In short: for about fifty years the ridge along today's Darlinghurst Road was Sydney's windmill country. Two big stone tower mills stood side by side near where Roslyn Street now meets Darlinghurst Road at Kings Cross. One was Thomas Barker's, finished in 1826. The other was built by the Frenchman François Girard a couple of years later. A third giant, Thomas Hyndes' mill near Craigend, stood just up the hill. Steam killed them off, and today the only trace of the Roslyn Street mills is some old sandstone sitting in the walls of two Kellett Street terraces. Here's what I found, with the best pictures from the 1800s.
Every time I walk up Darlinghurst Road past the Roslyn Street corner, among the backpackers and the late-night crowd, I try to picture two great sandstone towers with canvas sails turning in the north-easterly. It's all in the records, and there's even a painting. George Edwards Peacock painted the scene in 1844 and called it View of part of Wooloomooloo and Mr. Barker's house and mills with Bradleys Point. The original is in the State Library of NSW.
I wrote a general piece on the windmills of old Sydney in 2021. This time I've stayed on the Darlinghurst ridge.
Sydney – Once a Town of Windmills
Before steam came along, most of Sydney's bread started life between millstones turned by the wind. The First Fleet's hand mills were hard work and wore out quickly, and the parts for a proper windmill finally came out with Governor Hunter in 1795.
The Government Mills – Observatory Hill and the Barracks
That first government windmill went up on Flagstaff Hill, which is today's Observatory Hill and was also called Windmill Hill. It was finished in February 1797. David Collins wrote that on its first trial, with only two sails on, it ground "a bushel of wheat in ten minutes". Within months, Governor Hunter was complaining that while the miller was away, the very people whose wheat was being ground "were clever enough to steal away some of the sails". By about 1810 the tower stood without its sweeps.
A second government mill was started in January 1798 near where Clarence Street crosses the top of Grosvenor Street. A three-day gale in June 1799 wrecked the tower, but it was rebuilt by 1802 and, as the military windmill, kept going into the 1840s. A third, timber government mill was built by Nathaniel Lucas around 1806, close to where Fort Street school later stood.
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The Domain Mills – Boston's, Palmer's and Kable's
On the east side of town, between where Governor Bourke's statue stands outside the Mitchell Library and the Conservatorium, there were at times three windmills at work. They were known as Boston's, Palmer's and Kable's. Charles Bertie wrote in 1912 that Kable's small post mill "was removed afterwards to the heights of Darlinghurst".
Millers Point, Pyrmont and Beyond
Millers Point takes its name from "Jack the Miller", John Leighton. By 1822 there were three wooden mills on the high ground there, apparently run by Jack. According to the Dictionary of Sydney, he died in 1826 after falling "in a state of intoxication" from a ladder leaning against one of his mills. John Macarthur had a stone mill at Pyrmont. Gordon's mill at Paddington and Hough's at Waverley came later. When William Charles Wentworth wrote his poem Australasia in 1823, he described Sydney's skyline this way:
"The lofty windmills, that with outspread sail
Thick line the hills, and court the rising gale."
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The Windmill Ridge – Darlinghurst Road
The high ground east of town ran north from today's Oxford Street towards the harbour, along the old South Head Road that Darlinghurst Road follows now. It caught every breeze off the harbour. Norman Selfe, the engineer who wrote about Sydney's windmills in 1902, put it this way:
"The most picturesque windmills of Sydney … were undoubtedly those which crowned the ridge at Darlinghurst."
The first was Thomas Clarkson's mill, put up around 1819 near today's Liverpool and Darley Streets, close to where the gaol was later built. Two wooden post mills stood nearby, just north of Liverpool Street, and one of them was Kable's old mill brought up from the Domain. The Morawa Museum's windmill records say these post mills were on James Hankinson's land grant. In June 1827 they went to auction as "Two Wood Post Windmills". In November 1828 one of them was being advertised as "a fine, new Post Mill, supposed by Judges to be the best ever erected in the Colony".
By the 1830s the ridge was crowded with mills. In 1896 a writer in the Sydney Morning Herald (26 December 1896) put it like this: "At one time—about the year 1835—this ridge carried no fewer than five windmills. Two stood near Macleay-street, two near the gaol site and one at the back of St. John's Church, Darlinghurst." Bertie, and F. J. Croft in the Herald of 2 April 1938, both called Darlinghurst Road "the miller town of Sydney" in the thirties. Both mention an old panorama in the Mitchell Library showing six windmills along the ridge, and Croft adds that two of them were near Darlinghurst Road and Roslyn Street.
The Roslyn Street Mills
Where They Stood
Every source I checked puts the mills in the same spot. The Dictionary of Sydney says there were "two more stone tower windmills that stood near where Roslyn Street joins Darlinghurst Road. One was owned by Thomas Barker and the other by Francois Girard." Bertie (1912), working from Norman Selfe's notes, puts them "near the junction of the Roslyn Street and Darlinghurst Road of to-day, and north of where Kellett Street now runs". The Morawa records go further. They place the two mills south-east of the Roslyn Street corner, only about 30 metres apart, with Barker's just north of Girard's.
