Stewart Town is an archaeological site that includes the remains of a cluster of earth and stone buildings, a water race and the associated orchard, occupied by gold miners including David Stewart, John Menzies and William Roy from about 1865 until the early twentieth century. Stewart Town has historical and archaeological significance relating to the lives of the gold miners and the technologies they used.

Stewart Town sits on a terrace close to Menzies Dam and overlooks the spectacular sluicing faces of Pipe Clay Gully. The land on the south bank of the Kawarau River, stretching up to the Carrick Range, was subject to extensive mining, particularly hydraulic sluicing (Bannockburn Sluicings, List Entry No. 5612). Stewart Town was not a town rather a cluster of buildings, that existed because of the residents’ control and sale of water to miners. It is named for miner and entrepreneur David Stewart who secured the water right from Long Gully, cut a race and built a dam to store water, which he sold to miners. Access to water allowed previously unworkable areas to be mined.

Stone mason David Stewart, and miner John Downie Menzies lived in a stone building close to their reservoir (Menzies Dam, List Entry No. 5611). Menzies died in 1894 and his house, race, claims and effects were sold. Stewart Town was occupied from about 1865 until the early twentieth century. Menzies and Stewart were in Bannockburn by the mid-1860s and there is a record of an application for a residence area in both their names in 1873. David Stewart died in 1883. William Roy mined with David Stewart and John Menzies from the 1870s. In 1913, Roy’s residence area was located next to the orchard section. William Roy died in 1923. As mining declined, the land around Stewart Town became part of the landscape of small holdings and allotments characteristic of the subdivisions between Bannockburn and the Kawarau River.

Stewart Town is a collection of nine earth and stone structures centred around one stone house (the Lind house). The stone house is constructed of split schist with mud mortar, with a mud brick extension at the north end. There are traces of cement plaster on the inside. The doors, windows and fireplace have large schist slabs over them. There is a small mud-walled area adjacent to the extension that was reportedly a dairy. There appear to have been at least two compounds surrounded with mud brick walls, a small section of which remains. A race runs through the back compound, and then to a dam. In front of the Lind House is an orchard containing fruiting apple, pear and apricot trees.

The land on which Stewart Town stands was included in the Bannockburn Sluicings Historic Reserve gazetted in 2000. In 2014, Stewart Town remains part of the Bannockburn Sluicings Historic Reserve.