Parramatta – From Burramatta and Rose Hill to the River City – Old Government House, St John's, Elizabeth Farm and Australia's Second Settlement – 1788 to Today

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page contains the names of people who have died.

Parramatta is only ten months younger than Sydney, and for the first fifty-odd years of the colony a fair case could be made that it mattered more. The governors lived there when they could, the food that kept everyone alive was grown there, and the Macarthurs, the Marsdens and the Harrises all built there. Today it's the River City, Sydney's second CBD, with a light rail line down Church Street and a new Powerhouse museum on the river bank. But walk a few hundred metres in any direction from the station and you're standing in the 1790s.

This page is my attempt to put the whole story in one place: the Burramattagal and the place of eels, Rose Hill and the government farm, James Ruse, Old Government House and the Domain, St John's and its graveyard, Elizabeth Farm, the convict institutions, the old pubs, the river ferries, the railway and the Roxy, right through to Parramatta now.

Parramatta in 1811, looking across the young town. The Dictionary of Sydney uses a south-west view of Parramatta from the same year by an unknown artist. Unknown artist, 1811, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Burramatta – The Place of Eels

Long before there was a Rose Hill, this was Burramattagal country. The Burramattagal were a clan of the Darug, and their name is usually given as coming from the Darug words for eel (burra), place (matta) and people (gal), so the people of the place of eels. The Dictionary of Sydney adds that the Bidjigal held the country to the north and west, and that the Burramattagal lived off a mix of food from the river and the woodlands around it.

The eels are still there. Saltwater from Port Jackson meets the freshwater of the Parramatta River here, and that's why the Parramatta Eels rugby league club picked the eel as its emblem. How far back people go here depends on who you read (see Where the Sources Disagree further down), but Greater Sydney Parklands says artefacts found in what is now Parramatta Park have been dated to between 35,000 and 39,000 years ago, and that sites that old are very rare.

The country the British found in 1788 looked like a gentleman's park, and that was no accident. Parramatta Park's own history notes that Phillip saw the Aboriginal people using controlled burning to manage the grasslands, and that the open, park-like look the British admired was the direct result of that care. Scarred trees in the park, where bark was taken for canoes, can still be seen, and shells from Aboriginal middens were burnt for lime in the mortar of Old Government House.

Maugoran, Boorong and Baludarri

When Phillip moved in in November 1788 the local clan was mostly one kinship group led by an elder named Maugoran. Maugoran, his son Baludarri and his young daughter Boorong were pushed off their land towards Wallumettagal country around today's Ryde. Maugoran complained about the number of white men settling on his country. Phillip's answer, as quoted in the Burramattagal article, was that "wherever our colonists fix themselves, the natives are obliged to leave that part of the country", and he sent more soldiers to Rose Hill.

Boorong went on to become an interpreter between the British and the local people and later the third wife of Bennelong. Baludarri spent time living at the Governor's house at Parramatta and guided Watkin Tench, but after he speared a convict in revenge for the wrecking of his canoe, Phillip outlawed him. He died of illness in 1791, and Bennelong organised his funeral in Sydney. The Baludarri Wetlands in Parramatta were named after him in 2008.

Disease did more damage than any musket. The smallpox epidemic of 1789 killed large numbers of people across the Cumberland Plain, and the St John's Cemetery heritage listing says that by 1830 there were no known survivors of the Burramattagal clan as a distinct group. Parramatta Park's history is more careful, saying survivors were possibly absorbed into neighbouring clans, and that some children were taken in by colonists.

Pemulwuy and the Battle of Parramatta, 1797

Resistance grew through the 1790s. In March 1797 the Bidjigal leader Pemulwuy led around 100 warriors into Parramatta. Settlers from the Northern Farms had been chasing a large group of Aboriginal people since dawn, and when Pemulwuy's party came towards the town the soldiers of the New South Wales Corps joined in. Pemulwuy threw a spear, the soldiers fired, and he was hit seven times. He was taken to the hospital at Parramatta and was expected to die, but he got better and escaped a few weeks later, still in leg irons. He was killed in 1802.

Parramatta Park's version puts the fighting at the military barracks in today's Robin Thomas Reserve, after a raid on the government farm at Toongabbie, and says at least five and possibly as many as fifty Aboriginal people were killed.

Rose Hill – The Second Settlement, 1788

Sydney Cove's soil was hopeless for growing grain, and the colony was close to starving. Phillip went looking for better land up the harbour, and Parramatta was the furthest point a boat could reach and the point where the river turned fresh. On 2 November 1788 he took a party of marines and a surveyor upriver and picked a defensible rise curved around a bend of the river, which he called the Crescent. The Dictionary of Sydney says the site for a redoubt was chosen on 2 November and convicts were sent up on 4 November. Land was cleared and the first crops went in.

He named the place Rose Hill after George Rose, Secretary to the Treasury, who was said to have helped him get the governorship. In June 1791 Phillip changed the name to Parramatta, after the name the Burramattagal used. Elizabeth Macarthur wrote at the time that it meant "head of the river", and the Dictionary of Sydney notes it was the first place the Europeans named from an Aboriginal word. The name Rose Hill lived on in the next suburb, now spelt Rosehill.

A stone marker in Parramatta Park on the site of Governor Phillip's house. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A Town Planned From Scratch

In 1790 Phillip laid out a town. High Street, now George Street, ran a mile from the planned Government House down to the Landing Place on the river, and it was a massive 62 metres (205 feet) wide. Along both sides went wattle-and-daub huts with thatched roofs, each 12 by 24 feet, set 60 feet apart and meant for ten people. Convicts started building them in July 1790. Parramatta Park calls it Australia's first fully planned town.

A granary, stores and barracks went up, there was a hospital by 1789, and a new brick hospital by the river in 1792. A gaol was started in 1797, a strong log building 100 feet long according to the Parramatta Gaol heritage history. It burnt down in 1799 and was rebuilt by 1802. The Dictionary of Sydney says the first road to Sydney, Parramatta Road, was laid out around 1797 under Surveyor-General Augustus Alt. Before that, everything came and went by water.

Government House at Parramatta in 1805, by the surveyor George William Evans, looking along the old High Street. George William Evans, 1805, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

James Ruse and Experiment Farm

James Ruse was a Cornishman, born at Launceston in 1759. In 1782 he was sentenced to death for breaking into a house and stealing two silver watches, reprieved, and given seven years' transportation. He came out on the Scarborough with the First Fleet with eighteen months of his sentence left, and told Phillip he'd been bred to farming.

Phillip gave him a go. In 1789 Ruse got one and a half acres of cleared land at Rose Hill, help to clear five more, two sows and six hens, and he was fed and clothed from the public store for fifteen months. The deal was simple: show that one man could support himself off the land. He did, and was granted another 30 acres. The National Trust calls it Australia's first convict land grant, and the farm took the name Experiment Farm.

Ruse sold up in October 1793 to the surgeon John Harris and moved out to the Hawkesbury, where flooding eventually wiped him out. He ended up as an overseer at Denham Court and died at Campbelltown in 1837. He carved parts of his own headstone, spelling and all.

Surgeon Harris and the Cottage

John Harris was one of those early colonists who seemed to do everything: surgeon to the New South Wales Corps, magistrate, head of police, naval officer, explorer, builder and one of the founding directors of the Bank of New South Wales. He'd served in Bengal, and the cottage on Experiment Farm is built like an Indian bungalow, with a verandah under the main roof and a raised platform, made for hot summers.

The Harris family kept the property until 1921, when it was cut up and became the suburb of Harris Park. The National Trust bought the cottage in 1961, after its Women's Committee raised £4,500, and it was the first property the Trust (NSW) ever acquired. It's at 9 Ruse Street, Harris Park.

Experiment Farm Cottage, Harris Park, with the caretaker's cottage behind. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Parramatta Park and Old Government House

The Governors' Country House

Sydney's first Government House was cramped and unhealthy, and the town around it was rough, so the governors liked to get out to Parramatta. Phillip had a small cottage on the hill above the Crescent. A section of brick flooring from that house, laid in July 1790, survives and is on display.

In 1799 Governor John Hunter cleared away what was left of Phillip's cottage and built something more permanent on the same spot. The three rooms at the front of the main house are Hunter's. Under Lachlan Macquarie the house was enlarged from 1815 to a design by Lieutenant John Watts of the 46th Regiment, with the central portico credited to Francis Greenway. The rest of the main block and the two side pavilions date from Macquarie's work in 1818. Ten early governors used it between 1800 and 1847, and Sir Thomas Brisbane made it his main home for a while in the 1820s.

Old Government House, Parramatta, the oldest surviving public building in Australia. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

One lovely detail is the black-and-white chequered floor in the entrance hall. There was no marble or granite to be had, so it's painted timber, and the original boards are still there. The house was dedicated in 1967, the National Trust runs it, and today it's furnished as it would have been in the early 1820s. In July 2010 Old Government House and its Domain were inscribed on the World Heritage List as one of the eleven Australian Convict Sites.

One of the furnished rooms inside Old Government House. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Members of the Royal Australian Historical Society visiting Government House on their 1903 excursion to Parramatta. Royal Australian Historical Society, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

From Governor's Domain to People's Park

The Domain around the house was a working farm as much as a garden: stockyards, a lumber yard, the redoubt, grazing paddocks and the government crops on the Crescent. Macquarie pushed the Domain east to O'Connell Street and, with Elizabeth Macquarie, reshaped it along the fashionable picturesque lines of the day. River Road dates from his time. Under Governor King, around 1800 to 1810, the botanist George Caley ran what may have been Australia's first public botanic garden on the government farm.

People were warned off the Domain from Macquarie's time until the 1840s, when Governor FitzRoy set aside land for a public racecourse and the Cumberland Turf Club was formed in 1847. The Parramatta Domain Act of 1857 ended the vice-regal use, and Parramatta Park was created in 1858 as a park for the people. A zoo ran in the park until 1951, when the animals went to Taronga, and for a time the US Army occupied the park.

Two memorials worth hunting out: the Boer War Memorial of 1904, which reused Doric columns from the old Parramatta courthouse on the corner of Church and George Streets, and the memorial to William Ewart Hart, who flew from Penrith and landed in the park in November 1911. The Dictionary of Sydney says it's recognised as the first long-distance flight in Australia.

