Bytes: SYDNEY SUBURBS

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DULWICH HILL

This will be a pleasing item for me in that I live in this suburb. Actually I live in two: the dividing line between the suburbs of Marrickville and Dulwich Hill is in the middle of the road upon which my home is located, Wardell Road. The local Council shows the address as Dulwich Hill, the GPS has it as Marrickville. So for today it is Dulwich Hill, Dully . . .

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LOCATION:

Dulwich Hill is a suburb in the Inner West of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is 7.5 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Inner West Council. Dulwich Hill stretches south to the shore of the Cooks River.

Cooks River at Dulwich Hill

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NAME ORIGIN:

The suburb takes its name from the area of Dulwich in London. The name Dulwich Hill appears in Sands Directory of 1892. It had been known by several different names prior to this. Following European settlement, it was called Petersham Hill. It later took the name Wardell's Bush, a reference to Dr Robert Wardell, one of the area's early landowners. Other names the area was given were South Petersham and Fern Hill.

Dulwich Hill was simply known as Wardell's Bush or Wardell's Hill until the 1890s. The first use of the name Dulwich Hill referred to a smaller subdivision of the Dulwich Grove and Dulwich Estate. The subdivisions were named after the London suburb of Dulwich. This may have been in keeping with the London names of the nearby suburbs of Lewisham and Sydenham.

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BTW:

Robert Wardell (1793 – 7 September 1834) was an English-born Australian barrister and newspaper editor.

He formed Australia’s first independent newspaper, The Australian, with William Charles Wentworth in 1824. After successfully defending a number of libel trials, having been sued by various governors of NSW, he also successfully participated in two duels.

The bush at Dulwich Hill saw many a splendid hunting party chasing Wardell's imported deer towards Cooks River.

In 1834, having made a moderate fortune, he was intending to go to England, but on 7 September 1834 when inspecting his estate on horseback at Petersham, New South Wales he came across three runaway convicts and tried to persuade them to give themselves up. The leader of the men, John Jenkins, however, picked up a gun and fatally shot Wardell. The men were arrested a few days later and two of them were subsequently hanged. Wardell was unmarried.

Wardell Road, which runs south from Petersham, in Sydney, is named after him.

Memorial bust of Robert Wardell (based on his death mask) in St James Church

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ABOUT:

Dulwich Hill was part of the land grant to Thomas Moore, who was the colony's shipbuilder. In 1799 Moore received a large grant of 700 acres (283.3 hectares). He called it Douglas Farm. It took in the present suburbs of Marrickville and Petersham and parts of Dulwich Hill and Stanmore. It was the highly prized stands of timber on the estate that most interested Moore and a later owner, Dr Robert Wardell.

Present-day Dulwich Hill also contained a number of smaller land grants, mainly to emancipated convicts. James Bloodworth (1759–1804), master builder and bricklayer, was a convict on the First Fleet. On arrival he was appointed master bricklayer in the settlement at Sydney Cove. Bloodworth was largely responsible for the design and erection of Australia's first buildings, including the first Government House in Bridge Street.

Sarah Bellamy also arrived as a convict on the First Fleet. Bloodworth and Bellamy lived together and produced seven children.

James Bloodworth received a pardon in December 1791, the second person emancipated in the colony. In 1794 he was granted 50 acres (20.2 hectares) at Long Cove Creek.

Dulwich Hill is located on both sides of a ridge, and consists of a number of low hills, which were once heavily timbered. The lower land slopes towards Cooks River and was covered in dense ti-tree scrub.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Dulwich Hill developed as a desirable residential district with a small village shopping centre and isolated but significant pockets of industry. It is a suburb shaped by twentieth-century subdivisions. Dulwich Hill has retained a village atmosphere, even with the late twentieth and early twenty-first century developments where former factory sites have been redeveloped for large apartment complexes. These complexes are themselves small villages within the suburb of Dulwich Hill.

The area became part of Sydney's expanding tram network in 1889 and, like many suburbs in the Inner West, experienced rapid growth in the early twentieth century. As a consequence, the suburb has a large number of examples of Australian Federation architecture. It also features examples of Edwardian, Gothic and Italianate architecture. The tramway ran up until 1957.

Until the tramway system was closed, electric trams ran to Dulwich Hill and the Cooks River from Circular Quay. The line to Dulwich Hill branched from the Cooks River line at Newtown, turning off King Street into Enmore Road, travelling through Marrickville and Dulwich Hill, via Victoria and Marrickville Roads.

Dulwich Hill railway station is located on Wardell Road, in the southern part of the suburb. The station opened on 1 February 1895 as Wardell Road when the Bankstown line opened from Sydenham to Belmore. It was renamed Dulwich Hill on 1 July 1920.

Dulwich Hill Station

Listed on the Register of the National Estate is the former public school in Seaview Street, which now operates as the Dulwich Hill High School of Visual Arts and Design. The building was constructed in 1892.

Dulwich High School of Visual Arts and Design

Also in Seaview Street is Situated in the same street is the former location of the Dulwich Hill Library, a converted cottage in the Victorian Gothic style.

Former Dulwich Hill library.

According to the 2021 census there were 14,046 people in Dulwich Hill. 63.0% of people were born in Australia. The most common other countries of birth were England 3.5%, Greece 2.7%, Vietnam 1.9%, New Zealand 1.8% and Lebanon 1.5%.

BTW:

JT Lang was Premier of New South Wales from 1925 to 1927 and 1930 to 1932. He was also the brother-in-law of the poet, Henry Lawson. In 1896 Lang and Lawson married sisters, Hilda and Bertha Bredt. From 1899 to 1902 they all lived together in Dulwich Street, Dulwich Hill.

BTW:

John Winston Howard, Prime Minister of Australia from 1996 to 2007, spent a few years of his early childhood in Dulwich Hill. His father, Lyall Howard, owned a service station on the corner of Ewart Street and Wardell Road. The family home, now demolished for units, was situated on the opposite corner.