National Trust Register

Service NSW

The National Trust of Australia (NSW) maintains a Register of landscapes, townscapes, buildings, industrial sites, cemeteries and other items or places which the Trust determines have cultural significance and are worthy of conservation.

While the Trust Register has no legal force, it has many active purposes for many people. A Trust classification is regarded as an authoritative statement on the heritage significance of a place.

The purpose of the Register is to alert responsible authorities, property owners and the public to the heritage significance of a place. Classification by the Trust and the information contained on the classification card may assist in the decision making process and ultimately the conservation of places and items.

The Trust Register serves as an independent early warning to identify places that are important and that could be under threat.

About the Trust Register

Why is the Trust Register important?

While the Trust Register has no legal force, it has many active purposes for many people. A Trust classification is regarded as an authoritative statement on the heritage significance of a place. Often classification cards are referred to by local councils in considering applications for demolition or alteration of a place. Councils (and government agencies) use the Trust Register and Classifications as a basis for preparing heritage studies for their area or department.

The Trust Register is of value for a variety of reasons, its broadest value is in being an all inclusive single Register for the state of New South Wales. As such it is of use on a comparative basis over the whole state.

How to access the Trust Register

The National trust’s NSW Register is not currently available online.

However, you can either visit our Archives in person at the National Trust Centre to view the Register, or you can email an enquiry to advocacy@nationaltrust.com.au to see if a place is listed. If a place is listed, a copy of the listing card can be made available to you.

We also hold extensive records relating to listed and unlisted places in our Archives that can be of benefit to researchers. Our Archives webpage has more information.

What protection does the Trust Register give?

The National Trust is a community-based, non-government organisation, and as such it has no statutory power. The Trust’s Register is intended to perform an advisory and educational role.

The listing of a place in the Register has no legal force. However, it is widely recognised as an authoritative statement of the heritage significance of a place. However, if a place becomes threatened, the Trust may campaign and advocate for its protection. Specific campaigns are conducted to save threatened places, to stimulate debate and to raise the level of public and government awareness of the need to conserve our heritage.

If a National Trust classified place is under threat, please contact us. We will also advise you to take action, particularly with the local council.

How to nominate a place to the Trust Register

The process of listing a place on our Register involves the identification and assessment of the place using criteria to indicate its cultural significance – its historic, aesthetic, social and scientific value for past, present and future generations.

This assessment is carried out by a\our technical staff and a number of expert committees who advise the Trust on items to be placed on the Register. These committees are made up of individuals with professional qualifications, such as architects, historians, archaeologists, planners, botanists, lawyers, educationalists and landscape architects, who all give their time freely to the Trust.

If you wish to nominate a place to our Heritage Register, please contact one of our Advocacy staff on 02 9258 0123 or at advocacy@nationaltrust.com.au

They can provide you with more information on the nomination process, the information we require and the nomination form.

Latest additions to the Trust Register

Harry Sielder Houses, Kurnell

The six houses at the former Australian Oil Refinery, Kurnell, are seminal early works of the distinguished Modernist architect Harry Seidler (1923-2006).
They are a rare example in his oeuvre of low-scale grouped housing.
The group displays Seidler’s interest in buildings of simple plan and flat-roofed form using large areas of glass and a limited palette of materials to create spatial continuity between interior and exterior spaces. Variety and visual interest are created by inflecting the plan and positioning of garages. These early modern houses would have been considered daring and futuristic in 1955 but they perfectly reflect the spirit of their time, all the more so given their close association with that quintessentially 20th century industry: an oil refinery.

Tarpaulin Factory, Enfield

The Tarpaulin Factory is historically significant for being formed from buildings formerly located at the former Sydney Yards, prior to the decentralisation of goods traffic away from the centre of the city, and is evidence of the expansion of the NSW Government Railways at the end of the 19th century.
It is also significant as a major surviving example of local iron manufacturing in Sydney in the late nineteenth century.
The cast and wrought iron structure is a rare surviving example of this building technology.

Glenleigh Old Homestead, Gooloogong

The group of original buildings of the Glenleigh homestead is a rare surviving group of mid-nineteenth
century timber buildings with corrugated iron roofs that record and represent a typical
early settler farming homestead in the region.
The buildings are intact and in fair condition, though
unoccupied now, and exhibit a rough rustic charm.
The homestead group includes a later brick
homestead that provides evidence of the evolution of the farm from its early years to a position of
prosperity in the early twentieth century.

Significant Trees Register

The National Trusts of Australia have collaborated to create a National Register of Significant Trees. This Register is consistent with our mission to protect and celebrate Australia's heritage.

Learn more here

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