The 1904 Boer War Memorial in Parramatta Park, built with columns from the old courthouse. Debra Widdicombe, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The William Ewart Hart memorial, marking where he landed after his 1911 flight from Penrith. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Dairy Cottage

Tucked away in the park is one of the oldest buildings in the country. George Salter, a Devon man transported on the Second Fleet ship Neptune for smuggling, got a 30-acre grant from Governor Hunter and built a cottage on it in 1798. By 1800 he had ten acres of wheat and twenty of maize. Macquarie bought the farm for the government in 1813, paying for it with thirty heifers, and later turned the cottage into the Governor's dairy. A sunken milk room was dug on the south side around 1823.

One of the first dairymaids was Elizabeth Eccles, who'd come out as Elizabeth Bird on the First Fleet's Lady Penrhyn for stealing a lamb. She worked at the dairy until she died in 1835, and Governor Bourke paid for her funeral. When the Domain became a park in 1858 the cottage became the ranger's house. Parramatta Park describes it as the only other building left in the park from the early colony, apart from Old Government House.

The Governor's dairy at Parramatta, drawn in 1844. Unknown artist, 1844, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Dairy Cottage today, with the later ranger's cottage on the right. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Brisbane's Observatory and the Bathhouse

Sir Thomas Brisbane was a keen astronomer, and in 1822 he built an observatory near Government House. It was the first permanent astronomical observatory in Australia, used to catalogue the southern stars. It closed in 1847, and all that's left are the stone piers of the transit telescope, a pair of marker pines and an 1880 memorial obelisk.

In 1823 he added a bathhouse on the same rise. Water was pumped up from the river and heated, then drained away to a duck pond. In 1886 the park trust turned it into the open, arched pavilion you see now, with its insides stripped out.

The remains of Governor Brisbane's observatory, the first in Australia. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Governor Brisbane's bathhouse of 1823, turned into an open pavilion in 1886. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

St John's – The Church That Named Church Street

The Reverend Richard Johnson, chaplain of the First Fleet, held the first Christian service at Parramatta on 28 December 1788, and for a while he preached under a tree on the river bank near the present ferry wharf. A church foundation was laid in 1791, but before it was finished it was turned into a lock-up and then a granary. The Reverend Samuel Marsden arrived on 10 March 1794 to take charge of the western settlements, and in 1796 he opened a makeshift church made from two old convict huts on the corner of George and Marsden Streets.

The Reverend Samuel Marsden, engraved by James Fittler around 1809. James Fittler, engraving c.1809, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The first St John's, of stuccoed brick, was opened in April 1803. It didn't age well. A sketch sent home in 1807, apparently by Governor Bligh, is labelled "Parramatta Church, built of brick and in a very bad state; unfinished in the inside – Stands in a Swamp."

The Twin Towers

Between 1817 and 1819 a new front with twin towers and spires was added at the western end. The towers are copied from St Mary's Church at Reculver in Kent. Elizabeth Macquarie showed Lieutenant John Watts a watercolour of Reculver and asked him to design towers for St John's, and his drawings are still in the State Library. In 1821 a clock by Thwaites and Reed of London went into the north tower, and it still has to be wound by hand. Macquarie's wife is usually given the credit for the idea, and Church Street itself takes its name from the church.

By 1852 the old church was described as a "perfect ruin". The builder James Houison was paid £1,350 to put up a new nave and chancel, and when the workmen dug out the old foundations they found a copper plate in Latin saying the foundation stone had been laid in 1799 under Governor Hunter. The towers were kept and the new church was built in front of them. It reopened on 1 July 1855. Transepts by Blacket and Sons were added in 1883. St John's became the provisional cathedral of the Anglican Diocese of Sydney in 1969.

St John's Church, Parramatta, photographed by William Henry Broadhurst in the early 1900s. William Henry Broadhurst, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

St John's Cathedral in 2023, with Macquarie's twin towers still out the front. Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

St John's Cemetery – Australia's Oldest European Burial Ground

St John's Cemetery isn't next to the cathedral, which catches people out. It's a separate walled block on O'Connell Street. It was set up in 1790 on an old stock paddock as a general burial ground for every denomination, and it's the oldest surviving European cemetery in Australia. Only later in the 1800s, when each church got its own cemetery, did it become purely Anglican.

The first burial was a convict couple's child, James Magee, on 31 January 1790. On 28 January 1791 Phillip's servant and gardener Henry Edward Dodd was buried there with a headstone, and his is the oldest surviving grave in Australia with its headstone still in place. It was also the colony's first public funeral.

Who's Buried There

More than fifty First Fleeters are buried here or listed in the burial register, though most lie in unmarked graves. Among the better-known names are the Reverend Samuel Marsden and his wife Elizabeth, D'Arcy Wentworth and his family, members of the Blaxland family, the botanist Charles Fraser, the bridge builder David Lennox, George Barrington, the surveyor Augustus Alt, the surgeon John Harris, Elizabeth Bourke (wife of Governor Bourke), Lady Mary FitzRoy (wife of Governor FitzRoy) and William and Mary Batman, parents of John Batman.

The high wall around it is made of convict bricks and dates from the 1820s. The Friends of St John's Cemetery formed in 2016 to look after it, and the St John's Online project publishes biographies of the people buried there.

St John's Cemetery on O'Connell Street, the oldest surviving European cemetery in Australia. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Elizabeth Farm and the Macarthurs

John and Elizabeth Macarthur arrived with the Second Fleet in 1790. In 1793 Lieutenant-Governor Francis Grose granted John 100 acres by the river east of the town, and that same year they began a small brick house: four rooms, a hall, a cellar and a kitchen out the back. Grants and purchases pushed the estate to 925 acres by 1818.

From 1794 John began crossbreeding sheep there, which is where the Australian wool story starts. He was away in England for years at a time, including his long exile after the overthrow of Governor Bligh in 1808, and Elizabeth ran the farm and their other properties while he was gone. The two olive trees on the front lawn are thought to be the oldest surviving olives in Australia, from plants John brought out in 1805 or 1817.

Elizabeth Macarthur, who ran the Macarthur estates while John was away. Unidentified painter, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Elizabeth lived at Elizabeth Farm until she died in 1850. The house was later leased out as a boarding house and even a glue factory. In 1904 William and Elizabeth Swann bought it with six acres, and the Swanns lived there until 1968. It passed to the Historic Houses Trust in 1983 and opened as a museum in 1984. The original cottage survives inside the later additions, making it Australia's oldest surviving European dwelling, and it was the very first place entered on the NSW State Heritage Register in 1999. Museums of History NSW runs it at 70 Alice Street, Rosehill.

Joseph Lycett's view of the "Residence of John Macarthur Esq. near Parramatta", about 1823. Joseph Lycett, c.1823, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Elizabeth Farm today, Alice Street, Rosehill. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Hambledon Cottage

Hambledon Cottage was built between 1821 and 1824 on the north-western corner of the Macarthurs' original grant, to a simplified design by Henry Kitchen, a rival of Greenway's. It was long said to have been built for Penelope Lucas, the family governess, but the heritage listing now says it was more likely just extra room for Elizabeth Farm. Archdeacon Thomas Hobbes Scott stayed there in 1825 and added a coach house and stables.

Penelope Lucas did move in, in 1827, and stayed until she died in 1836. John Macarthur had left her an annuity and the right to live there for life. Towards the end of his illness he banished the women from Elizabeth Farm, and his daughter Emmeline went to live with Miss Lucas at the cottage. Later the Macarthur family doctor, Matthew Anderson, who was also surgeon to the Female Factory and the Orphan School, lived there from 1839 to 1847. The cottage is at 47 Hassall Street, Harris Park, and is owned by the City of Parramatta.

Hambledon Cottage, Hassall Street, Harris Park. Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Female Factory

This one gets its own page, so just the outline here. The first Female Factory was a two-storey building above the gaol, on what is now Prince Alfred Square, and the women moved in in 1804. Within ten years more than 200 women and children were crammed into a place meant to sleep 30. Macquarie had Francis Greenway design a new factory for 250 women on the river at North Parramatta. He laid the first stone in 1818, and the women were moved in 1821. It cost £4,778.

Of the more than 9,000 women recorded passing through the female factories, an estimated 5,000 went through Parramatta. After the factory closed, its buildings became the Parramatta Lunatic Asylum, now Cumberland Hospital.

Augustus Earle's watercolour of the Female Factory at Parramatta, about 1826. Augustus Earle, c.1826, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Orphan Schools

The Female Orphan School

Governor King had set up a Female Orphan School in Sydney in 1801 (I've written about it in my Orphan School post). Elizabeth Macquarie took a special interest in a new one at Parramatta. Macquarie laid the foundation stone in 1813 and the building at Rydalmere was finished in 1818. The Dictionary of Sydney gives the completion date as 30 June 1818. Today it's part of Western Sydney University, and the Whitlam Institute has been housed there since 2000.

Joseph Lycett's "View of the Female Orphan School, near Parramatta", about 1825. Joseph Lycett, c.1825, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Roman Catholic Orphan School

Catholic families had complained that Catholic children were being raised in the Protestant orphanages. A Roman Catholic Orphan School was set up at Waverley in 1836, and in 1841 a plain three-storey sandstone building went up beside the Female Factory's third-class penitentiary at Parramatta. It's the only surviving non-church building by colonial architect Henry Ginn. Many of the children's mothers were in the Female Factory next door, which is thought to be why the school was moved to Parramatta. In 1844, 113 orphans were transferred from Waverley.

The Sisters of the Good Shepherd took over the running of it in 1859. It was always overcrowded and underfunded, and it closed in 1886, with the children sent to St Vincent's Home at Manly. The site then became the Parramatta Girls Industrial School, better known as the Parramatta Girls Home, from 1887 to 1974.

A visit to the Girls' Institution at Parramatta in March 1939, on the old Orphan School site. Photo by Sam Hood. Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Lancer Barracks

In 1817 Macquarie wrote to Earl Bathurst that the old barracks at Parramatta were "almost in ruins and consequently very dangerous", and that he planned a new one once the hospital was finished. Lancer Barracks went up between 1818 and 1820 on Smith Street, opposite where the station is now, and housed a run of British infantry regiments. When the British troops were withdrawn in the 1850s the police and government used it.

The Lancers took it over in the late 1800s, and the 1st/15th Royal New South Wales Lancers are still there. It's described as the longest continuously operating military site in Australia since colonial settlement. The Lancer Museum is in Linden House, open on Sundays.

