The "Palisade Hotel" - Millers Point - NSW
I Happened To Stumble Upon The "Palisade Hotel" Sitting There At What Seems The Top Of Millers Point. All Alone There, Almost Like A Shag On A Rock. I Had Meandered My Way Through The Rocks, The Backlanes, Pathways, Old Houses And Some Historical Sites.
The Hotel Itself Is Closed Down And Looks To Be Abandoned (That was February 2015. It reopened in August 2015.), Except For The Motorbike That Was Sitting Right At The End Of The Verandah. It Was A Very Sad Sight..... In My Eyes Anyway, And I Really Hope No One (The Ruthless, Money Hungry, Developers which I Have Started To See These People As) Knocks It Down And Builds Some Cheap And Nasty Jail Cell Apartments with A Balcony With A View.... Because It's Happening All Around The Surrounds Of The Hotel With The BARANGAROO Development Of The New Casino... (Like 1 Casino Isn't Enough)
The Palisade Hotel: The Story Behind the Pub on the Hill
The Palisade from the east, standing tall over the corner of Argyle Place and Dalgety Road, 2024. Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
I've walked up to the Palisade a good few times since that first visit in 2015, when I found it shut up and looking sorry for itself. It's open again now, so I thought it was about time I dug into the story of the place properly. And it turns out it's a much bigger story than one pub. It's about the plague, the Harbour Trust, the wharfies, and a whole suburb that the government more or less rebuilt as a company town.
The Palisade in May 2021, with its tall, narrow front and its verandahs stacked one above the other. Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Before the Pub: Coodyee and the Point
This is Gadigal country. The City of Sydney acknowledges the Gadigal of the Eora nation as the Traditional Custodians of the area. According to historian Shirley Fitzgerald in the Dictionary of Sydney, the local people who had lived here for thousands of years called the point Coodyee. The nearby headland at Dawes Point was officially given the dual name Dawes Point and Tar-Ra, which was what the original inhabitants called it.
The English name came from windmills. Fitzgerald writes that three mills were built after 1815 on the far point of land facing Cockle Bay, owned by the former convict John Leighton, known as Jack the Miller. Wikipedia tells it a little differently, with a land grant to Sergeant Thomas Miller of the 73rd Regiment on 30 June 1814 and a small mill owned by the ex-convict Jack Leighton, the place becoming known as "Jack, the Miller's Point". Either way, the windmills gave the Point its name.
Millers Point as Joseph Fowles drew it, about 1845. State Library of NSW. Joseph Fowles, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
For years it was a hard place to get to. You had to scramble over The Rocks or go round the shoreline. The quarrymen cut away the edges of the Flagstaff Hill for building stone, leaving the high cliffs you still see along Argyle Place and Kent Street. Then the Argyle Cut, finished in 1846 according to Fitzgerald, opened the Point up to the town.
Cuthbert's shipyard and Millers Point, about 1870. City of Sydney Archives, Graeme Andrews Working Harbour Collection. Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Sydney's Waterfront Village
By the gold rush years of the 1850s, Fitzgerald calls Millers Point "the most intensely maritime area of Sydney". Just about every job was tied to the wharves, or to the shops, pubs, doss houses and boarding houses that kept the wharfies going. By 1861 there were six large bonded warehouses here, about 400 houses and, as she puts it, "a clutch of pubs".
Miller's Point, from the Royal Australian Historical Society's Osborne Collection, dated 1930 on Commons. Royal Australian Historical Society, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
The First Palisade, About 1880
There was a Palisade Hotel on this corner long before the one we see now. According to the heritage listing, as quoted on Wikipedia, the site was owned by James Parle in the 1870s, and the first rate for the hotel was paid in 1880, so it's thought it was built about then. The rate book described it as a three-storey brick-and-stone building with an iron roof and twelve rooms. Henry Taylor kept it until 1911.
And the name? The City of Sydney says the hotel is named after the palisade fence built between Munn and Bettington streets. So it's a fence, not a fort.
Looking up at the Palisade from the street, May 2021. Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The 1900 Plague and the Great Resumption
The 1890s were rough on the Point. Fitzgerald writes that the great maritime strike of 1890 ended with the smashing of the Wharf Labourers' Union, the wool trade collapsed, and work became patchy. Then in January 1900 the plague arrived.
