In 1896, the grand hotel, Jenolan Caves House, was built, as a wilderness retreat for the wealthy¹. It was designed in the Colonial Architect’s office, under the supervision of Colonel Walter Liberty Vernon (1846 – 1914).

The rambling, 4-storey hotel complex was designed in an ‘English Domestic Revival’ style, which was then being employed for the best hotels in Britain of the 1890s.²  The style has been called the ‘Sussex Wealden’ style and also the ‘Federation Arts & Crafts’ style.

It is characterized by craggy façade, picturesque gables, knobbly tile roof and deep recessed openings with multi-paned windows, giving the new building an instant air of old-age, charm and respectability

Caves House sits alongside Jenolan Caves, Australia’s most well-known limestone cave system and longest continually operating tourist attraction.

Caves House, along with all the buildings in the Jenolan Caves Karst Conservation Reserve, was added to the NSW State Heritage Register in 2004.

Considerable changes have been made to the buildings over the years, but today Caves House is rightly regarded as one of the finest large guest houses still functioning as tourist accommodation.

Caves House is regarded as an icon of the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia.

Walter Liberty Vernon was born in Buckinghamshire, England. He was trained in England and emigrated to Australia in 1885. In 1890, he was appointed the Chief Government Architect (NSW).

“Throughout Vernon’s 21 years in this post, hundreds of building were designed and constructed by the Public works Department under his supervision, such as The Art Gallery of NSW, Mitchell Library and Sydney Central Railway Station. He employed a range of styles, but all reflecting his early training and English influences. Caves House appears to be his first public building employing an English vernacular revival style. Caves House can be seen as influenced by the large country houses in England such as Standen in Sussex, St. Alban’s Court in Kent, Avon Tyrell in Hampshire and Cragside in Northumberland. All are in the English vernacular revival style with its stress on homeliness and simplicity and whose advocates took care to base each building on the building customs and materials of the region in which it was built.”³

Jenolan Caves House was built from limestone quarried on site.

"Caves House itself was designed to appeal to the sophisticated, financially comfortable element of society, the intellectual and the curious. For such clientele the building offered a range of handsome public spaces, including the necessarily grand Dining Room, Billiards Room and Coffee Room, while exhibiting a diversity of accommodation to suit the varying means (and needs) of the patrons”4 .

To be listed on the NSW State Heritage Register, Jenolan Caves House was identified as meeting a range of cultural standards - aesthetic, historic and social, which make it significant for past, present or future generations.

Aesthetic significance

“Vernon was influenced by his British background, contemporary fashion and the ‘romance’ of Jenolan Caves. He designed a hotel “complex whose distinctive characteristics are its notional signature in the minds of the community, an instantly recognizable place. Caves House, indivisibly associated with the Caves themselves, is for most Australians, and certainly all those who have visited, a place of national identity, of a unique individual character ‘impossible’ to mistake. The surrounding landscape of Caves House, the craggy hills surrounding the creeks that give into the Grand Arch and form the Jenolan River, comprise a setting of the highest aesthetic value, and one which has attracted a unique, national identity, celebrated in literature, art and popular culture.⁵”

Historic significance

Caves house “was developed through its association with one of the earlier-discovered, and earliest protected and celebrated, sites of natural environmental heritage in Australia (and the World).

"It was amongst the earliest, if not actually the earliest, of natural environment heritage sites within Australia to be developed for tourist visitation and by a Government authority, and, after setting the model for such developments in the new Nation, has survived to become the last of its ilk remaining under government management.

"Its principal component, the caves, have held an immense attraction for visitors across more than a century, based on their scientific, aesthetic and curiosity/spectacle value, through their accessibility have influenced scientific knowledge, aesthetic/cultural expression, and the community which has perceived, and perceives them still, as part of its national estate, common natural heritage, and national identity.

"Its built fabric and modifications to the natural setting of the place include a distinctive and architecturally-distinguished principal building, the work of an architect prominent and influential in the development of Australian architecture, employing locally innovative construction technology to address the problems of high standards of performance in an isolated setting.

"The provision of access to, and interpretation of, the Caves supported early and innovative engineering works such as Australia’s first hydro-electric generation plant, and possibly the first subterranean lighting installation, for recreational purposes, in the World. The physical evidence of this work survives.”⁶

Social Significance

“The Caves House Precinct is also a remarkable reflection of the social forces and influences in Australia – developing social homogeneity, and the relationship between ‘man’ and ‘Nature’, or Australians and the ‘bush’.

"From its early exclusivity, reserved by inaccessibility and isolation for the enjoyment of the wealthy, the Precinct has evolved, through an accelerating pursuit of maximum accessibility for educational and recreational purposes.

"Encouraged by prevalent romantic and religious conceptions of the relationship between man and his environment, as much if not more than scientific curiosity and educational objectives, the fabric of the Precinct was developed so as to consolidate, in its visitors the conceptions behind its form and functional arrangement. Inherited by subsequent generations of visitors and management of differing philosophical subscriptions as well as social perspective, the Precinct has evolved until reaching a point of conflict within new concepts of man and the natural environment.

