Collits' Inn is a heritage-listed former inn and now functions, accommodation and restaurant at Hartley Vale Road, Hartley Vale, City of Lithgow, New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by Pierce Collits and built in 1823. It is also known as Collitts Inn and Golden Fleece Inn. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999.
History
Pierce Collits was transported to New South Wales in 1801. His wife, Mary, accompanied him on the Minorca as a free woman, and in 1803 she received a grant of on the Castlereagh flood-plain. Macquarie pardoned Pierce in 1810, he became a substantial grazier and held various government positions. After obtaining an additional at Prospect, the Collits family was allowed to settle over the Blue Mountains in 1821 with 145 head of cattle, but Pierce remained as Chief constable on the Nepean until 1823. In 1823 both Lawson's Long Alley down from Mount York, by-passing Coxs Road of 1812, and Bells Line of Road descending midway along Darling Causeway were created. Collits built an inn near the convergence of these roads in the same year, 1823: the inn is shown on Surveyor Hoddle's 1823 map of Bells Line.
Until Mitchell opened Victoria Pass in 1832, Collits Inn, the Golden Fleece, was the premier hostelry on the old western road. It was also a leading place for stock mustering and stock sales, so Collits had substantial holding paddocks on the portion 27 (where the Inn was sited) and on the adjacent of portion 29 to the south (where the cemetery was established). By 1828 Collits was running 360 cattle and 300 sheep of his own.
After a decade of success, with visits from Governors in 1829 and 1832 and the post office franchise in 1830, the Golden Fleece declined after 1834 and Collits opened new inns first in Little Hartley, then in Hartley. The Hartley Vale property then became primarily a farm retained by Pierce Collits until his death in 1848. It passed from the Collits family in the 1860s when the pioneer family of Sodwalls, the Whalans, bought it and retained it as a private house until at least the 1880s. In 1911 Job Commens, son of John Stephen Commens of Duddawarra in Kanimbla and his wife Grace born a Dalziell of Rosevale also in Kanimbla, bought the farm and renamed it Mount York Farm. Job and Grace, with their son Alan, farmed there until 1920, when the farm was leased for three years because of Grace Commens' fourth pregnancy late in life. The Commens sold Mount York when the lease expired in 1923. In 1946 a Croatian immigrant, S Pilarcik, bought the property, joined by his wife in 1965. In 1986 a Permanent Conservation Order (no. 455) under the NSW Heritage Act was placed on the property with a defined curtilage. In 1998 Mrs Pilarcik sold the property to Mr and Mrs Stewart, whose family already held adjacent property.
Historical Period: Built 1800 - 1825 Used 1800 - 1825 Used 1826 - 1850 Used 1851 - 1875 Used 1876 - 1900 Used 1901 - 1925 Used 1926 - 1950 Used 1951 - 1975 Used Post 1975.
Description
Collits' Inn is a single story Old Colonial Georgian building, of weatherboard and brick nog construction. The Collits Inn group consists of the Inn, the Stables, the Barn, the Outbuilding, the Woolshed, the Pit toilet and the External Septic Toilet lying on of Portion 27 in the County of Cook.
The Inn is an excellent example of a wayside Inn from the Colonial period with many of the characteristics of the old Georgian style, including its pleasant human scale, symmetrical facade, stone flagged verandah below a broken-back hipped roof, small pane sash windows and simple chimneys. The Inn has remnant gardens in its vicinity and is set behind a screen of substantial pine trees on the road.
Condition
As at 27 November 2001, the initial archaeological assessment report on the Collit's Inn complex had predicted the potential survival of substantial and significant archaeological evidence relevant to all prior occupation phases.
The completion of the work described in this report confirmed the high archaeological potential of the area within and around Collit's Inn. As a sample transect across the site and through the main Inn building the trenches overall confirmed th epredicted intactness of the archaeological resources of the site. The nature of the historic occupation of the site and of the documentary evidence, means that additional material or deposits, particularly informally established features such as rubbish dumps, may be expected to be present elsewhere in or around the Inn. For this reason unnecessary disturbance of the deposits around or within the Inn itself must not occur within any other future projects.