The Dictionary of Sydney says the first reported case of plague in Sydney was a Millers Point man, Arthur Payne (also written Paine), diagnosed on Saturday 19 January 1900. He and his family were sent to the Quarantine Station on 24 January and their house in Ferry Lane was fumigated. He recovered. Over eight months, 303 cases were reported and 103 people died.
The rat catchers, about July 1900. From John Degotardi Jr's photographs of the areas hit by the plague. Photographic Collection from Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The rat incinerator, 1900, from the same series. Photographic Collection from Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Fitzgerald describes heavy-handed treatment. The area was quarantined for a time, houses were compulsorily disinfected, and people thought to have been in contact with the disease were ferried to North Head in the dead of night. But the bigger change came after. In her words, the hysteria "gave the government the excuse it needed to resume all the wharves and the streets behind them". By mid-1901 the new Sydney Harbour Trust held more than 800 properties, including 553 houses, between George Street in The Rocks and Kent Street in Millers Point.
95 and 97 Cumberland Street, The Rocks, photographed in 1900 for the Rocks Resumption survey, when the cleansing gangs went through the quarantine area. Photographic Collection from Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The back of the old Flagstaff Hotel, corner of Cumberland and Little Essex streets, from the same 1900 survey. Old pubs like this were part of what the Trust took over. Photographic Collection from Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Harbour Trust Builds a Company Town
The City of Sydney says the Trust was formed in 1901 to rebuild the port. Its first big jobs were new wharves to rent out to private companies, and roads on a massive scale. Whole streets disappeared as the cliff was cut down to make Hickson Road at wharf level. The Munn Street bridge across Hickson Road went up in 1910.
Building the Munn Street bridge at Millers Point, dated 1912 on Commons. Australian National Maritime Museum. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
Fitzgerald says Millers Point became one huge building site. Up to 1,000 men would gather at the corner of Argyle and Kent streets in the mornings, hoping to be picked up for a day's labouring. The Trust built new houses, a kindergarten, red brick shops in Argyle Street, and big red brick hotels like the Palisade. She calls the result "something akin to a company town, with the company being the state". The Trust handed out houses to keep its own workforce close, not by need.
Joseph Duggan's butcher shop in Argyle Street, Millers Point, dated 1906. Australian National Maritime Museum. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
18–20a Munn Street, right next to the hotel. The City of Sydney calls them the last survivors of the workers' houses the Harbour Trust built in 1910. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Sydney Harbour Trust building, about 1925. State Records NSW. State Records NSW, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
Henry Deane Walsh
The man behind it all was Henry Deane Walsh, the Trust's engineer-in-chief. The Walsh Bay Wharves page on Wikipedia says he designed and built a new system of wharves, stores, roads and hydraulics, using the steep ground cleverly so the wharves could be worked at two levels, with a ratproof seawall. Walsh Bay is named after him. Hickson Road was named after the Trust's chairman, Robert Rowan Purdon Hickson.
The Walsh Bay wharves today, 2019. They were designed by H.D. Walsh, whose name is also tied to the Palisade. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Old and new side by side at Walsh Bay, 2019. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Building the New Palisade, 1915–16
After the plague the population of the Point grew again, and the heritage listing says the demand for "watering holes" was such that the Trust had to build replacement hotels for the port workers and locals. The Palisade was one of four the Trust built. The others were the Dumbarton Castle, the Big House (now the Sussex Hotel) and the Harbour View Hotel.
The Harbour View Hotel on Lower Fort Street, another of the Trust's four hotels, 2020. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The City of Sydney says the new Palisade was designed by Walsh in the Federation free style. According to the heritage listing, work started on 6 April 1915 and finished in May 1916, at a total cost of just over 3,000 pounds. That's right in the middle of the First World War.
It was five storeys of stone, brick and cement on steel and timber framing. Inside there was a large bar and two parlours on the ground floor, two sitting rooms and a dining room on the first floor, 15 bedrooms, a kitchen, a laundry, bathrooms and pantries. There was a big flat roof for drying the washing, and a fire escape with a landing on every floor.
The side of the Palisade, showing the projecting bays and the arched windows, 2021. Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The 1916 plans show a long U-shaped bar, with the public bar at the front, a private bar on one side and a jug and bottle department on the other. The two parlours out the back had their own entrance and open fires. Down in the basement were the toilets, the bottle store and the cellar, with a hatch up into the bar.
The heritage listing describes the outside: original ceramic tiles on the ground floor, the original timber doors and windows, two-storey projecting bays with timber shingles above wide arched windows, and a group of narrow arched windows lighting the stairs. It calls the hotel "an exceptional example of a federation free style building with arts and crafts influences", and says its very tall, narrow shape makes it a landmark, closing the view down several streets.
