Berrima Vault House

Situated in heritage-listed Berrima, Australia’s best-preserved 1800s village, this unique building started life as Taylor’s Crown Inn, hand-built by convicts in 1844 using local sandstone. Berrima was founded in 1831 with surveyor Robert Hoddle (later Melbourne’s planner) taking design cues from traditional English villages. This meant administrative buildings like the Berrima Gaol and Courthouse were built - along with 13 public houses to satisfy a growing thirst. Taylor’s was one of those first pubs and was soon joined by the barracks, built to accommodate wardens from the gaol - what’s now known as the Southern Highland’s largest fireplace was where they grabbed some shut-eye. Over the years Taylor’s Crown Inn has been a public house, private house, restaurant, art gallery, bakery and more, mirroring the changing fortunes of Berrima itself. History shows that by the 1860s, Berrima was ready to take on a more significant role in the region, and the expectation was the rail line from Sydney to Goulburn would pass through the village bringing further growth. When that failed to materialise, the village contracted and became just another stop on the main road south. The opening of the bypass in the late 1980s reinvigorated tourism to Berrima, an industry that thrives today, with the village recently winning the NSW Top Tourism Town award.