Lancer Barracks, Smith Street, from a slide taken around 1985. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Native Institution and Macquarie's Feast

In 1814 William Shelley, a trader and former missionary, proposed a school to educate Aboriginal children, and Macquarie jumped at it. On 28 December 1814, the anniversary of his own arrival in Sydney, he held a public conference with the local Aboriginal people in the Parramatta marketplace to explain the school. The Sydney Gazette reported that fewer than sixty people came, because many feared their children would be taken by force. After an hour of talk three children were handed over, and everyone was seated in a circle and served roast beef and a jug of ale.

The Native Institution opened in a house near the church in January 1815. Parents were told they couldn't take their children back but could come and see them each year on 28 December. Four more children were taken during a punitive expedition in 1816, and Macquarie made the first land grant to Aboriginal people that year, 30 acres on Richmond Road to Colebee and Nurragingy. That settlement became known as the Black Town.

The December gathering became an annual event. At the 1816 feast the Gazette counted 179 men, women and children, with tables of roast beef, potatoes and bread and a cask of grog, and Macquarie handed out breastplates naming chiefs. In 1819 a 14-year-old Aboriginal girl, believed to be Maria Lock, won first prize in the colony's school examination ahead of around 120 others. But many parents never accepted the school. In 1818 Yarramundi spoke of the fear of "men in black clothes" taking the children, and after several children died in 1821 many ran away. In 1823 Brisbane moved the Institution to Black Town. The feast carried on after Macquarie left, with around 400 people at the 1824 gathering, until Governor Bourke stopped it in 1835.

Brislington – The Doctors' House

Brislington, at 10 George Street, is a two-storey red-brick Georgian house built between 1819 and 1821 for John Hodges, an emancipist trader and publican. It was probably the Anchor and Hope inn. The local story is that Hodges won £1,000 in a card game at the Woolpack with the eight of diamonds, and had the convict bricklayers work a diamond pattern into the back wall to celebrate. His luck ran out when he was convicted of stealing a big stone from the Government Quarry for his kitchen fireplace, and the house was advertised for forced sale in 1825.

In 1857 it was bought by Dr Walter Brown, who named it after his home town in Bristol. Three generations of Doctors Brown practised there until 1952. It became a nurses' home for Parramatta Hospital in 1949, survived a demolition plan in the 1970s, and since 1983 has been a medical and nursing museum.

Brislington, 10 George Street, now a medical and nursing museum. Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Harrisford and the Old King's School

Harrisford, at 182 George Street down towards the river, was built between 1823 and 1829 for the Reverend William Walker when he married Rowland Hassall's daughter. In 1832 Walker leased it to the brand-new King's School, which opened there on 13 February 1832 under the Reverend Robert Forrest. Later it was William Woolls's school, then a home for John Harris's nephew, and later still a peanut butter factory, a stationery shop and a car workshop. The King's School Old Boys' Union owns it and restored it in 1980.

Harrisford, 182 George Street, the first home of The King's School. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The school soon needed its own building. The Agricultural and Horticultural Society's old nursery on the north side of the river was handed over in 1834, Colonial Architect Ambrose Hallen drew up the plans, and the new sandstone school was ready to move into in January 1836. The King's School stayed on that site, beside the Domain, until August 1968, when it moved to its current campus in North Parramatta. The Old King's School buildings are now Bayanami Public School.

One of the Old King's School buildings beside Parramatta Park. sv1ambo, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Church Street, George Street and the Old Pubs

Early Parramatta ran along George Street, the old High Street, from Government House to the wharf. Visitors kept remarking on how many pubs there were. A visitor in 1837 complained that the town was "studded all over" with public houses. By 1817 there were twelve licences in Parramatta, including James Larra's Freemason's Arms, Andrew Nash's Hawkesbury Settler and Charles Walker's Red Cow.

The Woolpack

The Woolpack story starts with the Freemasons Arms, on the north-east corner of what are now Marsden and George Streets, kept by James Larra, a French ex-forger who became one of the colony's best-known publicans. In 1821 Larra sold to Andrew Nash, who renamed it the Woolpack after the wool trade that had started around Parramatta. It became the place for balls, banquets and honeymoons. The Woolpack and its predecessors stood on that block until 1895, when the land was sold to the Crown for a courthouse. The Woolpack name now belongs to the hotel on the south-east corner, which is roughly where Marsden's hut church had stood.

The Woolpack Hotel on the corner of George and Marsden Streets. rcbutcher, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Red Cow

The Red Cow on George Street was the Woolpack's great rival. It was named for the red cattle grazing around the town and was advertised as a landmark as early as 1803. The Agricultural Society of NSW was formally launched at a dinner there on 10 July 1822, with Governor Brisbane, Marsden and eighty "gentlemen of the first rank" at the table, and in 1827 it took the mail coach trade off the Hawkesbury Settler. Hannah Walker ran it for years after her husband died in 1826. It was sold to the Commercial Banking Company in 1873 and pulled down for the bank.

The Royal Oak

Up the north end of Church Street, on the corner of Ross Street, stood the Royal Oak. Gary Carter's history says a pub may have been there as early as 1813. In 1823 John Tunks, son of a First Fleet marine, was running the Shamrock, Rose and Thistle on the site, and George Sheffield renamed it the Royal Oak in 1853. Its stables took in racehorses when meetings were held in Parramatta Park. Last drinks were on 26 January 2020, and in May 2020 it was knocked down to make way for the light rail. The Cobb and Co stables at the back were kept, and the Royal Oak moved across the road to 404 Church Street.

The Royal Oak Hotel at Church and Ross Streets in 2013, seven years before it was demolished for the light rail. rcbutcher, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Underneath the town there's more. The Parramatta Archaeological Site at 45 Macquarie Street preserves the cellar of the Shepherd and Flock Inn, licensed from 1825 to 1870, on an allotment where the Wheatsheaf Hotel ran in a convict hut from 1801 to 1809.

How Church Street Took Over

Church Street crosses the river on Lennox Bridge, built by David Lennox with convict labour between 1836 and 1839 from sandstone quarried at the Female Factory. It was the third crossing on the spot, after a timber footbridge washed away in 1795 and the Gaol Bridge of 1802 to 1804. Lennox Bridge is the third oldest masonry bridge still standing in NSW, and since 2024 it has carried the light rail.

Lennox Bridge, completed in 1839, carrying Church Street over the Parramatta River. sv1ambo, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Dictionary of Sydney says it was the railway reaching Parramatta in 1860 that swung business away from George Street and the wharf to Church Street and the station. Murray Brothers put up a multi-storey store in Church Street in 1889 that may have been the first in western Sydney. The Town Hall opened in 1883, and in 1888 the council put up the Centennial Memorial clock and fountain in the square out the front for the colony's centenary. Church Street was closed to through traffic for the mall in 1986.

The 1888 Centennial Memorial Fountain in Centenary Square, between the Town Hall and St John's. Debra Widdicombe, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Parramatta from May's Hill, painted by Joseph Lycett around 1824. Joseph Lycett, c.1824, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The River and the Ferries

For the first forty years the river was Parramatta's main road. The first wharf was built by convicts from gum logs and rebuilt in sandstone in 1835, near the Landing Place where Phillip's party came ashore in 1788. The first steam ferry, the Surprise, started running between Sydney and Parramatta on 2 June 1831, and paddle steamers carried goods and passengers up and down the river for decades.

Silt and pollution beat them in the end. Ferries also landed downstream at Redbank, near the mouth of Duck River, where from October 1883 a steam tramway ran passengers up George Street to the Park gates. Ferry services west of Meadowbank stopped in 1928, and the tramway closed on 31 March 1943. After dredging, and with the new RiverCat catamarans, the State Transit Authority brought the ferries back to Parramatta on 9 December 1993. At low tide the boats still stop at Rydalmere and you finish the trip by bus. The last RiverCat was retired on 9 March 2026, and the F3 now runs with the new River-class and Parramatta River-class ferries.

Redbank Wharf in 1915, the ferry terminus for Parramatta, where trams took passengers into town. Unknown photographer, 1915, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The RiverCat Marjorie Jackson at Parramatta Wharf in May 2025. State Transport Regions, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The 1855 Railway

Sydney's first railway opened on 26 September 1855, running from Sydney to a station called Parramatta Junction, which is in what we now call Granville. So the first "Parramatta" station wasn't in Parramatta at all. The line was pushed through to the present Parramatta station on 4 July 1860. When it was carried on west towards Penrith, it cut through the south-west corner of the Domain, and Macquarie's stables and coach house were pulled down to make way for it.

The station has been rebuilt more than once. A new transport interchange linked to Westfield opened on 19 February 2006, and a Parramatta metro station a block to the north is planned to open in 2032.

Parramatta station in December 2024. JustARandomEditor123, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Roxy

The Roxy at 65–69 George Street was the first of a planned chain of suburban picture palaces by Roxy Theatres Ltd. It was designed by Moore and Dyer with Herbert and Wilson in full Spanish Mission style, and it opened on 6 February 1930 to a packed house of 1,923 seats and a crowd of thousands in the street. It was built for the talkies and also had a Christie theatre organ, said to be one of the biggest and best in the state.

It's been through a lot since. The organ was sold in the 1950s, and in 1976 Hoyts cut it into three cinemas, with Gough Whitlam at the reopening. Village took it over, and it closed as a cinema in March 2002 after 72 years. It reopened as a nightclub and bar in 2004 and closed in July 2014. Plans in 2017–18 for a tower on the site were knocked back by Parramatta Council and the Land and Environment Court. It's on the State Heritage Register, and the heritage listing calls it the best surviving example in Australia of the Spanish Mission style on a large public building.

The Roxy, George Street, in the 1930s. Photo by Sam Hood. Sam Hood, State Library of NSW, no known copyright restrictions, via Wikimedia Commons

The Hoyts Roxy in June 1993. lindsaybridge, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Parramatta Today

Parramatta was gazetted a city on 19 November 1976. Since 2000 it has turned into a government and office centre, with the NSW Police headquarters, Sydney Water and thousands of office workers moving out from the Sydney CBD, and Parramatta Square has gone up around the Town Hall.

The Light Rail

The first stage of the Parramatta Light Rail opened on 20 December 2024. It's a 12-kilometre line from Westmead to Carlingford through the Parramatta CBD, run as the L4. From Rosehill Gardens towards Carlingford it reuses the old Carlingford railway line. It runs on-street down Church Street and over Lennox Bridge. The second stage, a branch towards Wentworth Point and Sydney Olympic Park, started construction in late 2024. In a way it brings back what was lost when the old steam trams were pulled up in 1943.