Detail of the Palisade, 2021. Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The verandahs of the Palisade, 2021. Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Wharfies' Pub
From the 1920s, the heritage listing says, Tooth and Co. held the head lease and sublet the pub to a string of licensees. When the Maritime Services Board took over from the Harbour Trust in 1936, the title went to the MSB, but Tooths kept leasing until 1950. That year the lease was put out to tender, Tooths didn't apply, and the licensee P. K. Armstrong took it on.
Fitzgerald gives a feel for what life was like for the men who drank there. Ships came less often as the century wore on, and in the 1930s men jostled for jobs at the pick-up points. She quotes one memory: "They'd go to Millers Point pick up at 8 o'clock. There were hundreds of men down at Central Wharf … The bloke would come out and he'd get on a box and say 'you, you, you and you'." Shifts could run 24 hours or more, so social life centred on the home, the local pubs and the church.
The liner Megantic at Aberdeen Wharf, Millers Point, about 1920, photographed by Frederick Wilkinson. Australian National Maritime Museum. Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons
A 1949 report quoted in the listing shows the pub had changed little. There were twelve single and one double bedroom, with five singles and the double used by the licensee and staff. The kitchen was up on the fourth floor.
Dalgety's Bond Stores, just south of the Munn Street Reserve. The City of Sydney dates the bond store to 1875. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Bridge Cuts the Point Off
Fitzgerald says residents always understood that the resumptions were also about making way for a harbour bridge. As early as January 1902 the Daily Telegraph published a map showing a 130-foot-wide road for a "contemplated bridge over the harbour". When the Sydney Harbour Bridge was finished in 1932, she writes, it strengthened the barrier between Millers Point and The Rocks, and the move to the suburbs it stood for made a place like Millers Point "very passé". After the 1920s, very little changed in the buildings for decades.
The Harbour Bridge going up in 1930, with the vehicular ferries Kooroongabba and Koondooloo below. Tyrell Collection, Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences. Tyrell Collection, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The Argyle Cut under the Bridge approach, 2022. The Cut was what first opened the Point up to the town. Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Point stayed a Labor stronghold. Fitzgerald notes that in the 1953 state election, when the electorate voted 68 per cent Labor, the Millers Point booth came in at 90 per cent.
Containers, Green Bans and Heritage
The finger wharves of Darling Harbour were turned into roll-on roll-off container terminals in the 1960s. The City of Sydney says the first new wharf was built in 1964, and in 1975 the Maritime Services Board took over the Munn Street Reserve land beside the Palisade for excavation, handing it back to council in September 1981.
Fitzgerald writes that by the 1970s the National Trust was joining forces with radical trade unionists and community groups to stop government-driven high-rise development in The Rocks. Locals at the Point didn't take kindly to being renamed "West Rocks" either. Wikipedia's green bans page says 54 bans were put on in NSW between 1971 and 1974, and that they helped save the historic 19th-century buildings of The Rocks from being knocked down for office towers. By the time the plans ran out of steam, Fitzgerald says, not much redevelopment had happened at Millers Point.
Hickson Road looking west, with the old Harbour Trust/MSB maintenance garage on the right and the Palisade up above the Munn Street bridge. State Records NSW, undated. Photographic Collection from Australia, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The heritage listing records some changes inside over the years: a partition came out of the bar in 1921, ladies' toilets were added in 1939, the original bar counter came out in 1979, and the upstairs rooms were upgraded in 1996.
Private Hands and Heritage Listing
In February 1987 title passed from the MSB into private hands, and in 1994 Palisade Properties Pty Ltd took it over, according to the listing as quoted on Wikipedia. It went on the State Heritage Register on 2 April 1999, number 00510. The listing says the Palisade matters because of its link to the government's takeover of the harbour after the 1900 plague, because Walsh designed it, and because it's been in use as a hotel ever since 1916 with relatively few changes.
Hickson Road in 2024, the road the Trust cut down to wharf level. Ymblanter, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Closed, Sold and Open Again
Wikipedia says the Palisade closed for renovations in 2008 and stayed shut for seven years, which explains why it looked so lonely when I wandered past in February 2015. The work added a rooftop bar, a new main bar and boutique rooms. In May 2015 Palisade Properties sold it to British businessman Richard Sapsford for $17.7 million. It reopened in August 2015, and the rooftop bar, called Henry Deane after Walsh, opened that November.
