Sydneytecture: Lost Villas of Sydney: Randwick, Bishopscourt 1875

Lost Villas of Sydney: Randwick, Bishopscourt 1875

Original

Today (Google)

Bishopscourt was built in the then-popular Gothic Revival style in 1859 as the official residence of the Anglican Bishop of Sydney. He relocated to Greenoaks in Darling Point in 1909, and the estate became a Catholic convent until it burnt down in 1924.

I've included some subdivision advertisements below which show how Bishopscourt, like many large Sydney estates, was progressively sold off over time, but especially took off during the 1920s land sale boom which saw so much of the Eastern Suburbs turned from basically sand dunes to hundreds of blocks of flats.

Another view of it, in 1880.

Viewed from Coogee Beach in 1887

1925

1887

1899

1925

1926

1927

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Sydneytecture is about more than just vintage photos of Sydney restored in colour. The focus is on once-well known places that have been forgotten, and identifying the interesting details in lost, anonymous images.

I also geolocate old mystery photos.

As an old Sydney architecture buff, I wanted to see how life really looked to our ancestors in these faded black & white photos. But just colouring the old-tech wasn't enough, so I strive to make each photo as realistic as if it was taken by a modern camera. And as I enjoy making these, I thought I'd share them here for anyone who's also interested.

[*It's important to know that there are websites on YouTube and Facebook which claim to show vintage photos of Sydney "come to life". However, they are auto-generated AI, and are just totally fictitious cartoons, full of errors and false-invention, nothing at all 'real'.]

My restorations can take days to craft, to ensure they're accurate to their original for archival purposes.

Google Street View is usually linked, so you can check out how each scene is today. All photos are from Trove, and all dates are confirmed via Sand's Directory and Dove's Maps. I regularly upload new posts.

How I work

As an amateur, I work the manually-intensive way. First, the monochrome source image is enhanced in Photoshop to identify the various elements that require work, along with other areas for concentration. Next, I run any necessary elements through Flux2 for primary colouring. The next stage is layer work and assembling in Affinity. The final stage is PS again, where all the fine work on light levels, contrasts, colouring, toning, and refinements are done. Most importantly, everything is constantly cross-matched with the original source image to ensure accurate replication.

...And yet, as AI engines improve, within a year or two all of this will be redundant, as their image-generation capabilities will no doubt be on par.