The Treasures of Cintra House digitisation project is an exciting collaboration between the University of Newcastle Library’s Special Collections, Maitland City Council, and Catherine E Blanch the current homeowner of Cintra House. Cintra is a grand 1878 residence with a rich local history. With support from the Local Heritage Fund and the homeowner, the 2025 Vera Deacon Intern, Erica Wright, will digitise a unique collection of letters, photographs, and books dating back to the WWI era. Under professional guidance, the intern will preserve these historically significant materials and share them publicly through the Living Histories digital repository.
This initiative not only enhances community access to Maitland’s cultural heritage but also fosters hands-on learning, local storytelling, and future-focused archival practice. The Treasures of Cintra House Project will be regularly updated as more Cintra House archives and items are digitised. The Treasures of Cintra House digitisation project is a collaboration between the University of Newcastle Library’s Special Collections, Maitland City Council, and Catherine E Blanch homeowner of Cintra House; a grand 1878 residence with a rich local history.
With support from the Local Heritage Fund and the homeowner, the 2025 Vera Deacon Intern, Special Collections has digitised a unique collection of letters, photographs, and books dating back to the WWI era. This initiative enhances community access to Maitland’s cultural heritage and also fosters hands-on learning, local storytelling, and future-focused archival practice.
The house Cintra in Regent Street, Maitland, NSW is arguably, along with the later Belltrees near Scone, the most important residential building designed by the Hunter Valley’s leading nineteenth century architect, John Wiltshire Pender, and one of the region’s most significant surviving Victorian buildings.
Built in 1878 and then extended in 1887, it is an excellent example of the Victorian Italianate style, with prominent tower and fine cast iron lacework, and surrounded by its original landscaped gardens, stables and ornamental gates. It forms a commanding presence in Regent Street, a residential heritage precinct which includes a dozen buildings designed by the Pender practice, of which Cintra and its neighbour the benevolent home Benhome (1884) form the dominant features.
Apart from its intrinsic architectural quality and importance within its physical context, Cintra also has a particular historical significance within its region. Its architect, John W. Pender, played an important role in the development of the Hunter region during the nineteenth century, as an architect, manufacturer, entrepreneur and civic leader, and his architectural practice was continued after him by his son Walter and grandson Ian.
Their record of 125 years of continuous architectural practice, probably the longest in Australia, has been preserved in their original drawings, specifications and other records which are now conserved in the library of the University of Newcastle, including the documents for Cintra, one of their finest buildings.
Cintra also is significant in terms of its original owners, the connected Levy and Cohen families, important merchants in Maitland, Newcastle and Sydney, as well as in the UK. Benn Levy, who was Pender’s client for the first stage of Cintra in 1878, was nephew of David Lewis (Levy), the founder of the celebrated Lewis’s department store in Liverpool UK, while Neville Cohen, who built the 1887 extensions, was cousin of George Cohen, the ‘doyen’ of Australian banking and chairman of the CBC Bank at the end of the nineteenth century. Benn Levy and his siblings donated the Levy fountain at the Woolloomooloo gates of the Botanical Gardens in Sydney.
Barry Maitland Emeritus Professor, BA, Dip Arch, MA, PhD, LFRAIA
