Highfield House in Stanley, Tasmania Australia was built by convict labour from 1826 to 1835. Highfield House was built for Edward Kurr Chief Agent for the Van Dieman's Land Company (Tasmania).  One can do a tour of the house plus the grounds which we have done and will do again hopefully.

The ruins below is where the convicts stayed whilst building Highfield - unfortunately not much is left of these buildings today.

The paddock once contained yards, cells, thatched huts to house the Convict stonemasons who were building the Ross Bridge in 1833.  By the early 1840's a large punishment station had sprouted with sufficient space for some 300 chained road gang convicts and male probation prisons that followed them.

Between 1847 - 48 the building were adapted especially for use as the Ross Female Factory, which operated as a convict hiring depot, nursery, probation and punishment station.  Over the next 7 years hundreds of female felons served time behind the conspicuous high security fence until the establishment's closure in 1855.

Ross Female Factory accommodated between 60 - 120 women at any one time.  These women were typically unmarried and aged in their mid twenties.  Around 40 of their infant children were confined separately in the nursery wing.

Of the 74,000 convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) between 1804 - 54 some 12,500 were women.

The prison walls and structures have all but disappeared, however, many layers of this site's history lie buried in government records and in the archaeology underfoot.

Male Bridge Gang 1833 - 36
Male Road & Punishment Station 1841 - 46
Male Probation Station 1846 - 47
Female Factory 1848 - 55
Police Station & Residence 1895 - 1938
Farm Residence 1938 - 80
Heritage Site 1980 - present

*Notes taken from the Signs at Ross.

Cottage at the back right