Randwick – How Simeon Pearce's Village Began – From Bidjigal Country to the Steam Trams

In short: Randwick didn't just grow, it was talked into being. For thousands of years this sandy, swampy heath between the harbour and the sea was Bidjigal and Gadigal country. Then in 1847 a young Gloucestershire migrant called Simeon Henry Pearce bought four acres of market garden on the heights above Coogee Bay, named them after the village he was born in, and spent the next forty years turning the name into a suburb. With his brother James he bought up land, pushed for roads, got a church, an asylum and a council, and in February 1859 Randwick became one of the very first municipalities in New South Wales, with Pearce as its first mayor. By the 1880s the steam trams were rattling up from the city and the old village was on its way to becoming the Randwick we know.

The Pearce family at Blenheim House, Randwick, about 1885. Simeon and his wife Alice are seated. J. Roarty, State Library of New South Wales, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Before Randwick: Bidjigal and Gadigal Country

Long before anyone thought of naming it after an English village, this was Aboriginal land. A heritage report written for Randwick City Council says the Bidjigal and Gadigal people of the Eora Nation were coastal clans who lived in and around the Coogee area and relied on the harbour and the ocean for their food. The same report says the traditional custodians of the wider Randwick City area were mostly Bidjigal, along with Gadigal and the Muru-Ora-Dial people around Maroubra.

Historian Pauline Curby, writing for the Dictionary of Sydney, describes the country as "a land of swamps and heath". And the people go back a very long way here. In 1995 an Aboriginal hearth, a campsite, was found on the high ridge off Avoca Street. It was dated to 8,000 years before the present, and at the time it was the oldest such site known in coastal Sydney.

Curby also makes the point plainly: the handful of European settlers who came out this way in the first half of the 1800s, land grants or not, all did well out of land that had been taken from its Aboriginal owners.

Sandhills, Market Gardens and a Few Early Landholders

For the first sixty years of the colony hardly anyone lived out here. It was a long, sandy haul from town. The council's heritage report says much of what is now Randwick Junction was Crown land before it was granted to early landholders, naming J. Pearce, Simeon Pearce, Alexander Macarthur and Samuel Hebblewhite. Among the small number of people already working the ground were market gardeners. One of them, George Hooper, matters to our story, because he's the man who sold Simeon Pearce his first four acres.

The Hooper family of Randwick, in an undated 19th-century photograph. A George Hooper, market gardener, sold Simeon Pearce his first block. Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Simeon Pearce, the Man Who Named It

From Gloucestershire to Sydney

Simeon Henry Pearce was born on 27 January 1821 at Randwick in Gloucestershire, England, the son of James and Elizabeth Pearce. According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, he and his cousin Samuel came out as bounty immigrants and landed in Sydney on Christmas Day 1841, on the Lady Clarke. The two set up as butchers, but the partnership was dissolved in March 1844.

Simeon was then backed by an innkeeper, James Thompson, and in January 1848 he married Thompson's eldest daughter, Alice Isabella. His brother James, who came out in 1848, married Thompson's youngest daughter in 1849. When she came of age in 1852, each brother received £1300. That money went a long way in land.

The parish church at Randwick, Gloucestershire, near Stroud, in Simeon Pearce's home village. St Jude's in Sydney was first designed as a copy of it. Vincent Jones, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Court Farm in the original Randwick, Gloucestershire, photographed in 1963. Geographer, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Four acres and a name

Randwick City Council's own history site says Pearce first visited the area, then called the Coogee Hills, in 1844. In September 1847, says the ADB, he bought four acres (1.6 hectares) of market garden on the heights above Coogee Bay and named them Randwick. The council says he bought the lot from George Hooper and meant to go into market gardening.

In 1848, soon after his marriage, he borrowed money from Hooper and built a solid house on the block. The council calls it the first stone house in the area. He called it Blenheim House, and it's still standing in Blenheim Street. From then on, the council says, Simeon dreamed of building a village on the model of his Randwick back home.

