Maryborough Courthouse is a heritage-listed courthouse at 170 Richmond Street, Maryborough, Fraser Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. It was designed by Francis Drummond Greville Stanley and built in 1877 by John Thomas Annear for the Queensland Government. It is also known as Maryborough Court House and Government Offices. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
The complex was the first large court building designed for a rural town in Queensland. It was the forerunner for several other buildings in regional areas. The building is rectangular in form with corner towers and connecting verandahs, and was constructed in rendered brick, with timber work forming the verandahs. The building stands as part of the historic Wharf Street precinct in central Maryborough. The courthouse has been in continuous use by the supreme, district and magistrates courts of Queensland since it was completed in 1878, making it the longest serving and oldest courthouse in use in Queensland.
History
The Maryborough Courthouse was constructed in 1877 to the design of the then Queensland Colonial Architect, FDG Stanley for use as both a courthouse and as offices for Queensland Government departments. The building is the second Maryborough Courthouse replacing an earlier 1860s building constructed on another site.
The original township of Maryborough was situated, not in its current place, but on the north of the Mary River, after wharves were established in 1847-1848, to provide transport for wool from sheep stations on the Burnett River. In 1852 the growing town was gradually transferred further south where ships were better able to navigate the river. Development followed and by March 1861, Maryborough was declared a municipality (the Borough of Maryborough) and Henry Palmer was appointed as the first Mayor.
During the late 1860s and 1870s Maryborough developed rapidly as the port of the nearby Gympie goldfields. The first circuit court hearings were held in local hotels from the late 1850s. In about 1856 a permanent courthouse and lockup for Maryborough were designed by Alexander Dawson, Colonial Architect of New South Wales. By 1857 the New South Wales Government voted that the sum of be spent on the erection of a courthouse and lockup, but it seems this was not completed until after the Separation of Queensland in the early 1860s and seems to be unattributable to Alexander Dawson. These brick buildings, supposedly the first brick structures in Maryborough, were built on the corner of Kent and Adelaide Streets, on the site of the present City Hall, which had been reserved for courthouse use in early Maryborough surveys. Repairs and additions were made to these buildings in 1871 but, soon after, plans were being prepared for a new courthouse. This was to be constructed on another site several blocks to the east of the first site, which had become available in 1874 following the relocation of the emigration barracks and the consequent extension of the adjacent Queen's Park.
FDG Stanley, the Colonial Architect of Queensland was responsible for the design of the new building. Stanley arrived in Queensland in 1861 from Scotland where he trained. He was appointed to the Office of the Colonial Architect in 1863 as a clerk of works and in 1872 succeeded Charles Tiffin as the Colonial Architect. Prior to being asked to design the Maryborough Courthouse, Stanley was already experienced in the design of large public buildings, although this was early in his prolific career in Queensland.
