Historic Houses Trust - Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection

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Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection

Royal Society Reading Room. Photographer JOM

The Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection is open to anyone with an interest in the history of house and garden design and interior furnishing in New South Wales.

The collection supports the Historic Houses Trust’s work of interpreting and managing places of cultural significance in New South Wales and provides a specialist research resource for scholars, heritage and conservation practitioners and museum professionals.

It includes material across a wide range of formats: architectural pattern books; architectural fragments; wall coverings; floor coverings; manufacturers’ trade catalogues and sample books; garden ornament; fittings (including curtain and blind hardware, door and window furniture); soft furnishings and trimmings; personal papers and manuscripts; pictures; photographs; books and periodicals. The scope of the collection is broad, covering houses and gardens of all kinds and ranging from the 19th century to the present day. We also record significant houses, interiors and gardens in situ, usually on the point of change, through photographic survey, and sometimes through oral history.

CATALOGUES & DATABASES

Books, periodicals, and other documentary material including photographs and personal papers can be found by searching the Library catalogue. Pictorial materials - paintings, drawings and photographs - including images from the collections of all Historic Houses Trust properties, can be found by searching the Pictures catalogue.

Our collections of wall coverings, floor coverings and garden ornament can be searched through the Museum collections catalogue.

The Colonial plants database is a database of plants known to be available in the colony of New South Wales up until the 1860s. The database comprises more than 11,000 listings, compiled from Botanic Gardens records, nursery catalogues and manuscript plant lists created by colonists like Colonial Secretary Alexander Macleay (1767-1848).