Blenheim House, Randwick, the stone house Simeon Pearce built in 1848. The first Anglican services in the district were held here. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The commissioner who bought the best blocks

Here's where it gets interesting. In August 1849 Pearce was made a bailiff, after a run of petitions to Sir Thomas Mitchell about saving the vegetation on the sandhills. From 1851 to 1856 he was commissioner of Crown lands in Sydney. The council's history is blunt about what that meant: the job gave him power over the sale of land in the district, and while he held it he started buying the best parcels himself and later resold them "earning him immense profits".

By 1854, the ADB says, Simeon and James had bought 200 acres at Manly and French's Forest, and over 200 acres in parcels around Randwick and St George. These were subdivided and sold at a good profit once Randwick had been promoted as a fashionable place to live. The council says that at one time the brothers owned nearly all the land in Randwick, including all of Struggletown.

Struggletown was built on Pearce land. It started as market gardens, and later stone cottages went up for the brothers' workers and their families. That gave the workers a roof and gave Simeon a steady rent.

Roads, fox hunts and a bishop

Nobody was going to move out to Randwick without a decent road. In 1853 Pearce petitioned for a road from the city to Coogee, later surveyed it, and became a commissioner of its trust. Not everyone was impressed. In March 1855 the composer Isaac Nathan publicly ran down his work. The council says the Old Botany, Randwick and Coogee road trusts improved the roads, and people began to move in.

Pearce knew how to sell a suburb. He and Alice hosted fox hunts across Randwick and Maroubra to bring the colony's leading people out for a look. One of them stuck. The council's heritage report says Bishop Barker of Sydney visited Pearce in 1855, liked what he saw, and decided to put his new residence, Bishopscourt, at Randwick instead of Newtown.

Sandgate in Belmore Road, one of a row of five sandstone investment houses Simeon Pearce built. Wikipedia says it stands on Crown land Pearce bought in 1853. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Asylum on the Hill

What really put Randwick on Sydney's map, says Curby, was the decision in the 1850s to move destitute children out of the crowded city to this rural spot. The council says Pearce played a key part in setting up the Society for the Relief of Destitute Children and secured the land for the asylum building in 1854. The ADB says he backed the building of the asylum in 1856, was a founding director and for a time president of the board, but "thought the children were too well treated".

The Asylum for the Relief of Destitute Children was officially opened in 1858. Its big sandstone buildings on Avoca Street went up between 1856 and 1880. Wikipedia says it was partly paid for by the legacy of Dr Cuthill, remembered in Cuthill Street, and that a southern wing was added in 1863. The Dictionary of Sydney says that wing housed a further 400 children. It was celebrated at first, but Curby writes it became overcrowded and scandal-prone, with cases of abuse. In 1915 the children were sent elsewhere and the buildings became a military hospital. It was later named the Prince of Wales Hospital.

One more thing about those walls. The council says the very first business meeting of Randwick Council was held inside the asylum.

From The Protestant Standard, 7 November 1874: the portrait of singer Catherine Hayes that hung in the boardroom of the Randwick Asylum. Unknown author, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Sandy Track: Randwick and the Races

Randwick and racing go together, but the sources tell the early part a little differently. Wikipedia says Governor Richard Bourke set aside the land for a racecourse in January 1833, that the first race there was a private one in June 1833, and that it was known as the "Sandy Course" because of the ground. It says racing stopped in 1840 and the track was used only for training, until the Australian Jockey Club moved its headquarters there in 1860. Racing came back that May in front of 6,000 people, and in 1863 the land was formally granted to the AJC.

Curby's version in the Dictionary of Sydney has racing held "spasmodically from the 1840s" on the "sandy track", and from the 1860s as a permanent fixture. Either way, by the 1860s, she writes, the name Randwick had become another word for horse racing.

Spectators at Randwick Racecourse, about 1872, from the Holtermann collection. Attributed to Charles Bayliss, State Library of New South Wales, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

1859: Randwick Gets a Council

Curby says a big reason for forming a council was money: somebody had to pay for the upkeep of the road joining Randwick and Coogee, which had started growing as a separate village in the 1850s. Pearce campaigned hard. A petition went up, and according to the council's history, Pearce's well-placed contacts helped get the incorporation through despite objections. The ADB says the protests came from Coogee residents, while the council's site says they came from neighbouring Waverley.