Church Street in January 2025, just after the light rail opened. Nick-D, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Powerhouse Parramatta

Powerhouse Parramatta is due to open on 7 November 2026 on the river bank. It's designed by Moreau Kusunoki with Genton, cost $915 million, and will be the largest museum in NSW, with most exhibitions free. The ground floor is raised above a 1-in-1000-year flood. The site was Willow Grove, Annie Gallagher's 1890s villa, which was taken down after a long fight with green bans. The plan to rebuild it somewhere else was dropped in 2023. I've told that whole story on my Willow Grove page.

It's a long way from a redoubt on the Crescent and a row of convict huts down High Street. But Old Government House, St John's towers, Elizabeth Farm, Experiment Farm, the Dairy Cottage and the graves on O'Connell Street are all still there, and you can see the lot in a day on foot.

Where the Sources Disagree

• How old is Aboriginal Parramatta? Wikipedia's Parramatta article says radiocarbon dating points to human activity from around 30,000 years ago. Greater Sydney Parklands says artefacts in Parramatta Park have been dated to between 35,000 and 39,000 years ago. Wikipedia's Burramattagal article says the Eora and Darug clans have been in the Sydney basin for "up to 10,000 years", which is far lower than the dated finds.
• The day Rose Hill became Parramatta. Wikipedia's Parramatta article gives 4 June 1791. The Dictionary of Sydney (Terry Kass) and the St John's Cemetery heritage history give 2 June 1791, the cemetery history linking it to King George III's birthday.
• When Phillip first saw the place. Parramatta Park's history says an expedition "came upon Parramatta in April" 1788. The St John's Cathedral history puts Phillip's trip to the head of the harbour in October 1788. Both agree the settlement began in November 1788.
• The Battle of Parramatta, 1797. Wikipedia's Parramatta article says Pemulwuy "held the town" until he was shot. Wikipedia's Battle of Parramatta article says five warriors were killed outright and others died later. Parramatta Park says at least five and possibly as many as fifty were killed, and that the attack was on the barracks after a raid on Toongabbie.
• Ruse's grant. The Dictionary of Sydney says Ruse was occupying Experiment Farm by November 1789 and was granted it later. The National Trust says the first land grant was made in 1790 after he asked for land in 1789. Wikipedia's James Ruse article says he got the further 30 acres in March 1791, two months after declaring himself self-sufficient in February.
• How old is the Experiment Farm Cottage? Wikipedia's Experiment Farm Cottage article dates it to c.1834 in its opening, but elsewhere in the same article says Harris built it in the mid-1790s. The National Trust calls it "the c1835 bungalow".
• Which is the oldest building in Parramatta? Wikipedia's Parramatta article calls Brislington "the oldest colonial building in Parramatta", dating it to 1821. That can't be right on its own figures, since Old Government House (front rooms 1799), Elizabeth Farm (1793) and the Dairy Cottage (1798) are all older. Brislington's own heritage history dates it 1819–21.
• The Dairy Cottage's date. Wikipedia's Dairy Cottage article says Salter built it in 1798. Parramatta Park says it was "constructed between 1798 and 1821", in part by Salter, which takes in the later dairy work.
• When the first St John's opened. Wikipedia's St John's Cathedral article says 10 April 1803. The Dictionary of Sydney says the first service was held on 17 April 1803. The cathedral article also notes that Hunter reported laying the foundation in 1798, that a later claim gave 5 April 1797, and that the copper plate found in 1852 said 1799.
• When the towers went up. Wikipedia's St John's Cathedral article says 1817 to 1819, with Macquarie laying a foundation stone on 23 December 1818. The Dictionary of Sydney just says "the 1810s". My own 2022 St John's post says 1816 to 1820.
• The 1883 transepts. Wikipedia credits Blacket and Sons, with Cyril Blacket finishing the design, and gives 1883. My 2022 St John's post says 1882 and names Edmund Blacket.
• The Native Institution's start. Wikipedia's Blacktown Native Institution article says the school opened on 18 January 1815. The Dictionary of Sydney says the Parramatta Institution ran "from January 1814" to December 1820, and Wikipedia's Parramatta article says Macquarie opened the school in 1814. Since the planning conference was held in December 1814, 1815 looks right for the opening.
• Maria Lock or Maria Cook? The Dictionary of Sydney names the prize-winning pupil Maria Lock. Wikipedia's Blacktown Native Institution article calls her Maria Cook.
• How many children at the first feast? The 1814 Sydney Gazette report says three children were handed over on the day and one more soon after. The Dictionary of Sydney says four students were enrolled from the conference.
• When the Lancers arrived. The opening of Wikipedia's Lancer Barracks article says the Lancers have been there since 1885. The history section of the same article says they moved in in 1891.
• How the King's School started. Wikipedia's King's School article says it was founded in 1831 and opened on 13 February 1832 "with a handful of pupils". The Harrisford article says about a dozen boys. The Old King's School heritage history says three day boys. The Dictionary of Sydney says the school moved north of the river in 1835. The heritage history says the building was ready in January 1836, and the Harrisford article says the school left Harrisford in 1836.
• The Woolpack's beginnings. The Woolpack Hotel's own history says it was one of the first ten hotels licensed "by Governor Phillip, in May, 1796". Phillip left the colony on 11 December 1792 (Wikipedia, Arthur Phillip), so that can't be right as written. Hunter was governor in 1796. The same history goes on to describe the Freemasons Arms in 1798, renamed the Woolpack in 1821. The St John's Cathedral history says the Woolpack and its predecessors stood on the corner from 1796 to 1895.
• The Royal Oak's age. The ABC and the City of Parramatta say the Royal Oak dated from 1813. Gary Carter's history says it "may have been established as early as 1813", but the first publican he can document on the site is John Tunks at the Shamrock, Rose and Thistle in 1823.
• Murray Brothers. The Dictionary of Sydney says Murray Brothers built multi-storey premises in Church Street in 1889 that may have been western Sydney's first multi-storey store. Wikipedia's Centenary Square article says Murray Brothers built the town's first department store in 1926.
• Hart's flight. The Dictionary of Sydney says William Hart flew from Penrith to Parramatta on 3 November 1911 in 19 minutes. Wikipedia's Old Government House article says he landed in the park on 4 November and the flight took 23 minutes.
• The first gaol. The Dictionary of Sydney says a gaol was begun in 1797. Wikipedia's Parramatta Gaol article says the first gaol was established in 1798, burnt in 1799 and was rebuilt in 1802.
• The Orphan School's move. Wikipedia's Roman Catholic Orphan School article dates the Parramatta school from 1841, when the building was finished. The Female Factory precinct history says the orphans were moved from Waverley to Parramatta in 1844.

Timeline

• 35,000–39,000 years ago: Dates given for Aboriginal artefacts found in Parramatta Park (Greater Sydney Parklands).
• 2 November 1788: Phillip chooses the Crescent for a redoubt and farm. Convicts arrive on 4 November.
• 28 December 1788: Rev. Richard Johnson holds the first Christian service at Parramatta.
• 1789: Smallpox devastates the Aboriginal people of the Cumberland Plain. James Ruse starts farming at Experiment Farm.
• 31 January 1790: First burial in what becomes St John's Cemetery.
• July 1790: High Street (George Street) and its convict huts laid out. The brick floor of Phillip's house is laid.
• June 1791: Rose Hill renamed Parramatta (2 or 4 June).
• 1793: Ruse sells Experiment Farm to John Harris. Macarthurs begin Elizabeth Farm.
• 10 March 1794: Rev. Samuel Marsden arrives.
• 1796: Marsden's hut church opens at George and Marsden Streets.
• March 1797: Battle of Parramatta. Pemulwuy wounded.
• 1798: George Salter builds the Dairy Cottage. The first log gaol is in use (burnt 1799).
• 1799: Governor Hunter builds the new Government House.
• April 1803: First St John's Church opens.
• 1804: First Female Factory opens above the gaol.
• 28 December 1814: Macquarie's first Aboriginal conference and feast in the marketplace.
• January 1815: Native Institution opens. It moves to Black Town in 1823.
• 1815–1818: Macquarie enlarges Government House.
• 1817–1819: St John's twin towers built.
• 1818: Female Orphan School finished. Female Factory foundation stone laid.
• 1818–1820: Lancer Barracks built.
• 1819–1821: Brislington built.
• 1821: Female Factory occupied. Larra's inn becomes the Woolpack.
• 1821–1824: Hambledon Cottage built.
• 1822–1823: Brisbane's observatory and bathhouse.
• 1823–1829: Harrisford built.
• 2 June 1831: First steam ferry, the Surprise.
• 13 February 1832: The King's School opens at Harrisford.
• 1836–1839: Lennox Bridge built.
• 1841: Roman Catholic Orphan School built beside the Female Factory.
• 1847: Observatory closes. The governors stop using Government House (used 1800 to 1847).
• 1850: Elizabeth Macarthur dies at Elizabeth Farm.
• 1852–1855: St John's rebuilt behind the towers.
• 26 September 1855: Railway opens to Parramatta Junction (Granville).
• 1858: Parramatta Park opens to the public.
• 4 July 1860: Railway extended to the present Parramatta station.
• 1883: Town Hall completed. Redbank steam tramway opens.
• 1886: Roman Catholic Orphan School closes. Bathhouse becomes a pavilion.
• 1888: Centennial Memorial fountain erected.
• 1904: Boer War Memorial unveiled. Swanns buy Elizabeth Farm.
• 1911: William Hart lands in Parramatta Park.
• 1928: Ferries stop running west of Meadowbank.
• 6 February 1930: The Roxy opens.
• 1943: Redbank tramway closes.
• 1961: National Trust buys Experiment Farm Cottage.
• 1967: Old Government House dedicated to the National Trust.
• 1968: The King's School leaves for North Parramatta.
• 19 November 1976: Parramatta gazetted a city.
• 1984: Elizabeth Farm opens as a museum.
• 9 December 1993: RiverCat ferries return to Parramatta.
• July 2010: Old Government House and Domain World Heritage listed.
• May 2020: Royal Oak Hotel demolished for the light rail.
• 20 December 2024: Parramatta Light Rail opens.
• 9 March 2026: Last RiverCat retired.
• 7 November 2026: Powerhouse Parramatta due to open.

