The Forgotten Valley of the Hawkesbury

POSTPONED

Explore Wisemans Ferry and St Albans – the river communities of inns and pioneer homes. There are many fascinating sites on the itinerary providing bespoke experiences especially for the HHA. Hear from private owners and local historians as they take us on exclusive tours of historic properties and landscapes and tell the story of this remarkable hidden valley.
 
Highlights include Price Morris Cottage (1835 wattle and daub timber cottage), the Industrious Settler (former inn with 1820s slab cottage, outbuildings & Walters family settler graves); the delightful Settler’s Arms Inn (1840s two storey stone Georgian Inn) and St Joseph’s Church (restored 1839 sandstone Gothic Catholic church & cemetery and winner of the NSW National Trust 2013 Best Heritage Restoration Award). We will also have time on this two-day tour to visit Cobham Hall, the original home of Solomon Wiseman and other significant historic bridges, churches, houses and graveyards along the way.

The Vice-Regal Retreat: Southern Highlands Tour

POSTPONED

This unique guided tour of the beautiful Southern Highlands, showcases its destination as a summer holiday resort during the 19th century. Once the NSW Governors came here for their holidays, the elite of Sydney followed, joining early grantees to form the idyllic lifestyle of summer hunts and hunt balls.

Judith Dunn OAM leads the tour and takes you into houses not usually open to the public (including Hopewood House, Throsby Park and Golden Vale Homestead). You will follow the ridge line of the Mittagong Range stud farms known as 'the nursery slopes of NSW’, enjoy exclusive fine dining experiences and curated tours including Joadja ghost town and Hillview. Other highlights: the rare surviving summer residence of 16 Governors and a beautiful vice-regal church.

English Arts and Crafts Houses, Gardens and Collections

7 - 23 May 2021

17 day fully escorted tour led by Dr James Broadbent AM.

This study tour of England will focus on the Arts and Crafts Movement. Arising from the polemics of William Morris and John Ruskin and assuming its name from the Arts and Crafts Exhibition of 1888, the Arts and Crafts Movement surely and quickly transformed the architecture, garden design and decorative arts of late 19​th​ Century and early 20​th​ Century Britain. It remains a significant influence in contemporary design. 

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Our tour encompasses the work of the Movement’s major designers – including William Morris, Philip Webb, C.F.A. Voysey, Charles Robert Ashbee, Detmar Blow, Gertrude Jekyll, Edwin Lutyens, Ernest Gimson and the Barnsley brothers – visiting major examples of their work in the Home Counties, the West Country and the Cotswolds. 
 
As with all the HHA study tours there are also visits to many important but smaller and more unusual places and to houses, gardens and collations not normally open to the public. 

Historic Houses and Gardens of Ireland - Part II South from Dublin  

5 - 19 June 2021

Following his popular 2018 Irish tour, north from Dublin to Belfast, Dr James Broadbent is leading a second tour starting again in Dublin but travelling south through the counties of Kilkenny, Waterford, Cork, Kerry and Limerick visiting ancient sites, historic gardens, landscapes, “ruins in demesnes deserted”, private country houses and public museums.

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From Edwin Lutyens’ formal Heywood Gardens to Harold Peto’s Italianate island garden of Ilnacullin, the Victorian exuberance of Bantry House and the cottage quirkiness of Boyce’s Garden; from romantic Lismore, a seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, and the Marquis of Waterford’s grand Curraghmore to Rothe House, a merchant’s townhouse of the early seventeenth century and from the sad, picturesque ruins of Duckett’s Grove and the preposterous gate lodges of Ballysaggartmore, our visits, as usual, range from the impressive to the eccentric. All tell the story of the country and its culture.

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