The incorporation was gazetted in February 1859. Randwick City Council's history site gives 22 February 1859 as the day Pearce was elected first mayor. Randwick now calls itself the second-oldest local government area in New South Wales, according to the Dictionary of Sydney.

The win didn't go down quietly. Isaac Nathan and other beaten candidates attacked Pearce's election, and in April 1859 Bell's Life in Sydney published "The Book of Simeon", which the ADB calls "a damaging exposé". Among the first aldermen was William Ellis. Wikipedia names him as one of Randwick's first six elected aldermen, and the man who built the towered sandstone building in Avoca Street in 1859.

The early council was a scrappy affair. Pearce's chief opponent was Charles Moore. In 1860 Pearce tried and failed to split the borough into wards that would each raise their own funds, which would have held back Coogee. In 1867, though, he stopped Coogee residents from breaking away altogether. Curby says the bad blood between Randwick and Coogee came to a head in the early 1860s, over the second St Jude's.

Randwick Town Hall in Avoca Street. Curby says it opened in 1882, designed by Blackman and Parkes. Wikipedia dates it to 1881. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

St Jude's and the Fight Over a Dead Man's Money

Pearce was a devout churchman. The first Anglican services were held in his own house. He picked a site for a church, schoolhouse and parsonage, plus burial ground, on Crown land set aside for them. The first, temporary St Jude's Church and schoolhouse opened on 23 May 1858, largely paid for by the government. In November 1857 Pearce had become one of its trustees.

Then came the row. In 1856 Frederick Jones had left £3000 in his will for an Anglican church at "Big Coogee". The ADB says Pearce talked Canon Allwood, a trustee of the estate, into accepting that since the will was written, Randwick had replaced Coogee as the name of the area. So the church went to Randwick. Allwood laid the foundation stone in May 1861 (the council gives the date as 25 May 1861). The church was first designed as a copy of the parish church at Randwick, Gloucestershire.

Within a month Charles Moore took the matter to the Supreme Court. He was nonsuited at first on a technicality, and lost his appeal in July 1862, but the court costs ate up half the bequest. St Jude's was finished in 1865 and, says Curby, became the centre of village life, just as a church would be in an English village. Wikipedia credits the original design to Edmund Blacket, while the Dictionary of Sydney says some of the interior fittings were by Blacket. It also says the church holds the only ringable set of eight steel bells in the world, cast at Vickers in England in 1864.

St Jude's Church, Avoca Street, Randwick, completed in 1865. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

St Jude's. The Dictionary of Sydney says the tower was raised in 1877 to take the clock. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The cemetery at St Jude's. As cemetery trustee, Pearce was caught up in a lawsuit over its drainage in 1864. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The High Cross and an English Village

Curby writes that Randwick began to feel like an English village when a vacant patch opposite the asylum, near the crossroads, started to be called the "High Cross", just as in the English Randwick. Today it's High Cross Park, the triangle on the highest ridge of Randwick.

High Cross Park, Randwick, named after the High Cross in Pearce's Gloucestershire village. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Coach and Horses

Every village needs a pub. The council's heritage report says the earliest commercial building at Randwick Junction was at the corner of Avoca Street and Alison Road, where the Coach and Horses Hotel, first run for a few years as the Vauxhall Gardens, was set up in 1856. It acted as a temporary post office and ran a horse-drawn service to Sydney.

Its man was John Grice. The Dictionary of Sydney says he ran it first as a general store with pleasure gardens around it, and ran the first Randwick to Sydney horse omnibus from 8 March 1859. He was the village postmaster until 1864. Curby says he sold drinks at town prices and put on shows at holiday time, with band music, dancing on the green, quoits and skittles in the Vauxhall Gardens. From 1870 the hotel had 17 boxes for racehorses, and the gardens had a bowling green, a menagerie, swing boats, skittle alleys, croquet lawns and a dancing room.

