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Hyde Park Barracks Museum

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Sydney Living Museums curator Fiona Starr sitting on a hammock at the Hyde Park Barracks. Photo © Scott Finneran for Sydney Living Museums

Open Today

 
10AM - 5PM
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Entry

Adult  | $12 
Concession  | $8 
Family  | $30 
Members  | Free of charge
Children under 5 years  | Free of charge

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Address

Queens Square, Macquarie Street, Sydney, NSW 2000

Phone

Museum: 02 8239 2311
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Sydney Living Museums Image

The World Heritage listed Hyde Park Barracks is one of the most significant convict sites in the world. A crossroads for tens of thousands of people, it played a central role in the world’s largest and longest-running system of convict transportation.

Convicts

1819–1848

In May 1819 Hyde Park Barracks opened to house convict men working in government gangs around Sydney.

Who were the Hyde Park Barracks convicts?

Women

1848–1887

With the end of transportation, the main building was converted into Sydney's female Immigration Depot in 1848. 

Irish orphan girls at Hyde Park Barracks

Courts

1887–1979

From 1887 Hyde Park Barracks was taken over by courts and government offices and became a bustling legal centre for Sydney.

Irritatingly bad buildings

 

Museum

1979 – present

Restored and excavated in NSW's first publicly-funded archaeological dig, the World Heritage-listed Hyde Park Barracks is now a museum about itself.

Australian Convict Sites: World Heritage

 

Videos

Replacing the hammocks at the Hyde Park Barracks Museum Play Video
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Learn about the history of the clock at the Hyde Park Barracks Play Video
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News from Hyde Park Barracks Museum

Entrance gates to museum with scaffolding over two gatehouses.

Hyde Park Barracks

Museum open during conservation workMonday 8 May 2017

Beneath the scaffolding now covering the gateposts and guardhouses of Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney Living Museums is conserving the 200-year-old stonework.

More
Group of five people.

Hyde Park Barracks

Irish Minister of State visits Hyde Park BarracksFriday 17 March 2017

Old newspaper print cartoon of man lying drunk outside a whiskey, rum and brandy shop with a sign reading: Specimen of the work done inside.

New online

Floor'd & spoony: convicts in solitaryTuesday 21 February 2017

Two actors dressed as convicts

Hyde Park Barracks

Convict Escapades Audition NoticeMonday 20 February 2017

Man smiling as he looks at inner workings of clock.

Hyde Park Barracks

Family time: the Hyde Park Barracks clockMonday 13 February 2017

Recently we had a visitor from the UK, Chris Vulliamy, who is a direct descendant of Benjamin Vulliamy (1747 - 1811) - the designer of the Hyde Park Barracks clock.

More

Online shop

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Buy
A Forger's Progress
The Life of Francis Greenway $50.00
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Joseph Lycett Convict Artist
The life and work of one of Australia's earliest colonial artists $39.95
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Sydney Views 1788-1888
From the Beat Knoblauch collection $49.95
Book cover with image of Arthur Phillip sinking into painted waterscape with seagull on his hat.
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Girt
The Unauthorised History of Australia $29.99
Groups of men standing or sitting in a town square, some of whom are looking back toward large building, Hyde Park Barracks, with front wall featuring dome-roofed cottages on either side of a large timber gate. Clouds drift overhead.
Prisoners' Barracks, Hyde Park
Group of seated students pointing at wall.
Rats: Convict Tales education program
alt text needed
Hyde Park Barracks tableau
A museum visitor looks at a large white wall featuring an elaborate and extensive arrangement of convict tools.
Convict Sydney exhibition
Imposing 3 storey brick building with clock set into gable end of roof, overlooking courtyard and town square. A person is walking towards the open front door of the building through the main entrance gates, past a pair of guardhouses.
Hyde Park Barracks and Queen's Square
Young girl wearing red jumper, leaning against display panel, views large photographic reproduction of colonial painting
Children visitors enjoy Convict Sydney exhibition, Hyde Park Barracks Museum
Children in straw hats and billowing cotton shirts standing inside open wrought iron gates in front of brick barracks building.
Students dressed as convicts
Top of dome with foliage of tree in background.
Guardhouse roof dome
Visitors and stalls at the Christmas Markets
At the Christmas Markets
Closeup of the Barrack's clock movement cogs and gears with numerals partly visible.
Detail view of clock
View along interior corridor towards sunlit window, with wooden ceiling arches visible.
Corridor

Featured stories from Hyde Park Barracks Museum

A group of convicts gathers outside the gates to the Hyde Park Barracks. An overseer and a redcoat watch over.

A day in the life of a convict

A convict’s life depended on who they worked for, where they worked and the kind of skills they had to offer.
Numerals 1 to 10 overlayed on orange transparent background with convict gaming pieces image below. Words: Top 10 Convict Artefacts.

Top 10 convict artefacts from Hyde Park Barracks: 1819-1848

Worn, torn, crafted, mended, stored, hidden, traded, gambled, or adapted by convicts – these convict artefacts found at Hyde Park Barracks are amongst the rarest and most personal artefacts to have survived from Australia’s early convict period.
Dramatic photo of lake or river with rocky shore, bordered with high grassy mountains and a road along the left hand shore.

Irish orphan girls at Hyde Park Barracks

In the few years between 1848 and 1850, a total of 4114 orphan girls, each one of them drawn from bleak Irish workhouses, were chosen to sail to Australia under a remarkable, controversial and short-lived immigration scheme.

Scan from photo print

Archaeology in action: Hyde Park Barracks

Occupied continuously by government institutions throughout its history and with over 100,000 individuals passing through, Hyde Park Barracks has a rich archaeological record.
Sydney Living Museums Image

Between 1819 and 1848, convicts living at Hyde Park Barracks were employed mostly by the government and known as ‘government men’. Barracks convicts had a different life from those who were assigned to work for free settlers.