The suburb with the misspelt name

Englorie Park House sits at the centre of the tiny suburb of Englorie Park. The land on which it sits has been home to many interesting people. It straddles two original land grants – one made to First Fleeter William Eggleton, and the other to Second Fleeter David Nowland.
Eventually the grants became one farm owned by merchant farmer Samuel Terry, who became known as the “Botany Bay Rothschild.” The property stayed in the Terry family after Samuel Terry’s death in 1838, via his grandson Samuel Terry Hughes, then to his stepdaughter Esther Hughes and then to William Nunn Pattrick, grandson of Esther Hughes. Pattrick (who had 12 children, of whom 6 sons served in WWI, three killed in action, 2 wounded), sold the property to Alfred Leath Park. Alfred built “Parkholme” – described as one of the “prettiest villas in the vicinity of Campbelltown, or indeed the colony”. Park was well known in coursing circles in the colony and his greyhounds were his pride and joy.  In about 1892, the property was sold to Henry Edward Vaughan, who was elected as an Alderman the same year, and as Mayor of Campbelltown the following year. He only served as mayor for one year. He leased Parkholme out when he subsequently moved away and after his death in 1901 it was purchased by Frederick Merewether. Frederick’s brother Herbert built the historic home Raith around the same time. The Merewethers were descendants of a pioneering family from the Hunter Valley.

In 1913 the property changed hands again. It was sold to Charles Burcher.  Born to blacksmith father Steven and mother Jane in Liverpool, on April 4th, 1837, Charles married Margaret Wilhelmina Smith in 1873, but she would tragically die in 1874, and their first and only child, daughter Jane, died in 1875. 

(Photo: Pastoral Review 16.12.1916) 

Burcher was highly respected in pastoral circles, and had been the owner of Euglo Station near Condobolin, and the adjoining Eugalong Station. Consequently, having retired to Campbelltown he changed the name “Parkholme” to “Euglorie Park”. Newspapers of the day frequently misspelt the name as “Englorie”, and this name would eventually stick. Burcher only lived at Euglorie Park for 3 years, before he died in 1916. He is buried in St Peter’s Cemetery, and clearly on his headstone is written “Charles Burcher who died at Euglorie, Campbelltown”. And so, Englorie Park really should be named "Euglorie Park". 

Burcher's headstone at St Peter's Campbelltown

Written by Claire Lynch

Sources

Trove

Ancestry

Grist Mills, Vol.4, No.1

http://www.cahs.com.au/parkholme.html

Highway Hold ups

Travelling along Appin Road has long been a hazardous trip. If you were doing it in 1866 there were even more reasons to be filled with trepidation. My research has revealed at least three terrifying hold-ups between Campbelltown and Wollongong during this year, leaving the community shaken.

In early April 1866 one late evening, two armed men stopped the mail coach at Loddon River just outside of Appin on the Wollongong side. They robbed the coach coming from Campbelltown to Wollongong of its mail bags and £5 from the only passenger. They later stopped the mail coach from Wollongong to Campbelltown, known as the up mail, and robbed the passengers of various sums of money, but did not take the mail bags.

It is believed the same bushrangers robbed again about a week later. At about 3am and four miles (7kms) from Appin, the bushrangers stopped the horses, and ordered the the coachman to bail up. The coachman and contractor was James Waterworth, and he was accompanied by the driver, a man from Wollongong and two youths returning either to home or school. The bandits tied everyone up, searched and robbed them. They also undid and rifled the mail bags, opening the letters, and helping themselves to whatever they liked. After leaving the letters scattered about the road, one of them cracked the whip and they drove off, leaving the poor passengers tied up. They eventually untied themselves and raised the alarm.

A few days later a girl on a farm on the Macquarie Fields Estate, was returning from school, when she picked up a parcel which turned out to contain 36 cheques, amounting to £360, and was a portion of the proceeds of the robbery. The cheques were handed over to the police and later a man from Appin was apprehended by the police.

James Waterworth was the coachman on Appin Road for many years. He died in his nineties in Campbelltown in 1920 after a lifetime of amazing stories of bushrangers and robberies. He was held up by bushrangers on three separate occasions. Before the robbery described above, James was held up once with a sickly man as his passenger. He was coming back from Wollongong with £300 and when the bushrangers stuck up the coach, James picked the little man up and carried him to a nearby shed. "You surely wouldn't harm this poor sick fellow" he said, and the bushrangers let him go.