My Earlier Posts

• Old Government House – Parramatta – New South Wales
• Old Parramatta Government House Precinct – Parramatta
• St John's Anglican Church – Parramatta
• Elizabeth Farm – Alice Street – Parramatta
• Elizabeth Farm – Alice Street – Parramatta (Historic Sydney Mansions)
• Willow Grove – 34 Phillip Street – Parramatta
• “Hiawatha” – 70 George Street – Parramatta (Historic Sydney Mansions)
• The Cedars – St John's – Parramatta
• The Cedars – St John's – Parramatta (Historic Sydney Mansions)
• Courthouse and Scotch Church – Parramatta
• The Orphan School – George St (the Female Orphan School before its move to Parramatta)
• Parramatta Female Factory – Fleet Street, North Parramatta – Greenway's Factory, the Convict Women, the Asylum and the Girls Home – 1804 to Today
• The Castle Hill Rebellion – Battle of Vinegar Hill – 5 March 1804
• Pemulwuy – Bidjigal Resistance Leader of Botany Bay and Parramatta
• Parklands – Castle Hill
• Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales
• The Rum Rebellion – 26th January 1808 – Governor William Bligh Is Overthrown
• The Wentworth Family of Vaucluse
• Woolaware Bennelong

Sources

1. Kass, Terry, "Parramatta", Dictionary of Sydney, 2008. https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/parramatta
2. "Parramatta and Black Town Native Institutions", Dictionary of Sydney. https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/parramatta_and_black_town_native_institutions
3. "Aboriginal Feast Day 28 December 1816" (Sydney Gazette transcription and context), Lachlan & Elizabeth Macquarie Archive, Macquarie University. https://www.mq.edu.au/macquarie-archive/lema/1816/congress28dec1816.html
4. "First Aboriginal Feast Day at Parramatta 28 December 1814" (Sydney Gazette, 31 December 1814), Lachlan & Elizabeth Macquarie Archive, Macquarie University. https://www.mq.edu.au/macquarie-archive/lema/1814/sydgaz31dec1814.html
5. Greater Sydney Parklands, "Ancient Aboriginal heritage" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/ancient-aboriginal-heritage
6. Greater Sydney Parklands, "Aboriginal people since 1788" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/aboriginal-people-1788
7. Greater Sydney Parklands, "Convict and colonial history" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/convict-and-colonial-history
8. Greater Sydney Parklands, "Park heritage" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/park-heritage
9. Greater Sydney Parklands, "World heritage listing" (Parramatta Park). https://www.greatersydneyparklands.nsw.gov.au/parramatta-park-heritage/world-heritage-listing
10. National Trust of Australia (NSW), "Old Government House". https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/places/old-government-house/
11. National Trust of Australia (NSW), "Experiment Farm Cottage". https://www.nationaltrust.org.au/places/experiment-farm-cottage/
12. Woolpack Hotel, "History" (extracts from Collinridge Rivett, The Fabulous "Woolpack" Story, 1956). https://www.woolpackhotel.com.au/history
13. City of Parramatta, Parramatta History and Heritage, "The 'Red Cow' Inn Parramatta", 2013. https://historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au/blog/2013/08/21/the-red-cow-inn-parramatta
14. City of Parramatta, Parramatta History and Heritage, "Parramatta Light Rail". https://historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au/research-topics/parramatta/parramatta-light-rail
15. Carter, Gary J., "The Royal Oak Parramatta", from About that Shout, 2017 (NSW Major Projects exhibition document). https://majorprojects.planningportal.nsw.gov.au/prweb/PRRestService/mp/01/getContent?AttachRef=EXH-82%2120190223T045541.048+GMT
16. ABC News, "Parramatta's Royal Oaks Hotel demolished for light rail", 20 May 2020. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-05-20/sydney-morning-briefing-wednesday-may-20/12263888
17. Wikipedia, "Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta
18. Wikipedia, "Arthur Phillip". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Phillip
19. Wikipedia, "Burramattagal". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burramattagal
20. Wikipedia, "Battle of Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Parramatta
21. Wikipedia, "Old Government House, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Government_House,_Parramatta
22. Wikipedia, "Dairy Cottage, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dairy_Cottage,_Parramatta
23. Wikipedia, "St John's Cathedral, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John's_Cathedral,_Parramatta
24. Wikipedia, "St John's Cemetery, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_John's_Cemetery,_Parramatta
25. Wikipedia, "James Ruse". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ruse
26. Wikipedia, "Experiment Farm Cottage". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment_Farm_Cottage
27. Wikipedia, "Elizabeth Farm". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Farm
28. Wikipedia, "Hambledon Cottage". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hambledon_Cottage
29. Wikipedia, "Parramatta Female Factory". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Female_Factory
30. Wikipedia, "Parramatta Female Factory and Institutions Precinct". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Female_Factory_and_Institutions_Precinct
31. Wikipedia, "Rydalmere Hospital". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rydalmere_Hospital
32. Wikipedia, "Roman Catholic Orphan School". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_Orphan_School
33. Wikipedia, "Lancer Barracks". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancer_Barracks
34. Wikipedia, "Blacktown Native Institution Site". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacktown_Native_Institution_Site
35. Wikipedia, "Brislington, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brislington,_Parramatta
36. Wikipedia, "Harrisford". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrisford
37. Wikipedia, "The King's School, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King's_School,_Parramatta
38. Wikipedia, "Old King's School, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_King's_School,_Parramatta
39. Wikipedia, "Parramatta Gaol". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Gaol
40. Wikipedia, "Prince Alfred Square". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Alfred_Square
41. Wikipedia, "Parramatta Archaeological Site". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Archaeological_Site
42. Wikipedia, "Lennox Bridge, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennox_Bridge,_Parramatta
43. Wikipedia, "Centenary Square, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centenary_Square,_Parramatta
44. Wikipedia, "Parramatta ferry wharf". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_ferry_wharf
45. Wikipedia, "Parramatta River ferry service". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_River_ferry_service
46. Wikipedia, "Parramatta railway station". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_railway_station
47. Wikipedia, "Roxy Theatre, Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roxy_Theatre,_Parramatta
48. Wikipedia, "Parramatta Light Rail". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parramatta_Light_Rail
49. Wikipedia, "Powerhouse Parramatta". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powerhouse_Parramatta

Pictures are from Wikimedia Commons, with the photographer or artist and licence shown under each one. Click a picture to see its Commons page.

Parramatta Female Factory – Fleet Street, North Parramatta – Greenway's Factory, the Convict Women, the Asylum and the Girls Home – 1804 to Today

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this page contains the names of Aboriginal people who have died.

Most people driving up Church Street or catching the light rail through North Parramatta have no idea that behind the trees and the hospital car parks sits one of the most important women's history sites in the country. The Parramatta Female Factory was where thousands of convict women landed after the long voyage out. It was their workplace, their boarding house, their maternity ward, their marriage market and, if they played up, their prison. An orphan school went up next door in the 1840s. When the convict days ended the factory became a lunatic asylum, and the orphan school later became the Parramatta Girls Home, which only closed in 1974.

I've pulled the story together from the Dictionary of Sydney, the City of Parramatta's research pages, the Parramatta Female Factory Friends, the National Heritage List and the UNESCO Tentative List entry. Where they don't agree on a date or a number, I've set it out in the "Where the Sources Disagree" section near the end.

Augustus Earle's watercolour of the female penitentiary or factory at Parramatta, painted around 1826, only a few years after Greenway's building opened. Augustus Earle (1793–1838), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Burramatta – The Place of Eels

Long before the factory, this bend of the river was Burramattagal country. The Burramattagal are one clan of the Darug people, and their name comes from the Darug words for eel (burra), place (matta) and people (gal), so "people of the place of eels". The city of Parramatta takes its name from them.

The Burramattagal were pushed off their land quickly once Governor Phillip set up the farm and outpost at Rose Hill in November 1788. Their elder Maugoran complained to the British about how many white men had settled in his country. Phillip's answer was that wherever the colonists settled, "the natives are obliged to leave that part of the country", and he sent more troops to Rose Hill.

The UNESCO Tentative List entry for the site says the river gave the Burramatta fresh water, fish and eels, that the land was part of their core territory, and that the riverbanks near today's Norma Parker Centre are known to have been a site of women's ceremony. So women were gathering on this riverbank long before the Female Factory came along.

The Parramatta River at the weir. Burramatta means the place of eels, and the river was the heart of Burramattagal country. Sesqui centennial, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Factory Above the Gaol (1804–1821)

The early governors saw convict women as a problem. Their labour couldn't be used the way the men's muscle could, and there was nowhere official to put the women who weren't married off or sent out as servants. According to Geoff Barker of the Parramatta Heritage Centre, many of those women had to live with a man or turn to prostitution to pay for a roof, and those with no fixed home often couldn't protect their weekly rations and went hungry by the end of the week.

Governor Philip Gidley King's answer was to put the women to work weaving. He had hired a master weaver, Thomas Wise, before leaving England in 1799, but Wise drowned on the way out. King started a small workshop in 1801 with women making rough woollen blankets. Then in August 1803 he signed a contract with George Mealmaker, a hand-loom weaver transported as one of the "Scottish Martyrs", to run the work in new rooms being built at the Parramatta gaol.

King had suggested adding an extra storey to the gaol going up on what is now Prince Alfred Square. Upstairs were two big rooms about 80 feet long and 20 feet wide, with no way through to the gaol below. That was the first "Female Factory", and the Parramatta Female Factory Friends date it from 1804 to 1821. By August 1804 Mealmaker had nine looms going, making fine linen, duck, wool, sailcloth and sacking, and 2,116 yards of cloth had been bartered for wheat through the commissariat.

Parramatta in 1811, while the women were still working in the rooms above the old gaol. Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It didn't last as a going concern. Barker writes that Governor Bligh had no interest in the industry, a fire hit the factory in 1807, and Mealmaker, who had "a propensity for whisky and snuff", died in poverty and was buried in St John's cemetery. In May 1809 the Sydney Gazette announced the factory had reopened under Benjamin Brewer.

By 1818 the place was a disgrace. The Reverend Samuel Marsden reported 150 women and 70 children on the books, but only two rooms, both used as workshops. About 30 women slept on the floor among the spinning wheels, wool and cards, many with little or no bedding, and "not less than 120 women are at large at night to sleep where they can". Francis Greenway, sent to report on the building in 1816, warned that the men in the gaol could get up to the women above, which "has a very bad moral tendency". The Parramatta Female Factory Friends note that most of Parramatta's hangings took place just outside this gaol, on what was called Hanging Green.