Barangaroo under construction in January 2015, just weeks before my first visit. Saberwyn, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
High Street looking over Hickson Road and the Barangaroo works, 2014. Bidgee, CC BY-SA 3.0 au, via Wikimedia Commons
The Palisade Today
The hotel's own website says there are eight boutique rooms on levels 2 and 3, a ground-floor Public House refurbished in mid-2015, and the Henry Deane cocktail lounge up top, spread over two floors. Down the hill, the old container wharves have become Barangaroo Reserve.
Barangaroo Reserve from the harbour, January 2025. Dicklyon, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The city skyline from Barangaroo Reserve, 2018. Rob Deutscher, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Palisade in 2021, open again and still standing over the Point. Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Still standing, then, and the developers didn't get it after all. It's worth the climb up Bettington Street for a beer and that view.
Other Old Pubs Around the Point
The Palisade in March 2007, the year before it closed for renovations. Mick Stanic (SplaTT), CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Lord Nelson on Kent Street and Argyle Place, 2009. Wikipedia says it was built in about 1836. Adam.J.W.C., CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Hero of Waterloo, Lower Fort Street, on a Kodachrome slide from about 1985. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Argyle Place, Millers Point, 2020. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Timeline
- c.1815 – Windmills on the point give Millers Point its name (Dictionary of Sydney)
- 1846 – Argyle Cut opens the Point to the town (Dictionary of Sydney)
- 1870s – James Parle owns the hotel site
- 1880 – First rate paid on the first Palisade Hotel
- to 1911 – Henry Taylor keeps the old hotel
- 19 Jan 1900 – Arthur Payne of Ferry Lane diagnosed with plague, Sydney's first reported case
- 1901 – Sydney Harbour Trust formed; by mid-year it holds over 800 properties
- 1910 – Munn Street bridge built; Trust workers' houses in Munn Street
- 6 Apr 1915 – Building of the new Palisade begins
- May 1916 – New Palisade finished, at just over £3,000
- 1920s – Tooth and Co. take the head lease
- 1932 – Sydney Harbour Bridge finished
- 1936 – Maritime Services Board takes over from the Trust
- 1950 – Licensee P. K. Armstrong takes the lease
- 1971–74 – Green bans in NSW, including The Rocks
- 1979 – Original bar counter removed
- Feb 1987 – Title passes into private ownership
- 1994 – Palisade Properties Pty Ltd takes title
- 2 Apr 1999 – Listed on the State Heritage Register (00510)
- 2008 – Closed for renovations
- Feb 2015 – My first visit: shut up and empty
- May 2015 – Sold to Richard Sapsford for $17.7 million
- Aug 2015 – Reopens; Henry Deane rooftop bar opens in November
Where the Sources Disagree
- How Millers Point got its name. The Dictionary of Sydney credits three windmills built after 1815 by the former convict John Leighton ("Jack the Miller"). Wikipedia adds a land grant to Sergeant Thomas Miller on 30 June 1814 and calls Leighton's mill "small".
- Architect or engineer? The City of Sydney calls Henry Deane Walsh the Trust's engineer-in-chief who designed the hotel. Wikipedia says the hotel "was designed by" him, and the heritage listing calls him "an engineer important in the history of NSW". He was an engineer, not a trained architect.
- How many storeys? The 1916 description in the heritage listing says five storeys. The modern description counts seven, including the basement and the rooftop bar.
- How many rooms? The old hotel had twelve rooms (rate book). In 1916 there were 15 bedrooms. In 1949 there were thirteen. The hotel's website now lists eight.
- When the Walsh Bay works were done. Wikipedia's Walsh Bay page gives 1912–1921 in one place and 1906–1922 in another.
- Mid-2015 refurbishment. Wikipedia says the hotel was closed from 2008 for seven years. The hotel's website says the Public House was refurbished in mid-2015.
My Earlier Posts
Sources
- Wikipedia, "Palisade Hotel" (text based on NSW State Heritage Register entry 00510, CC BY 4.0)
- City of Sydney, "History of Munn Street Reserve", 2013
- Shirley Fitzgerald, "Millers Point", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008
- Wikipedia, "Millers Point, New South Wales"
- Wikipedia, "Walsh Bay Wharves Precinct"
- Wikipedia, "Green ban"
- Hotel Palisade, official website
- City of Sydney, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories (acknowledgement of the Gadigal)
- Pictures: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each image
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