The Coach and Horses Hotel on Avoca Street, still pouring beers after more than 150 years. Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Captain Cook Looks Toward Botany Bay

A little further down Avoca Street is the castellated sandstone building with the tower. Wikipedia says William Ellis built it in 1859 as an investment. For a short time it was the Star and Garter Inn, run by Mrs Elizabeth Shipway. Later it became the home of Captain Thomas Watson, a Sydney Harbour pilot, who the Dictionary of Sydney says added the tower so he could see Botany Bay.

Watson paid sculptor Walter McGill £700 for a statue of Captain Cook, carved from Pyrmont sandstone. It was unveiled on 27 October 1874, facing Botany Bay. The Dictionary of Sydney says it's probably the first statue of Cook put up in Australia.

Walter McGill's statue of Captain Cook, unveiled at Randwick in October 1874. Sardaka, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Big Houses on Avoca Street

As the money came, so did the mansions. Curby says that between 1860 and 1910 northern Randwick went from fairly rural country to near-continuous suburb. Ventnor, a two-storey sandstone house with ocean views on Avoca Street, is one example, though the sources disagree on who built it (see below). Nugal Hall in Milford Street, designed by Mortimer Lewis, had its southern part built in 1853 for the shipping merchant Alexander McArthur, says Wikipedia.

Ventnor, Avoca Street, Randwick, once home to mayor George Kiss. Sardaka, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Getting There: Horse Buses and Steam Trams

For years the way to town was by horse. Grice's omnibus started in 1859, and Curby says horse buses and then an extensive tram network made commuting from Randwick possible.

The trams came almost by accident. Wikipedia says four steam tram motors were brought out from the Baldwin works in Philadelphia for the 1879 International Exhibition, running from Redfern station to near the Botanic Gardens. The line was so popular that an extension to Randwick opened in 1880. By 1894 there were more than 100 steam trams running. The Randwick Tramway Workshops opened in 1881 to look after the steam engines on the line between the city and the racecourse.

The heritage report says the trams, and the workshop jobs, brought settlers in large numbers. The original landholders began subdividing and selling to developers, and Randwick Junction had its biggest building boom, laying out the street pattern you can still see.

Sydney's first steam tramway depot at Pitt Street, about 1880, the year the line was extended to Randwick. Adam.J.W.C., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Pearce's Last Years

Pearce was mayor again in 1866 to 1868 and in 1882, and a magistrate from 1861. The council says that in the 1870s and 1880s he pushed for better services, including land for a cemetery and an extension of the railway to Randwick. He went back to his birthplace in 1857 and again in 1881. In 1884 he resigned from the council after a stroke, and he died on 18 January 1886 after a second one. The ADB says he left £28,320 to his wife, two sons and four daughters. In 1889 the west end windows of St Jude's were put in as his memorial.

By the 1890s the village was filling in. Our Lady of the Sacred Heart opened in Avoca Street on 6 May 1888, the Presbyterians built on the high point near Alison Road in 1890, and the post office went up in 1897, all according to the Dictionary of Sydney. Randwick wasn't the English village Simeon dreamed of any more, but it was very much his town.

The former Randwick Post Office of 1897, at Randwick Junction, now called Easts House. Collywolly, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A sandstone paving block in Simeon Pearce Park, Randwick, named after the town's founder. Sardaka, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

