The Badridge brothers – Thomas, the City Surveyor, and Edward, the City Building Surveyor – designed the main clock tower. By late 1872 doubts were being expressed about the stability of this tower, with Horbury Hunt, one of the colony’s leading architects, making a public statement implying that the Council was being irresponsible in not appointing a professional architect. Hunt, of course, was pleading in favour of a profession only just then gaining some public recognition, and most men in the city who styled themselves architects had, in fact, been trained as surveyors or builders, gaining their architectural knowledge through practical experience and not through formal academic or professional training. The relevant Council officers made reports to Council assuring aldermen of the tower’s stability and of their own competence, but it had to be admitted that earlier that year the contractors had agreed to increasing the stability through additional buttressing.

(image: City of Sydney Archives, SRC Photographic Files)