Joshua Bray lived at Denfield on the Appin Road. In 1866 he wrote "They are very much excited about here, the mail was robbed ten days ago...The night before last they stopped it about a quarter of a mile from this house- the coachman and the passengers came about 4 o'clock in the morning to tell us. These robberies take place in the night...they were hiding all their jewellery. Papa has loaded his pistol". Bray describes this robbery as a quarter of a mile from Denfield or about 400 meters in today's measurements. This would rule out the robbery where they tied the victims up as it was seven kilometeres from Appin and therefore too far from Denfield, however it could have been the one where Waterworth carried his sickly man to safety.

The bushrangers are long gone but the same narrow and winding Appin Road continues to move thousands of people between Campbelltown and Wollongong every day.

 James Waterworth pictured in 1902 driving the same coach that travelled from Campbelltown to Wollongong via Appin

Written by Andrew Allen

Sources:

Empire, 16 April 1866, p4

Sydney Morning Herald, 14 April 1866

NSW Police Gazette and Weekly Record of Crime, 4 April 1866, p118

The Old Police Station

 

The Campbelltown Police Station was once situated in Railway Street. Dates for its construction vary from 1880, the late 1880s and 1890. It replaced an earlier station around the corner in Queen Street near the Courthouse.

The police station was built in typical late nineteenth century style for police stations. It had cast iron brackets decorating its ten verandah columns. To the north of the station were the cell blocks and stables. These cell blocks were linked to the courthouse in Queen Street by a tunnel. A police sergeant's residence was situated next to the station until it was demolished in 1970.

The station operated until August 1985, when it became far too inadequate for Campbelltown's growing population. A fibro extension to ease the congestion did little to fix the problem. 

The old station was eventually demolished in 1988 and it was controversial. The Attorney General's Department owned the building but regarded the station as having no real historical significance. The National Trust however recommended that it be retained. Members of the public were vocal about its pending demolition including Deputy Mayor John Hennessey, who claimed "this is nothing short of public vandalism". A new court complex now stands on the site. A more modern and much larger station was built in Queen Street.

Written by Andrew Allen

Sources:

ALLEN, Andrew 2018

More Than Bricks and Mortar: Remembering Campbelltown's Lost Buildings

Campbelltown: Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society

Macarthur Chronicle, 17 November 1987, p17

New Rotolactor Photographs

The library recently received a donation of photographs of the Menangle Rotolactor during its heyday. We are grateful to Lyn Smith for sharing her wonderful images with us. Below is a sample of some of the collection we received. The photographs were taken in 1956. The complete donation is being processed and added to Our Past in Pictures photographic database found on the local studies page on the library's website.

Cattle yards at the Menangle Rotolactor

The rotolactor in 1956

Cows being milked at the rotolactor

Written by Andrew Allen

Fined

50 years ago today, this story from the Campbelltown-Ingleburn News:

An Ingleburn man was convicted at Campbelltown Courthouse and fined for negligent driving. Proceeding along Atchison Road, Macquarie Fields the driver decided to overtake the car ahead.
Unfortunately, in doing so he forced a police car, approaching from the opposite direction, to brake suddenly and swerve completely off the road to avoid collision.
According to the accused, he took the course of action because the car in front had braked suddenly.

The driver was fined $100.

The incident was dramatic to imagine but I wondered too about the fine payment without the convenience of eftpos. Back then there were no $100 dollar notes. And in 1970 there were no fifties either! After decimalisation, $50's were only deemed warranted after enough inflation had come to pass and weren't introduced until 1973. The only suitable choices after $20's, if he were flush enough, were these Campbelltown related notes.

Caroline Chisholm

John Macarthur

Or perhaps he wrote them a cheque...whatever they might be.

Sourced from the Campbelltown Macarthur Advertiser, 11 August 1970

by Michael Sullivan

Minto in the War Years

I came across an interesting interview in our collection last week. A Mr Dewar of Minto was interviewed in 1985 and he spoke about moving to Minto in 1942 and what the village was like during the war years. When the Dewar family first arrived in 1942, they lived on the corner of Pembroke and Stafford Streets for the first 18 months, before moving to Eagleview Road.