Timeline

• About 8,000 years ago: an Aboriginal hearth is used on the ridge off Avoca Street (found in 1995).
• 27 January 1821: Simeon Henry Pearce is born at Randwick, Gloucestershire.
• January 1833: Governor Bourke sets aside the racecourse land; first private race in June (Wikipedia).
• 25 December 1841: Simeon and cousin Samuel arrive in Sydney on the Lady Clarke.
• 1844: Pearce first visits the Coogee Hills.
• September 1847: Pearce buys four acres from George Hooper and names them Randwick.
• 1848: Blenheim House is built; Pearce marries Alice Isabella Thompson; brother James arrives.
• 1851 to 1856: Pearce is commissioner of Crown lands in Sydney.
• 1853: Pearce petitions for a road from the city to Coogee.
• 1854: Land secured for the destitute children's asylum.
• 1856: Coach and Horses (Vauxhall Gardens) established; Frederick Jones leaves £3000 for a church at Coogee.
• 23 May 1858: temporary St Jude's Church and schoolhouse opens. The asylum is officially opened this year.
• February 1859: Randwick's incorporation is gazetted; Pearce becomes first mayor (the council gives 22 February).
• 8 March 1859: Grice's first Randwick to Sydney horse omnibus.
• May 1860: AJC racing comes to Randwick before 6,000 people.
• May 1861: St Jude's foundation stone laid; court fight to July 1862.
• 1863: asylum's southern wing; racecourse land granted to the AJC.
• 1865: St Jude's Church completed.
• 27 October 1874: Captain Cook statue unveiled.
• 1880: steam tram extended to Randwick.
• 1881: Randwick Tramway Workshops open.
• 1882: Town Hall opens (1881 per Wikipedia).
• 18 January 1886: Simeon Pearce dies at Randwick.
• 1888 to 1897: Sacred Heart Church, Presbyterian church and post office are built.

Where the Sources Disagree

• First municipality or second? The heritage report written for the council calls Randwick "the first municipality in NSW". The Dictionary of Sydney calls it the second-oldest local government area in the state.
• Who protested the 1859 incorporation? The ADB says Coogee residents. Randwick City Council's history site says neighbouring Waverley residents.
• How long was Pearce mayor? The ADB lists his inaugural term, then 1866 to 1868 and 1882. The council's history site says he was mayor "for the first ten years" from 1859 to 1868, but its own list of dates in office gives 1859 to 1860, 1866 to 1868 and 1882. Wikipedia says he was mayor six times.
• The early racecourse. Wikipedia has the first race in 1833 and racing stopping in 1840. The Dictionary of Sydney has spasmodic racing from the 1840s on the "sandy track".
• Ventnor. The Dictionary of Sydney says Ventnor was built by mayor George Kiss. Wikipedia says Alderman Edward Dawson built it in 1859 and Kiss lived there in the 1870s.
• Town Hall. The Dictionary of Sydney says it opened in 1882. Wikipedia says it was built in 1881.
• Blacket and St Jude's. Wikipedia says Edmund Blacket designed the church. The Dictionary of Sydney says some of its interior fittings were by Blacket.

My Earlier Posts

• Randwick Asylum For Destitute Children - Now Prince Of Wales Hospital
• St Jude's Cemetery – Avoca Street – Randwick
• Newmarket Precinct - Young Street - Randwick NSW
• Randwick Tramway Workshops - King St - Randwick
• Frenchman's Road - Eastern Suburbs - Randwick - Bondi
• Montepellier - Randwick - New South Wales
• Sherbrooke House – 20 Coogee Bay Road – Randwick
• Swan Aisle – 87 Darley Road – Randwick
• Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail
• The Shark Arm Case – Coogee Aquarium – 1935

Sources

• Pauline Curby, "Randwick", Dictionary of Sydney, 2015: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/randwick (including its linked entries on the Coach and Horses, St Jude's, Captain Cook statue, Star and Garter, Sandgate, Ventnor and the Randwick Tramway Workshops)
• Ruth Teale, "Pearce, Simeon Henry (1821–1886)", Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 5, 1974: https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/pearce-simeon-henry-4380
• Randwick City Council, Our Story, "Simeon Henry Pearce": https://ourstory.randwick.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/1498 (draws on Brendan O'Keefe, Simeon Pearce's Randwick: Dream & Reality, 1990)
• City Plan Heritage for Randwick City Council, Heritage Assessment, Randwick Junction Town Centre: https://www.randwick.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/367952/CP10-23-App2-Heritage-Assessment-Randwick-Junction-Town-Centre.pdf
• Wikipedia, "Randwick, New South Wales": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randwick,_New_South_Wales
• Wikipedia, "Randwick Racecourse": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randwick_Racecourse
• Wikipedia, "Steam trams in Sydney": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_trams_in_Sydney
• Images: Wikimedia Commons, with credits under each picture.