In the 1840s and 1850s Lochinvar's coach station was an important stop in a coaching network which once extended from Morpeth and Maitland into the inland plains of NSW and as far away as Moreton Bay (Brisbane).
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The expansion of coaching into the developing inland during those decades was made possible by the construction of the regional road network. The Stage Carriage Act (1835) tied coaching to Royal Mail contracts and made commercial coaching viable. Horse numbers rose and heavily sprung coaches were developed.
One of the first men in New South Wales to take advantage of these developments was Henry "Boshy" Nowland, the owner of the Lochinvar coach station.
Nowland was born in 1796 on Norfolk Island to two convicts of the Second Fleet.
He was a significant figure in the development of Muswellbrook, which became his headquarters.
Initially he concentrated on winning Royal Mail contracts in the Upper Hunter but he soon expanded further afield. Eventually, for several years in the 1840s, he held all the overland Royal Mail contracts from Maitland to Moreton Bay.
Coach horses could normally go only eight miles without a break. Resting and watering them before climbing Harper's Hill was particularly important. This explains Nowland's interest in Lochinvar.
In the 1840 sub-division of Lochinvar, Nowland bought all the lots north of the Great Northern Road along what was then known as "the road to Windermere" (now Cantwell Rd).
Access to Lochinvar Creek along the west was a major reason for his purchase of these lots. In 1840-41 he had a brick Colonial Georgian coach house constructed.
It was the first permanent structure erected in the township following the 1840 sale.
This still-existing convict-built building had four rooms off a central hallway and included wide verandahs on the front and back.
There was also a stable to the north of the coach house.
The station was operated by a married couple. The husband attended to the horses which could graze in the low-lying paddock along the creek, while his wife supplied refreshments to travellers.
At least twice a day, Nowland Royal Mail coaches on the Great Northern Road arrived at the Lochinvar station, one travelling north from Maitland and one south from the inland to Maitland.
Private coaches were also accommodated. Four rooms were all that were legally required to be a licensed hotel during this time.
In 1850 Henry Nowland's coach station was additionally licensed as the "Cross Keys" hotel. The first publican was butcher and salter John Keys, who had come out from Ireland as a convict in 1831. In 1852 the Cross Keys licence was transferred to Johannes Wenz.
He was one of six German vinedressers brought out by Edward Macarthur in 1838 to improve the wines at the Macarthur Camden estate.
After Johannes's death in 1853 the licence was transferred to his widow Juliana.
The last publican of the Cross Keys was Irish settler John Coleman, who had married a Wenz daughter.
With the approach of the rail, in 1858 Henry Nowland sold his Lochinvar land and the coach station and hotel ceased operations.
The purchaser was middle-class Englishman John Sanger Brown, who turned the building into his family home and named it "Holbeach" after his home town in Lincolnshire.
