curtilage’ is generally defined as: the area of land surrounding an item or area of heritage significance which is essential for retaining and interpreting its heritage significance. It can apply to land immediately surrounding an item or, more broadly, to a precinct which includes associated buildings, works, relics, trees or places and their setting. This might seem comprehensive but its also obscure and far too overwhelming, leading to a claim to include everything or nothing.

In a recent ‘Curtilage Study’ of Elizabeth Farm, consultant town planner Robyn Conroy reminds us that ‘the heritage significance of Elizabeth Farm does not stop at its boundary fences’. [Robyn Conroy Curtilage Study Elizabeth Farm for Historic Houses Trust, June 2006]

At Elizabeth Farm, the historic curtilage spreads outwards covering several hundred acres, owned both privately and publicly, under domestic, commercial, recreational and industrial use. The portion of land occupied by the homestead represents less than 1% of the former estate. The conservation of Elizabeth Farm might be said to include, or even depend upon, the protection of land owned and controlled by others.

So lets approach this from a different perspective … Conroy goes on: if the significance of Elizabeth Farm is dependent upon the maintenance of the existing, or surviving landscape (the oldest and perhaps most important colonial landscape in Australia) and where change can only be accepted as inevitable, then we need to combine consciousness raising and community awareness with planning controls and creative urban solutions.