Ботуэлл: Тарихы мен қазіргі жағдайы

Bothwell, Tasmania is a small town with a population at the 2021 census of 499. Nearby locations include Hollow Tree, Hamilton, Ouse and Kempton. The citation for Bothwell in the Australian Register of The National Estate describes Bothwell as:" an agricultural settlement on the Clyde River, set in a modified landscape, surrounded by low naturally vegetated hills. Consistently it is a loose grid plan settlement with large lot sizes. Civic details include avenue plantings and Queens Square. Dense pine plantings occur en route to the showground. Important homesteads occur on the west side of the river. It has two village centres, with fine churches and cemeteries grouped about Queen's Square. The general character of the town is one of looseness, internal open spaces being important, with consistent architecture generally in good condition. The settlement is important for its formal layout which is emphasised by continuing civic consciousness in building and landscape."

For many thousands of years before European colonisation, the Bothwell area was the home of the Mairremmener people, who migrated seasonally between the mountains and the coast. Led by Tongerlongerter, they fiercely resisted the occupation of their territory, as part of what is known as the Black War. Bothwell traces its formal founding to 1822, when several families of Scottish origin settled in the area that was to become the town. It was named after Bothwell in Lanarkshire, Scotland. It was laid out in 1824 by surveyor Thomas Scott, A further plan was drawn up in 1900, the town had by then extended further east to William Street and north to Elizabeth Street and the market place now named as Queen's Square. The school was granted a larger site in this plan, between Mary and Michael Streets, where it is located currently. The heritage registered hotel at the corner of William and Patrick Streets, currently called The Castle Hotel, dates from 1829 and is the second oldest continuously licensed hotel in Tasmania. St Luke's Presbyterian, now Uniting, Church opened in 1831. It faces east and is prominently located on Market Place adjacent to Queen's Square, at the end of Alexander Street. It was used by both Anglicans and Presbyterians until the Anglican church, St Michael and All Angels, opened in 1889. Bothwell Post Office opened on 1 June 1832. At the first census of population in Tasmania, taken on 1 January 1842, Bothwell had a population of 947, comprising 672 males and 274 females. In 1870, Bothwell had a population of 1300, in 1881 it was 1049 and in 1891 it was 1482. For some years after 1848, Bothwell was the place of exile of the Irish nationalist leaders John Mitchel and John Martin; their lodging Mitchel's Cottage still stands on the Nant property. Bothwell was also the site of a radio telescope, built in the 1960s, in nearby Dennistoun, by one of the pioneers of radio astronomy, Grote Reber.

Australia's first country town literary society was established in Bothwell in 1834 as a debating society by the Scottish born minister Rev. James Garrett. The society built a meeting place in 1837, the same year that Sir John Franklin became its patron. In this building the society established one of Australia's earliest public libraries. John Mitchel wrote about the library in 1852, stating that: <blockquote>"Bothwell has a very tolerable public library, such library as no village of similar population in Ireland had."

Bothwell features several distinctive styles of architecture, including Georgian, Queen Anne Revival and Victorian. It has many buildings listed on the Tasmanian Heritage Register, Register of the National Estate and the National Trust, from stone cottages to churches.

One of the larger houses is the two storey Georgian Wentworth House, located on Wentworth Street on the west side of the Clyde River. Construction, at a cost of £560 was started in 1830 by convict builders, for Captain, later Major, D'Arcy Wentworth, brother of explorer William Wentworth, and one of Bothwell's early police magistrates. The house was originally called Inverhall and was single storey. The house was further added to by Major Charles Schaw, an assistant police magistrate in Bothwell, at a cost of £4000. The citation in the Australian Register of the National Estate describes Wentworth as:"A very unusual two storey Georgian house Main north facade has off centre portico with grouped casement windows flanked by pilasters to one side and a single window at level two to the other side. The east facade is possibly the most attractive, with three pairs of French doors with bracketed cornice and heavy 3 dormer window (with pilasters) above the eaves line. Central Decorative chimney. Fine garden and setting.

St Luke's is the second oldest Presbyterian church in Australia, the oldest being the Ebenezer Church in the Hawkesbury region of New South Wales, which is also the oldest extant church building in Australia. It has a square, Norman style tower with a castellated parapet, lancet windows and a Gothic doorway which was restored by the National Trust in 1968. In 2007 a significant restoration and conversion to a whiskey distillery were undertaken by noted Tasmanian architectural firm Circa Morris Nunn.