Tas That Was – Trentham Cottage

During the nineteenth century, Port Arthur was considered a disreputable place because it was a secondary punishment station for convicts. When it was decommissioned in 1877, the Tasmanian government divided the settlement into lots and sold them to private citizens at a series of auctions. By the late 1880s, a small but thriving township called Carnarvon had been established on the site.

One of the people who purchased land at Port Arthur was a man named Samuel Handel Trenham. He and his wife Emma moved to Tasmania from England in 1885 with their five children and bought Lot 13, located in the middle of the Port Arthur site. They ran a general store from inside a small wooden house that already stood on the lot when they purchased it.

When Samuel died in 1897, his 19-year-old daughter Alice inherited Lot 13. Between 1898 and 1904, Trentham Cottage was built, replacing the original timber house.

The Trenham family owned the cottage – and Lot 13 as a whole – until 1947, when the state government bought it back. By then, the government had recognised the historical significance of the former convict settlement, whose name had changed back to Port Arthur from Carnarvon during the 1920s, and it had begun re-acquiring the land and buildings – a process that took decades to complete.

Trentham Cottage and Lot 13 have been restored to what they may have looked like during the 1910s.

Members of the Trenham family on the veranda of Lot 13’s timber house (c.1889).

Trentham: A Virtual Tour (Slow TV)

Tas That Was is a column that includes:

• anecdotes of life in Tasmania in the past;
• historical photographs of locations in Tasmania; and/or
• documentaries about locations in Tasmania.

If you have an anecdote or photograph you’d like to share with us, please send it to submit@tasmaniantimes.com.

Callum J. Jones studied English, History and Journalism at the University of Tasmania and lived in western Sydney from 2022 to 2024 while working as a journalist for Professional Planner, a leading online publication for financial planners. He has written for Tasmanian Times since 2018 and has also been published in a range of other outlets, including Quadrant and the BAD Western Sydney anthologies.