Prince Alfred Square today. The first factory, the two rooms above the gaol, stood here from 1804 until the move in 1821. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Governor Philip Gidley King, who had the women put to work weaving and the factory built above the Parramatta gaol. Unknown artist, State Library of New South Wales, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Reverend Samuel Marsden, whose 1818 report on the crowded old factory helped push Macquarie into building a new one. James Fittler (1758–1835), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Greenway's Factory by the River (1818–1821)

Marsden had been writing to everyone who'd listen about the women, including Wilberforce, Lord Bathurst and Elizabeth Fry, and in January 1817 Governor Lachlan Macquarie put a new Female Factory on his list of essential public buildings. In March 1817 Greenway was told to draw up a factory and barracks "sufficient to lodge 300 female convicts, on an area of ground of four acres, enclosed by a stone wall nine feet high".

The site was on the north side of the river, just up from the weir for the government mill, on land that had been granted to Governor Bligh and taken back by Macquarie after Bligh left. Major George Druitt called tenders in December 1817, and in April 1818 the contract went to William Watkins and Isaac Payten, who were to finish in eighteen months for £4,778. Macquarie laid the foundation stone in 1818 (see "Where the Sources Disagree" for the exact day). The building was finished in January 1821, well over time.

Governor Lachlan Macquarie, who put a new Female Factory on his list of essential public buildings in 1817 and laid its foundation stone in 1818. Richard Read, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Francis Greenway, the convict architect who designed the factory for 300 women on four acres by the river. Unknown artist, State Library of New South Wales, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Macquarie was proud of it. In his list of public works he called it "A Large Commodious handsome stone built Barrack and Factory, three storeys high, with Wings of one storey each for the accommodation and residence of 300 Female Convicts". It came with carding, weaving and loom rooms, stores for wool and flax, a kitchen garden and a bleaching ground, all inside a high stone wall with a moat or wet ditch.

According to Wikipedia's account, the walls of the main building were 2 feet 6 inches thick at the foundations, it had an oak-shingled roof, and the women ate on the first floor and slept on the two floors above. Barker points out that the plain, unornamented design was a lot like Greenway's Hyde Park Barracks. It also sat too close to the river: Commissioner Bigge noted a breach in the bank that threatened the wall's foundations, and the late decision to build the wall plus the flood works added £1,200 to the bill.

Greenway's Convict Barracks in Sydney (Hyde Park Barracks), about 1819. The plain design of the Parramatta factory was a lot like it. George William Evans (attributed), State Library of New South Wales, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Moving Day – February 1821

The women were walked from the old rooms above the gaol to the new factory in February 1821. According to the City of Parramatta's history pages, Macquarie and Commissioner Bigge came to watch 109 women and 71 children moved in on 1 February. Bigge, who was in the colony looking into government waste, wasn't impressed and doubted such an expensive barrack had been needed at all.

Joseph Lycett's Parramatta from May's Hill, about 1824, around the time the new factory was filling up. Joseph Lycett, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

First, Second and Third Class

With a lot more women to manage, the factory brought in a class system. The Dictionary of Sydney says it began with two classes, and a third came in after Governor Brisbane ordered more sleeping quarters in 1823. The City of Parramatta says the Royal Engineers built the quarters for "third class" women around 1825. The Parramatta Female Factory Friends set the classes out like this:

• First class: women waiting to be assigned as servants, or eligible for marriage.
• Second class: women there for a minor offence, for pregnancy, or because they had a child with them.
• Third class: the "crime class", for women sentenced in the colony or caught behaving badly, for example by being insolent. Women could be moved up or down depending on their conduct.

For first-class women, the Dictionary of Sydney says, the factory was mainly a refuge and a labour exchange. They got better food and clothes, could have visitors, could go to church, and could earn their own money for extra work. Second class was a probationary class with worse food and fewer rights.

For the third class the factory was plainly a harsh women's prison. They did hard labour, and from 1826 they had their heads shaved, which marked them out and hurt their chances of being assigned or married. In June 1831 the Sydney Monitor reported that someone attached to the factory was making money on the side selling the women's hair. The Parramatta Female Factory Friends list the other punishments: breaking rocks, picking oakum, chopping wood, laundry work, solitary confinement on bread and water, wearing a heavy iron, and a cap of disgrace.

What landed a woman in third class was not always consistent. The Dictionary of Sydney gives the case of Julia Allen in 1831. She preferred a stroll in the Sydney streets to scrubbing her master's floors, told him he was "a dirty, disagreeable, detrimental little devil", and said she'd be damned before she'd work. That got her six weeks in the third class. A fortnight later Isabella Wass was found guilty of biting off part of a woman's finger and got two weeks less than Julia.

Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane, who ordered extra sleeping quarters in 1823 that helped bring in the three-class system. E. E. Friedrich T. Schenck, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

'Black-eyed Sue and Sweet Poll of Plymouth, taking leave of their lovers who are going to Botany Bay', a British print from 1794. Unknown artist (British Museum collection), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

An 1834 illustration of a disobedient female convict being punished aboard the Lady Juliana on the voyage out in 1789. Unknown artist, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Spinning, Weaving and Parramatta Cloth

Wikipedia explains it was called a factory because it made cloth: linen, wool and linsey-woolsey. It says the women wove 60,000 yards of cloth in 1822 and calls it the colony's first manufactured export. The Parramatta Female Factory Friends say the women spun and wove linen and what became known as "Parramatta" cloth.

The City of Parramatta says work for every class revolved mostly around making cloth and linen. Some women cooked and washed for the factory, some of that washing was done for the public, and others worked as needlewomen or hat-makers. When Bigge reported, he recommended adding sewing and straw-hat making to the spinning and carding to keep the women busy. The Parramatta Female Factory Friends add straw plaiting and a laundry service for the colony. The work came and went with demand, and the council notes the women often had nothing to do when production cost too much or nobody wanted their labour.

The Rajah Quilt, made by convict women aboard the ship Rajah in 1841. Needlework was one of the skills convict women brought with them. Women of the convict ship Rajah, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Lycett's view of John Macarthur's house near Parramatta, about 1823. First-class women waited at the factory to be assigned as servants to households like this. Joseph Lycett, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Picking a Wife at the Factory Gate

The factory was also, quite openly, a marriage bureau. Carol Liston, writing in the Parramatta Heritage Centre's Women Transported, says Governor Darling found the "disposal of the women in an eligible manner" both desirable and "extremely perplexing and embarrassing". Governments encouraged convict mechanics to marry by giving married men extra time to work for themselves. In 1832 the Government Gazette announced that men could apply to marry women in the factory.

Judge Roger Therry described ticket-of-leave men getting a pass to go to the factory and choose a wife, with little courtship beyond a quick look. The whole thing supposedly took three days: one to get there and choose, one for courtship and the wedding, and one to go home with the bride. Liston points out that in practice it can't have been that quick, because couples needed permission to marry and that took weeks.

Real names turn up in the church books. In October 1831 the banns approved at St John's, Parramatta included five women from the factory, among them Margaret Hogan, a widow with four children. On 13 March 1843 Henry Boggs of Wollongong married Catherine Nowlan of the Female Factory at St Patrick's in Parramatta, with three factory staff as her witnesses. It didn't always end happily. The Dictionary of Sydney notes that more than one newly married former inmate turned up in the newspapers' police columns complaining of beatings from her husband.

Governor Ralph Darling, who found finding husbands for the factory women 'extremely perplexing and embarrassing' and who appointed Ann Gordon as matron. John Linnell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Women's Hospital and the Children

Greenway also designed a hospital on the site, and it still stands. The Dictionary of Sydney says sick and injured women and expectant mothers, free as well as convict, were cared for there, which makes it the first dedicated women's health service in Australia. The City of Parramatta adds that in the 1820s the factory treated most of the women in the colony who needed a doctor, and that surgeons were treating women out in the open courtyard until a verandah was asked for in 1829.

Babies born there could stay with their mothers until they turned three, often less, and were then sent to orphan schools such as the Male Orphan School at Liverpool or the Female Orphan School at Rydalmere. Many never got that far. The Dictionary of Sydney says the St John's burial registers show plenty of infants who died at the factory, and women died there too, from infectious disease and childbirth. There was at least one coroner's finding of death by starvation, which the authorities were quick to reverse.

Lycett's View of the Female Orphan School, near Parramatta, about 1825. Children born at the factory could be sent here from about the age of three. Joseph Lycett, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The old Female Orphan School building at Rydalmere, now part of the Western Sydney University campus. Gareth Edwards, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Matron Ann Gordon

Ann Gordon ran the place longer than anyone. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says she was born in Portsmouth about 1795, married Robert Gordon of the Limerick Militia in 1812, and came to Sydney with him and their two daughters in 1817. Governor Darling gave her the job of superintendent and matron in October 1827 at £150 a year, including quarters, fuel and light, which made her one of the highest-paid women in the colony. Wikipedia notes that was £50 a year less than her predecessor got.

According to the City of Parramatta, there were 366 women in the factory in her first year, more than a thousand passed through in 1827 and 1828, and 500 were still there in late 1829. Built for 300, it grew to more than 600 women and children under Governor Bourke. Locals nicknamed it Gordon's Villa, Gordon's Nunnery or Gordon's Seminary, and women sent to live and work there were said to have been "Gordonised".

Scandal around her family finished her. The factory midwife, Mary Ann Neale, alleged misconduct by Ann's husband, and there were rumours about her daughter Caroline. Ann herself wasn't blamed, and Bourke called her "a valuable public servant", but she lost the job in 1836 and was paid a year's salary. Sarah and Thomas Bell took over. Ann died at Maitland on 6 June 1868.

A portrait identified on Wikimedia Commons as Matron Ann Gordon, who ran the factory from 1827 to 1836 and was one of the highest-paid women in the colony. Unknown artist, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Parramatta River on an early 1900s postcard. The factory stood on the left bank, so close that its wall needed buttressing against the river. William Henry Broadhurst, State Library of New South Wales, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Riots

The women didn't take it all lying down. The Dictionary of Sydney and Women Transported both list riots in 1827, 1831, 1833, 1836 and 1843.

27 October 1827

The first riot broke out while the factory was changing matrons, as Ann Gordon arrived. Liston says it was a reaction to cuts in the ration of tea and sugar, and possibly a show of independence for the new matron's benefit. The Sydney Gazette's report is a cracker:

"A numerous party again assailed the gates, with pick axes, axes, iron crows … the inmates were quickly poured forth, thick as bees from a hive, over Parramatta and the adjoining neighbourhood. About one hundred came into town … A captain, a Lietenant, two serjents; and about 40 rank and file, were seen flying in all directions with fixed bayonets … and so violent were the Amazonian banditti, that nothing less was expected but that the soldiers would be obliged to commence firing on them."

