Marble table

Historic Houses Trust Members funded the acquisition of an important and long sought after marble-topped cedar centre table for Elizabeth Bay House. The marble is a brecciated marble from the Limekilns quarry near Bathurst, New South Wales. It had been sold in the late 1960s by a descendant of Thomas Burdekin (1784–1844), auctioneer and builder of Burdekin House, Macquarie Street, Sydney.

The table is a particularly appropriate acquisition for Elizabeth Bay House. A marble circular table was listed for the saloon in the inventory of the estate of Lady (Susan) Macleay, compiled in 1903. The entrance hall was furnished with a pair of marble-topped cedar hall tables and it is likely that the adjacent rooms were furnished ensuite. The use of Australian stone and marble in furniture and architectural fittings is a little-known aspect of colonial craftsmanship. The Elizabeth Bay House saloon floor, staircase and several upper floor chimneypieces are of a finely grained and figured Marulan mudstone, known in the 1830s as ‘Cowpastures stone’.

Marble was discovered in the Marulan district in 1828. The Sydney Morning Herald reported on the discovery of a white marble in the Bathurst region in April 1843. Although it is not known when the grey Limekilns brecciated marble was discovered, it was used in the 1840s at Rosedale, an inn operated by the Tobin family at Limekilns.  William Patten advertised the sale of ‘circular marble tables for drawing rooms’ in the Herald in 1844 and it is likely that the table acquired for Elizabeth Bay House was made at Patten’s Australian Marble Works in Pitt Street.