Design and Art Australia Online

sketcher, architect, builder and pastoralist, was born in London, second son of Henry Jackson and Jane, née Paynter. Arriving at Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, with two of his brothers in the Lion on 7 August 1829, Samuel initially set up as a builder at Launceston but soon acquired a busy architectural practice as well, despite the lack of any formal architectural training. Known buildings of this period erected to his design are: Hythe (near Longford); the Georgian Gothick Methodist Sunday School in Paterson Street, Launceston (1835-36); and a house on the corner of Cameron and Charles streets. Albion House (c.1837), a pair of two-storey Regency townhouses at 153-55 George Street, has also been attributed to him.

Arriving at Port Phillip (Victoria) in the brig Chilli on 20 August 1835 with his brother William as members of a pioneering party of hopeful sheep farmers, the Jacksons spent four years farming at Sunbury, living in a rush hut on a site later sold to Sir William Clarke for his grand country residence. Samuel soon returned to Melbourne and established the town’s first private architectural practice. Between about 1840 and 1855 he designed many buildings in Melbourne and Geelong: Melbourne’s original Scots Church (1841-42) – Jackson’s pen and wash plan and elevation, dated 1841, is in the La Trobe Library – both the original box chapel (1839) and the succeeding Carpenters’ Gothic Roman Catholic Church of St Francis (1841-45), the Melbourne Hospital (1846-48), the Italianate Toorak House (1848-51) for his merchant brother (?) James Jackson, and an Italianate villa, Charnwood, at St Kilda (c.1855: demolished).

On 30 July 1841, seated inside a revolving barrel set on the unroofed walls of the Scots Church at the corner of Collins and Russell streets, Jackson drew a 'PANORAMIC Sketch of MELBOURNE Port Phillip from the walls of Scots Church on the Eastern hill’. Measuring 18 feet x 18 inches (5.48 m x 45.7 cm), this pencil view was done with the aid of a Camera Lucida. Brushwork was added later. The resulting panorama was purchased by the Victorian government from Jackson’s descendants in 1888. In 1892 it was the basis for an oil 'cycloramic picture of Old Melbourne’, commissioned by the Victorian government from the scene-painter John Hennings for 500 guineas to adorn the Melbourne Exhibition Building. Both Jackson’s original and Hennings’s 120 × 13 foot (36.5 × 3.9 m) version are in the State Library of Victoria (the latter somewhat the worse for wear). Engravings after sections of Jackson’s picture appeared in the Australasian Sketcher on 15 December 1888 and 18 April 1889.

In 1841 Jackson and Robert Russell submitted an entry in the competition for a stone bridge over the Yarra River and won second prize. In 1845 Jackson moved to St Kilda where a few years later he built a new home, Wattle House. His estate finally comprised 200 acres. In 1847 he purchased Sandford, a 15 000-acre run near Casterton in the Western District of Victoria. He married Mary Ann Lowther in Melbourne in 1852; they had one daughter, another Mary Ann. Jackson appears to have largely abandoned architecture for farming and property development in the 1850s, although he continued to live in Melbourne until he and his family returned to England in 1862. Samuel Jackson died at his Georgian mansion, Yarra House, Enfield, Middlesex, on 7 May 1876 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery, London. He left a large estate, accumulated mainly from land dealings in Victoria. His Melbourne panorama was bequeathed to a nephew.

Writers:

Staff Writer
James McArdle

Date written:

1992

Last updated:

2023