The women came back a few hours later under military escort, their aprons loaded with bread and meat. The historian Gay Hendriksen argues it was Australia's first female workers' riot, and the Parramatta Female Factory Friends describe it as the women refusing to work on starvation rations.

March 1833 – The Hair-Cutting Riot

In March 1833 the women resisted the routine cropping of their hair. According to Liston, the constables and 40 soldiers followed the elderly Reverend Marsden and Dr Anderson into the third-class yard and were met with a shower of stones. The women were subdued and their hair was cut. A convict woman, Mary Ann Jarvis, did the cutting when the paid monitresses refused, and her own sentence was remitted because of the risk she took.

February 1843

By the early 1840s transportation had stopped, assignment had stopped and the colony was in a depression. Liston says numbers in the factory hit 1,203 women and 263 children in the winter of 1842. In October 1842 the women petitioned the Governor, arguing they had been sentenced to transportation, not imprisonment. An inquiry backed them. Even so, in February 1843 about a hundred third-class women broke out of their quarters, yelling and throwing stones, and got into the outer yard before the military and police pushed them back.

That same year Gordon Elliott, the Parramatta police magistrate, started a hiring scheme where the women would be paid. Between February and March 1843 he placed 94 of the best-behaved women as cooks, laundresses, needlewomen and housemaids.

Elizabeth Fry reading to the women prisoners at Newgate. Marsden wrote to her about the Parramatta women, and Gipps brought in two administrators she had chosen. Jerry Barrett, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Gipps's Cells and the End of the Factory

Under Governors Bourke and Gipps the factory turned more and more into a prison. In June 1838 the Royal Engineers under Captain Barney started a three-storey cell block, finished in September 1839. Charles White, writing in 1906, put the total cost at £3,767 and the number of cells at 72, built on the American separate system. The ground-floor cells were so dark that Her Majesty's Prison Inspector criticised them and new windows had to be cut. Gipps also brought in two new administrators chosen by the English prison reformer Elizabeth Fry. Liston says 72 women were regularly in the cells through 1840 and 1841.

Once transportation to New South Wales ended in 1840, the factory slowly ran out of purpose. Assignment of women stopped in 1841, and by 1846 there were only 250 women left. The City of Parramatta says the factory's administrative positions, including the matron's, were abolished by 1848. Edwyn Statham, the last superintendent, and his wife were straight away made superintendents of the new Parramatta Lunatic Asylum.

Governor Sir George Gipps, whose three-storey cell block of 1838–39 made the factory more of a prison than ever. William Nicholas, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The asylum at Gladesville (Tarban Creek) about 1883. From 1849 chronic patients were moved from here into the old Female Factory. State Archives and Records NSW, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Factories Built on the Parramatta Model

Parramatta was the first purpose-built female factory and the pattern for the rest. The Parramatta Female Factory Friends list eleven others: George Town, Launceston, Ross, Hobart Town and the Cascades in Van Diemen's Land, Bathurst, Newcastle and two at Port Macquarie in New South Wales, and two at Moreton Bay. The National Heritage List says only three of the twelve survive.

The Cascades Female Factory in Hobart in 1844, one of the factories that followed the Parramatta model. John Skinner Prout, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Ross Female Factory in Tasmania, another of the factories in the system that began at Parramatta. EurovisionNim, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Female Convict Factory at Moreton Bay (Brisbane) around 1835, on the site of today's GPO in Queen Street. Unknown artist, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Roman Catholic Orphan School Next Door

Right next to the factory, on its south side, stands the old Roman Catholic Orphan School. The City of Parramatta says work began in 1841 on a four-storey building and a three-storey servants' wing designed by Henry Ginn, using stone from a quarry in Fleet Street. Wikipedia says it was first meant for the children of the factory women. It was supposed to replace the Male Orphan School at Liverpool, but instead 113 children were brought over from the Roman Catholic orphanage at Waverley.

It grew and grew: a new wing around 1850, more work by William Munro from 1859, a hospital in 1862 (later called Bethel House), and a chapel in 1865. According to Wikipedia, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd took over its management in 1859. By the 1870s it held 318 children, and the 1873–74 Royal Commission on Public Charities found boys and girls crammed into dormitories, in some cases more than one child to a bed. When it closed in August 1886, 41 children were still there.

The Sisters of Charity, who later founded St Vincent's Hospital, also did some of their early work at the factory and the orphan school. I've written about them in my St Vincent's post (link below).

From Lunatic Asylum to Cumberland Hospital

In July 1849 Governor FitzRoy announced that "incurable chronic lunatics" would be moved from the overcrowded Tarban Creek asylum at Gladesville to "the building at Parramatta, known as the Female Factory". The City of Parramatta says the site officially became the Parramatta Lunatic Asylum in 1850. Dr Patrick Hill became the first surgeon superintendent in 1852 but died soon after, and Dr Richard Greenup took over. Through the 1850s most new arrivals were destitute people and low-risk patients. By the 1870s it was the biggest government establishment in Parramatta, with about 800 inmates.

Conditions were grim. The women patients lived in Gipps's old prison cells, described in 1877 as a "gloomy, three-storied building" so dark inside that it was "never brighter than twilight on the sunniest day". Dr Frederick Norton Manning, after touring asylums around the world, wrote: "I have not seen anything so unsatisfactory and so saddening as Parramatta, except at Cairo."

Under the Lunacy Act of 1878 the asylum became the Parramatta Hospital for the Insane. The women moved into a new weatherboard complex in 1882, and the old factory buildings started coming down. Sandstone from Gipps's cell block went into James Barnet's No. 1 Male Ward, finished in 1885, which still stands with the turret clock from Greenway's main factory building in its spire. The Dictionary of Sydney adds that the factory bell, dated 1820, hangs above the clock. Greenway's main building itself was knocked down in the 1880s, and the old factory gates went around 1909 for Walter Liberty Vernon's administration block. By 1934 there were 700 women patients. The name changed to Cumberland Hospital in 1983, and it is still a mental health hospital today.

Parramatta Gaol, about five minutes' walk from the factory buildings. The Dictionary of Sydney says the two places share a long history. Adam.J.W.C., CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Parramatta Girls Home, Kamballa and Norma Parker

This is the hardest part of the story. In 1887 the girls of the Biloela Industrial School on Cockatoo Island, ninety of them, were moved into the old orphan school buildings. It became the Parramatta Industrial School for Girls. A 1910 official handbook said it was designed for "neglected and uncontrollable girls between the ages of 13 and 16 years", especially those whose company had led them to "immoral tendencies or criminal instincts".

Wikipedia says girls were sent there as "delinquent", "neglected" or juvenile offenders, and many were Aboriginal girls of the Stolen Generations. The UNESCO entry says the training aimed at domestic skills and "moral purity", and that many former inmates see it as forced domestic slavery. There were riots from the very first years, and Wikipedia lists others in the 1940s, 1958 and 1961. The UNESCO entry tells of one escape where the girls built a human pyramid to get over the high walls. From 1961, girls who broke the rules could be sent to the Hay Institution for Girls, a maximum-security annexe.

Public pressure, led in large part by the campaigner Bessie Guthrie and the Women's Liberation Movement, closed the home in 1974. The UNESCO entry says the site then became Kamballa, a shelter for girls, and Taldree, for boys, and from 1980 it was a women's detention centre called the Norma Parker Centre. In 2014 the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard from sixteen women who said they had been sexually and physically abused at the Girls Home. The National Heritage List places this history alongside the convict story, naming the Forgotten Australians, Child Migrants and Stolen Generations.

What's Left Standing

The Parramatta Female Factory Friends list what survives from the factory years:

• Two Greenway buildings from about 1818: the Matron's Quarters and administration building, and the Lying-In Hospital.
• The third-class penitentiary and sleeping quarters from about 1823 to 1826.
• The sandstone walls and yards.

The Dictionary of Sydney adds the 1830s courtyard walls and the Gipps courtyard, where discarded convict stone still lies around but the solitary cells are gone.

Heritage Listing and the World Heritage Bid

The Parramatta Female Factory Action Group, now the Parramatta Female Factory Friends, started in 2010 to stop the buildings being lost to "demolition by neglect" and to push for national and world heritage listing. They got the first part. The Parramatta Female Factory and Institutions Precinct went onto the National Heritage List in November 2017. The listing says the precinct, used from 1821 until 2008 by state and church institutions, is "outstanding in its capacity to tell the stories of women and children in institutions".

On 13 September 2023 Australia added the precinct to its UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List. That bid ended in February 2026. According to Property and Development NSW, the UNESCO advisory body ICOMOS told the Australian and NSW governments the precinct didn't meet its criteria, and the nomination was discontinued. The Parramatta Female Factory Friends said they were "deeply disappointed — but determined to continue the fight". In their statement of 22 February 2026 they called on both governments to keep a World Heritage pathway open, possibly as an extension of the existing Australian Convict Sites listing.

Parramatta North Today

The land around the factory has been fought over for more than a decade. In 2015 the ABC reported that UrbanGrowth NSW wanted about 3,900 dwellings in North Parramatta, in buildings up to 30 storeys. The Female Factory Friends and local residents fought hard against it, and the government promised $103 million to restore the buildings.

The latest chapter came on 7 August 2026, when the NSW Government finalised the rezoning of 33 hectares of Parramatta North. The plan allows around 2,000 new homes, at least 100 of them affordable, in buildings from two to 23 storeys. It also allows up to 12,000 jobs, a university campus, up to 10 hectares of open space and a new First Nations pavilion by the river, with $124.5 million for the first stage of infrastructure. The 6-hectare Female Factory and Institutions Precinct itself is not part of the rezoning and stays in government ownership, and buildings next to it were cut back in number and height.

Property and Development NSW says government money has already gone into restoring buildings for uses like the Western Sydney Startup Hub and the Parramatta Girls Home Memorial Garden. It held a Heritage Day on the site on 9 May 2026, with tours of the Girls Home and the Female Factory. The Female Factory Friends run tours from their rooms at 5 Fleet Street.

The Parramatta River at Parramatta. The 2026 rezoning promises longer riverside paths and up to 10 hectares of open space across Parramatta North. Ryanwiki, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Descendants – One in Seven?

