Summary

This item is one of our 50 Treasures: Celebrating 50 years of James Cook University.

Trisha Fielding answers the question 'Why is this significant?'

This framed group of portraits, signed by Townsville staff members of the north Queensland architectural firm, Tunbridge & Tunbridge, was presented to the firm's founder, Walter Howard Tunbridge, 'as a small token of their esteem', on 24 March 1904. Framed in a collection of north Queensland timbers, the portraits – depicting members of the firm at the height of their work in north Queensland – may have been a parting gift to Tunbridge, who married in Brisbane just two weeks later, and did not return to Townsville.

Walter Howard Tunbridge was born in Kent, England, in 1856, and after emigrating to Queensland in 1884, was employed as an architect with timber merchants Rooney Bros. In 1887, his younger brother, Oliver Allan Tunbridge, joined him in Townsville, and together they established the firm of Tunbridge & Tunbridge.

They soon became leading architects, designing many well-known buildings throughout the north. Locally these included: the Metropole, Victoria Bridge, Lowth's, and Great Northern Hotels; Bishop's Lodge, North Ward; and the Grandstand and totalisator buildings at Cluden Racecourse. Further afield, their designs included: St Margaret's Church of England, in Croydon; and the North Gregory, Railway, and Post Office Hotels, in Winton. Their best-known residential work is Thornburgh House in Charters Towers – the magnificent villa residence they designed for E.H.T. Plant was built in 1890.

The Tunbridge brothers had distinguished military careers, and both served in the Boer War and later the First World War. Between 1902 and 1909, Lieutenant Colonel W.H. Tunbridge was aide-de-camp to the Governor-General and in 1918 was made a brevet colonel in the Australian Military Forces.

After marrying Leila Brown in Brisbane in 1904, W.H. Tunbridge moved to Melbourne, where he established a branch of Tunbridge & Tunbridge. He is credited with designing one of Melbourne's first reinforced concrete buildings – Bank Place Chambers (also known as Whitehall). He retired from architecture in the mid-1930s.

One of the architects pictured, Charles Dalton Lynch, joined the firm around 1899, and became a partner from 1902, after which time it was known as Tunbridge, Tunbridge and Lynch. Lynch is credited with designing Buchanan's Hotel in Sturt Street.

Curiously, Oliver Tunbridge is missing from the staff portraits. Oliver managed the Charters Towers branch of the firm until around 1896, and later managed the Rockhampton office, so this may account for his omission from the staff portraits, which date to 1904.