I would like to share some of the interview and display some of the photographs from the Dewar family that were donated to Campbelltown Library Service.

The following points are highlights from the interview:

• There were no street lights, very few houses, one shop and the houses were far apart.
• No houses were allowed to be built in the war years as material was needed for war purposes.
• There was only one school with one teacher in one classroom who taught from Kindergarten to Year 6.
• The roads were terrible. Redfern Road was the only street sealed. Most people walked.
• The Dewar's had a horse and sulky but mainly walked to the Railway Station. 
• Minto people had to go to Campbelltown to watch picture shows. Picnics were popular because that was one way that people got together for enjoyment.
• The swimming hole at Casula station was a popular place to swim.
• The Dewar's lived on Eagleview Road. It was named this because it lead up to a very high point at Leumeah Road, where you could see down to Bowral and across to Camden and then right around to the lights of Katoomba and Blackheath at night and then to Sydney. At some points you could see the Harbour Bridge.
• There was a dance every Friday night at the School of Arts.
• Telephone calls were handled by the switchboard operator Mr Williams at the Post Office. People only had a telephone between 9am and 6pm and none after midday on Sunday.
• There was only one shop where Minto Mall is now.
• Soldiers from the Ingleburn Army Camp would come to Minto to train and you would be walking along the street and would see a soldier behind the fence with a gun. They were training to go overseas.
• A local dairy would supply the Dewar's with milk. They would take their jars up to the dairy and get them filled up with cream and it only cost one shilling.

The Dewar home on the corner of Pembroke and Stafford Street in 1942

The Dewar family home in Eagleview Road, Minto

Mrs Helen Douglas Dewar with her sister Miss Jessie Abbott and granddaughter Anne outside the family home on Eagleview Road

Dave Dewar with daughter Anne outside his car

Presbyterian Sunday School picnic on the Dewar's property at Minto

All of the photographs above are from the Dewar Collection, Campbelltown City Library, Local Studies Collection.

Written by Andrew Allen

Sources:

"Why Campbelltown?" Interviews

Westview

In August 1888 the Sisters of the Order of the Good Samaritan purchased land for a college. The college, to be known as St John's Preparatory College, "Westview", was situated on a hill to the east of Campbelltown. The sisters came to Campbelltown in 1887 where they took over the parish school and established St Patrick's school for girls and is the current Campbelltown Tourist Information Centre.

The building that was used for the college was thought to have been an existing building on land that was owned by John Kidd and included part of George Carr's grant. It was partly bordered by Aston and Bayle's farms. A newspaper article describing extensions made to Westview in 1954 identified the building as "Hillview", however there is no evidence to support this. George Carr is likely to be the convict listed in the Campbelltown Pioneer's Register who was a labourer at Airds and died in 1940.

"Westview", St John's Boarding School for Boys around 1900. (Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society)

In an article written by Robert Parkinson in volume 11, issue number 4 of Grist Mills: the journal of the Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society, the author writes "It is not clear if the sisters actually erected the cottage and called it Westview although Sr Claudia has spoken of "the old homestead where we (the sisters) had our dining room".

The buildings were added to in the following years, although they were inadequate for the college's requirements. The sisters had to make do for too long and it was decided to build substantial additions which were officially opened in 1922. The college became known officially as St John's Preparatory College, Westview. It cost £5000 and much of it was funded by parishoners. In 1954 a ceremony marked the laying of the foundation stone for further extensions and they were opened by Bishop McCabe on 2 December 1956.

Garnet Jennings and Frank Monaghan at the college in 1926 (Campbelltown and Airds Historical Society)

In 1969 St John's closed to be re-opened in 1970 as St Patrick's School for girls. This school had moved from the old St John's church in George Street.

I visited the school a few weeks ago and met one of the teachers and the school archivist. They showed me the excellent archives collection, including many objects and documents related to the school's history. I was also directed to the site of the original building that housed the college when the sisters moved there in 1888. The building was still standing in the 1940's but it is unclear when it was demolished. I hope to have an answer for this in the near future.

The area in front of the yellow signs marks the site of the original Westview building 

Written by Andrew Allen

Sources:

PARKINSON, Robert

St John's College Westview Campbelltown, NSW

In Grist Mills Vol. 11, No. 4, December 1998

Campbelltown Pioneer Register

Campbelltown-Ingleburn News, 4 December 1956