You'll often hear that one in seven Australians descends from the women of the Female Factory. It's worth knowing where that comes from. The City of Parramatta writes that it is "estimated one in seven Australians is descended" from the women who passed through. In 2015 Gay Hendriksen, president of the Parramatta Female Factory Friends, told the ABC: "It's estimated one in seven Australians are related to the women who went through the factory." The Friends' own fact sheet gives a range, "1 in 5 to 1 in 7 Australians are related to female factory women", and separately says one in seven Australians are descended from convict women generally.

So it's an estimate from the historians and advocates closest to the site, and the wording shifts between "descended from" and "related to". None of the sources I read show how the figure was worked out. It's a nice thought all the same. If your family tree has a convict woman who came to New South Wales between 1821 and 1848, there's a fair chance she spent time behind those sandstone walls.

Timeline

• Before 1788 – Burramattagal country, part of the Darug nation.
• November 1788 – Governor Phillip sets up the farm and outpost at Rose Hill, and the Burramattagal are pushed out.
• 1801 – King starts a small blanket-weaving workshop with women convicts.
• August 1803 – George Mealmaker is contracted to run weaving in new rooms on the Parramatta gaol.
• 1804 – The women move into the "factory above the gaol".
• 1807 – A fire at the factory.
• May 1809 – The factory reopens under Benjamin Brewer.
• 1816 – Greenway reports on the crowded old factory.
• March 1817 – Greenway is ordered to design a factory for 300 women.
• April 1818 – The contract goes to Watkins and Payten for £4,778.
• 1818 – Macquarie lays the foundation stone (4 May or 9 July, depending on the source).
• February 1821 – 109 women and their children move into the new factory.
• 1822 – 60,000 yards of cloth woven.
• 1823–1826 – Third-class quarters are added and the three-class system starts.
• 27 October 1827 – The first riot. Ann Gordon becomes matron.
• 1831 – A second riot.
• March 1833 – The hair-cutting riot.
• 1836 – Another riot. Ann Gordon is dismissed.
• 1838–1839 – Gipps's three-storey cell block is built.
• 1840 – Transportation to New South Wales ends.
• 1841 – Assignment of women ends. Work begins on the Roman Catholic Orphan School.
• Winter 1842 – 1,203 women and 263 children in the factory.
• February 1843 – The last recorded riot.
• 1848 – The factory's positions are abolished and it becomes the Parramatta Lunatic Asylum.
• 1849–1850 – Patients are moved in from Tarban Creek, and the asylum is made official.
• 1878 – The asylum becomes the Parramatta Hospital for the Insane under the Lunacy Act.
• 1880s – Greenway's main building and Gipps's cells are demolished, and the No. 1 Male Ward is built in 1885.
• August 1886 – The Roman Catholic Orphan School closes.
• 1887 – The Parramatta Industrial School for Girls opens.
• 1974 – The Parramatta Girls Home closes, and Kamballa and Taldree take its place.
• 1980 – The Norma Parker Centre for women opens.
• 1983 – The asylum is renamed Cumberland Hospital.
• 2010 – The Parramatta Female Factory Action Group is formed.
• November 2017 – National Heritage listing.
• 13 September 2023 – The precinct is added to Australia's World Heritage Tentative List.
• February 2026 – ICOMOS advises against listing, and the nomination is discontinued.
• 9 May 2026 – Heritage Day at Parramatta North.
• 7 August 2026 – The Parramatta North rezoning is finalised, with the Female Factory precinct left out.

Where the Sources Disagree

• When the first factory started: The Parramatta Female Factory Friends say 1804 to 1821, and Wikipedia says the women moved in in 1804. The Dictionary of Sydney heads its section "c1802–1821". The City of Parramatta titles its page "1803–1821", and the UNESCO entry says the earlier factory was "established 1803".
• The foundation stone: The Dictionary of Sydney and the City of Parramatta's bicentenary podcast page both say Macquarie laid it on 4 May 1818. Another City of Parramatta page, "The Second Female Factory: 1818–1848", says 9 July 1818.
• Moving day: The Dictionary of Sydney, the Parramatta Female Factory Friends and the City of Parramatta's "Second Female Factory" page say 1 February 1821. The City of Parramatta's bicentenary page says 21 February 1821.
• How many children moved in: The City of Parramatta says 71 children came with the 109 women. The Parramatta Female Factory Friends say 72.
• How many women it was built for: Macquarie's own description and Greenway's orders say 300. Wikipedia says Greenway was told to design for 250.
• The contractor's name: The City of Parramatta has Isaac "Payten" (in partnership with William Watkins on one page, and William Gooch on another). The Dictionary of Sydney spells him "Peyton".
• How many women passed through: Wikipedia says over 9,000 names are recorded across all the factories, with about 5,000 through Parramatta, and the City of Parramatta also says about 5,000. The Parramatta Female Factory Friends' fact sheet says about 15,000 went through the factory system at Parramatta.
• What the 1827 rioters wanted: Liston, in Women Transported, says the riot was over cuts to tea and sugar. Wikipedia says the disputed ration was bread and sugar.
• How many riots: The Dictionary of Sydney, Women Transported and Wikipedia list five (1827, 1831, 1833, 1836 and 1843). The Parramatta Female Factory Friends say there were six.
• When the third-class quarters went up: The Dictionary of Sydney links the third class to new sleeping quarters ordered by Governor Brisbane in 1823. The City of Parramatta says the Royal Engineers built the third-class quarters around 1825, and the UNESCO entry says the three-class system came in in 1825. The Friends date the surviving penitentiary to about 1823–1826.
• When the factory became an asylum: The Dictionary of Sydney, the Friends and the UNESCO entry say the factory closed and the asylum began in 1848. Wikipedia's Cumberland Hospital article says the site held female convicts until 1847 and was redesignated a lunatic asylum in 1849. The City of Parramatta says it officially became the asylum in 1850.
• When it became the Hospital for the Insane: The Dictionary of Sydney says it was renamed in 1869. The City of Parramatta says it happened under the Lunacy Act of 1878. The Parramatta Female Factory Friends say it was the Lunatic Asylum until 1890.
• When Greenway's main building came down: The Dictionary of Sydney says 1883. The City of Parramatta says Greenway's building was demolished in 1885–1886, after Gipps's cells were approved for demolition in 1882.
• When the orphan school started: The Dictionary of Sydney says construction began in late 1840, and Wikipedia and the City of Parramatta say 1841. The UNESCO entry says the school was established in 1844, and the Friends call it the Roman Catholic Orphanage (1844).
• How many female factories there were: Wikipedia says Parramatta was one of 13. The National Heritage List says 12 were established and three survive. The Friends say Parramatta was the model for 11 others, which also makes 12.
• The date of the National Heritage listing: The National Heritage List page says it was inscribed on 14 November 2017, and Wikipedia says 17 November 2017. Property and Development NSW says the precinct has been on the list "since 2018".
• When the Norma Parker Centre closed: The UNESCO entry says it ran as a women's detention centre until 2008. The City of Parramatta says it stopped being a detention centre in 2010.
• The descendants figure: The City of Parramatta and Gay Hendriksen (ABC, 2015) say one in seven. The Friends' fact sheet gives one in five to one in seven, and it switches between "descended from" and "related to".

My Earlier Posts

• Willow Grove – 34 Phillip Street – Parramatta
• St Vincent's Hospital – Victoria Street – Darlinghurst, where the Sisters of Charity's early work at the Female Factory gets a mention
• Benevolent Asylum – Railway Square, which took in former Female Factory women
• Philip Gidley King – Third Governor of New South Wales
• The Orphan School – George Street
• Old Government House – Parramatta
• St John's Anglican Church – Parramatta
• St Matthew's Church, Windsor – Francis Greenway
• Sydney Hospital – The Rum Hospital
• Darlinghurst Gaol & Darlinghurst Court
• Elizabeth Farm – Alice Street – Parramatta (Historic Sydney Mansions)
• The Cedars – St John's – Parramatta (Historic Sydney Mansions)
• Parramatta – From Burramatta and Rose Hill to the River City – Old Government House, St John's, Elizabeth Farm and Australia's Second Settlement – 1788 to Today

Sources

• Michaela Ann Cameron, "Parramatta Female Factory", Dictionary of Sydney, 2015, revised 2017 – dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/parramatta_female_factory
• Geoff Barker, "The First Female Factory, Prince Alfred Square, 1803 – 1821", City of Parramatta – historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au
• "The Second Female Factory: 1818-1848", City of Parramatta – historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au
• "Parramatta Female Factory – Bicentenary 1821 – 2021", City of Parramatta – historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au
• "Parramatta Female Factory – interviews with local historian" (200 years page), City of Parramatta – historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au
• Emma Stockburn, "Matron Ann Gordon", City of Parramatta, 2020 – historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au
• Neera Sahni, "History of the 'Parramatta Lunatic Asylum' 1848-1878", City of Parramatta – historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au
• Geoff Barker, "'Parramatta Hospital for the Insane', Destruction of 'Female Factory' Buildings and structures, Cumberland Hospital, 1878-1983", City of Parramatta – historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au
• "Parramatta Roman Catholic Orphan School Site", City of Parramatta – historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au
• Gay Hendriksen, Carol Liston and Trudy Cowley, Women Transported – Life in Australia's Convict Female Factories, Parramatta Heritage Centre, 2008 (PDF) – historyandheritage.cityofparramatta.nsw.gov.au
• Parramatta Female Factory Friends, "Fast Facts" – parramattafemalefactoryfriends.com.au
• Parramatta Female Factory Friends, Media Statement, 22 February 2026 (PDF) – parramattafemalefactoryfriends.com.au
• Hilary Weatherburn, "Gordon, Ann (1795–1868)", Australian Dictionary of Biography – adb.anu.edu.au/biography/gordon-ann-12943
• Australian Government (DCCEEW), "Parramatta Female Factory and Institutions Precinct", National Heritage List – dcceew.gov.au
• UNESCO World Heritage Centre, Tentative Lists, "Parramatta Female Factory and Institutions Precinct" – whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/6686
• Property and Development NSW, "Parramatta North" – nsw.gov.au
• NSW Government, "Historic Parramatta North set for a once in a generation renewal", 7 August 2026 – nsw.gov.au
• ABC News, "Development plans could ruin major Australian historical site in Parramatta, heritage groups say", 19 June 2015 – abc.net.au
• Wikipedia, "Parramatta Female Factory" – en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia, "Burramattagal" – en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia, "Roman Catholic Orphan School" – en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia, "Parramatta Girls Home" – en.wikipedia.org
• Wikipedia, "Cumberland Hospital" – en.wikipedia.org
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, with individual credits under each picture.