Hyde Park Barracks

This guide to Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney follows Francis Greenway, a convicted forger shipped from Bristol in chains, and the strange assignment Governor Lachlan Macquarie hands him: design a barracks to lock down six hundred convict men after dark. It traces the building from its 1817 foundation stone to the doors opening two years later, and the life it took on afterward, housing migrant women and the destitute long after the convicts were gone. Picture the hammocks strung two rows deep.