"In the contemporary context of concern for the integrity and fragility of natural resources such as the Caves and their setting, balanced with regard for the cultural importance of the modifications and the improvement wrought by earlier generations, Caves House Precinct assumes a landmark status in Australian environmental consciousness, emphasized by its popularity in the community.”

Caves were long known to local Aboriginal people, and were discovered by European settlers in 1838. From then, until 1880, sightseers could spend the night camping in the Grand Arch or Devil’s Coach House cave.

In 1867, Jeremiah Wilson, a local farmer, was appointed ‘Keeper of the Caves’. Visitors would write to Mr Wilson advising him of their intention to visit. Meeting them at Tarana train station, he would take them by buggy through Oberon and walk them down last the two miles into the Jenolan Valley, because the decent was too steep and unsuitable for a vehicle.

The night was spent camping in the Grand Arch – ladies on one side, gentlemen on the other. Smoke from their camp fires can still be seen on the stalactites in the Woolshed Chamber of the Imperial Cave. For entertainment a platform for dancing was erected in 1869, the floor of the Grand Arch being rocky and uneven.

In 1880, the Department of Mines, which managed the caves, provided Mr Wilson with materials to erect a building, 40 feet long by 14 feet wide and covered with corrugated iron. This first ‘Caves House’, white washed to provide sealing from the weather, contained 4 bedrooms and a dining room. The kitchen was separate, in case of fire - a common risk at the time.

In 1883, The Australian Town & Country Journal reported:
“It is evident that increase of accommodation at the caves is necessary, at least during holiday times. On examining the visitors' book from January 1 to March 20, 1883, the names of 158 visitors are entered, and during the few days we were there, inclusive of ourselves, the number increased fully 50 more, a well-known contributor to the Sydney papers being among the number. There should then be better accommodation.”⁸

In 1886, the fee for an overnight stay in this rough accommodation was only 8 shillings.⁹ Jeremiah Wilson was flooded by requests for accommodation. As the fame of the caves spread, visitors came in ever increasing numbers, especially when the roads into the valley were completed. The first Caves House quickly proved inadequate, and extensive building work was undertaken.

In 1887, a two-storey wooden building was erected where ‘Trails Bistro’ is today, catering for 30 visitors. The same year, Governor Lord Carrington, and his wife Cecelia traversed the new Six Foot Track from Katoomba. They spent 2 nights at Jenolan Caves, staying in the first Caves House.

In 1888, 1,829 visitors arrived, making further expansion necessary. So, in 1890, an additional structure was erected, alongside the original Caves House, replacing the 1879 kitchen.

Unfortunately, in 1895 fire destroyed the old dining room, kitchen and one of the 2-storey accommodation houses. Jeremiah Wilson was unable to rebuild, and his lease was resumed by the New South Wales Government.

1896 to 1906 was marked by a strong government commitment to develop the caves as a resort for wealthy travelers and as a retreat from Sydney. Sir Sydney Smith, Minister for Mines, who ultimately controlled the affairs of Jenolan Caves, determined that any rebuilding would be of the highest standards.¹⁰

Government Architect, Walter Liberty Vernon, designed the first wing of Caves House, built in 1897, which could then be reached by a new road from Katoomba via Hartley. The improvements cost the NSW Government £30,000¹¹ which in today’s money would be approximately $4,101,345.32 (based on an average annual inflation rate of 3.9% over 111 years).

Vernon designed Caves House in an ‘Arts & Crafts’ style to reflect the romantic and picturesque associations of the caves, describing it as a “large comfortable hotel of the type best known in the tourist districts of England, Scotland and Ireland”¹².

In 1897 the Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens Joseph Henry Maiden remodeled and terraced the slopes around Caves House, providing a setting of park-like gardens.

A 1915, NSW Government guide book, written by Oliver Trickett (who first surveyed the Caves System) gave a fulsome description of Caves House:

“This building is of attractive appearance, solidly built of the Caves lime stone. It contains a dining room capable of seating 120 guests and has a detached billiard –room. There are hot and cold water bath – rooms, and an ample water supply from two reservoirs a short distance up the camp creek. A bathing place is also available in the Jenolan River, below the Grand Archway, at the Fish Hatchery.

"The Caves House is surrounded by tastefully laid –out gardens and is reached by first class roads constructed by the government at very large expense.

Visitors may rely on being as comfortably housed as at any resort for holiday makers in the mountains.”

• 1917 - Caves still popular during the Great War
• 1918 - Plans for farm on the banks of the river, to feed Caves House guests
• 1919 - Flood of Caves House
• 1919 - Flu Outbreak
• 1927 - Overnight stay by Duke & Duchess of York
• 1942 - Caves House menaced by bushfires
• 1942 - Caves House nearly closed, as war time transport problems led to record low attendance
• 1947 - Caves house benefits from post WW2 travel boom

Now, Caves House offers accommodation for all needs and budgets, from historic guesthouse rooms to modern, motel-style rooms in the Mountains Lodge (which was added in 1986).

Caves House features a café, bar, atmospheric function rooms and magnificent grand dining room, now Chisolm’s Restaurant.