The Mount Victoria Police Station with an attached residence were designed by the New South Wales Government Architect, James Barnet, in 1886. Barnet was an influential and esteemed architect, responsible for the designs of defence works, courthouses, lockups, police stations and post offices throughout the state including the General Post Office and substantial enlargements to Customs House in Sydney.

The original late-Victorian building facing Station Street is a fine sandstone and brick building comprising four rooms including the police office, a kitchen and two cells as well as a drill yard and residence. It was built in 1887 at a cost of £800.

Although Mount Victoria was home to a convict stockade in the 1830s, the need for a police station arose following the town’s rise to a fashionable resort destination in the 1860s. At that time the village was far from civilisation, and even in the early to mid-1880s there was no police station between Lithgow and Penrith, a distance of more than 60 miles (close to 100 kilometres). Although a trooper was stationed at the township, the Government had to pay 33 pounds a year for a cottage for him to live in. The local community at the time put together a ‘deputation’, requesting firmly that the station be built, as the land had already been purchased for such a purpose but a building not ‘put up’ despite many promises to that effect.

“…black sheep have strayed into the fold, and annoyed the law-abiding inhabitants and the local policeman so seriously that the erection of a police station has become a matter of urgent necessity.”

Sydney Morning Herald, August 1886

The Mount Victoria Police Station and residence form a coherent group of public buildings that contribute to the turn of the century character of Mount Victoria. These buildings are important for their associations with the provision of police services in the area since the late nineteenth century.