Back then it was called Woolloomooloo Hill, and the road was still the South Head Road. Roslyn Street itself is named after Barker's house, Roslyn Hall, which stood next to the mills.
Thomas Barker's Hope Mill (1826)
Thomas Barker was orphaned young. He came out in 1813 as apprentice to John Dickson, the engineer who brought the colony's first steam engine. Barker went on to become one of the richest flour millers in Sydney, but he started out with wind. The Australian Dictionary of Biography says that in 1826 he and John Smith built a large windmill at Darlinghurst, "and soon afterwards another close by". In a June 1826 letter to Governor Darling, Barker didn't hide his ambitions: "it is my wish to oppose as far as my means will allow, those overgrown Millers, by building other Mills".
According to the Morawa records, Barker's partnership with John Smith was dissolved on 23 June 1826, with the mill still unfinished. Barker bought out the land and the half-built tower and finished the job. By mid-September 1826 he was telling the public that the Hope Mill was "ready to receive WHEAT, to be Ground and Dressed, in any Quantity not less than 5 Bushels". When he died in 1875, his obituary in the Sydney Morning Herald (20 March 1875) remembered it this way: "His first essay was a self-acting windmill, which he caused to be erected in Macleay-street."
Barker built his home, Roslyn Hall, right beside the mills. The Dictionary of Sydney says he took up the Roslyn Hall estate on Woolloomooloo Hill in 1833, a villa and the windmills on nine acres. The house was later replaced by St Luke's Hospital.
François Girard's Stone Mill (1827–28)
The second mill belonged to one of the great characters of early Sydney. François Girard was a Frenchman who had been transported as a convict. He taught fencing, dancing and French, and after his pardon in 1825 he threw himself into baking. A scandal over short-weight bread didn't slow him down. By May 1826 his advertisements were promising "every kind of fancy bread, of a superior quality for gentlemen's tables. N.B. French Hot Rolls at Half past 7 in the morning."
Girard had already leased mills on the ridge and in town, but he wanted his own. Governor Darling refused him a land grant because he wasn't a British subject. Kenneth Dutton's history of Girard says he simply bought a one-acre block next to Barker's and began building "his own solid stone mill", using stone from his own quarry. The Morawa records describe it as five storeys high and well advanced by September 1827. Sybil Jack, writing in the Dictionary of Sydney, says it was built by Ashley and Hyndes.
1828 was a rough year for Girard. He baked bread for the soldiers under contract, and during a wheat shortage he was allowed to mix in maize flour. The troops hated it. In Girard's own words, the soldiers "demolished all his windows with the loaves and stones". Governor Darling took the opposite view: "the soldiers in revenge broke his windows with the ill-baked and unwholesome loaves he had supplied." Then, in September 1828, the new mill was damaged in a storm. While it was repaired he went back to grinding at one of the old post mills.
Girard soon turned to steam. In February 1829 he tried to let the stone mill and took on a steam engine instead. The Australian reported he was "paying for the use of it £1000 yearly". The windmill was heavily mortgaged. The Morawa records say that in February 1831 he handed it over to John Northwood in return for clearing the debt. Northwood, who wasn't a miller, sold it on in 1836.
How These Tower Mills Worked
The Roslyn Street pair were tower mills: tall stone towers with a cap on top carrying the sails, and only the cap turned to face the wind. In the older post mills the whole timber body swung round on a big post. Sybil Jack notes that by the 1830s nearly all Sydney's windmills had "common sails", canvas, set like the sails of a ship. She also says the stone towers on the ridge seem to have had better gear for hoisting the sacks and turning the caps than the older mills. Hyndes' mill, for one, had two pairs of stones and a smutter for cleaning the grain.
The Morawa records note something lovely in the paintings. Barker's mill had a staging, or platform, around the tower so the miller could reach the sails, and a fantail, the little wind wheel at the back that turns the cap into the wind by itself. Girard's mill doesn't appear to have had one, and Morawa suggests its staging was used to swing the tail pole round by hand.
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Was the Second Mill Barker's or Girard's?
The Australian Dictionary of Biography says Barker built two mills, the first "and soon afterwards another close by". Peacock's 1844 painting is also titled "Mr. Barker's house and mills". The Dictionary of Sydney, Dutton and the Morawa records all give the second tower to Girard. Bertie, quoting Selfe, says the right-hand one was Barker's and the other was "erected by Mr. Girard or Mr. Hyndes". He adds that the second one was at one time known as Donaldson's mill, after Kellett House, home of Sir Stuart Alexander Donaldson, which stood close by. The Morawa records offer a tidy explanation. Both mills seem to have stood on the same 1826 grant to Smith and Barker, with the land under Girard's mill split off at some stage.
The End of the Roslyn Street Mills
Both mills were still standing in 1845 according to the Morawa records, and "Mr. Barker's windmill" was advertised to let in mid-1848. The Herald's special report on Woolloomooloo of 15 March 1851 enjoyed the view of the hilltop mansions: "Intermixed with these houses are several windmills, materially adding to the diversity of the scenery". In the 1850s Frederick Terry's engraving Sydney from the Old Point Piper Road still showed the sails of Hyndes', Barker's and Girard's mills high on the skyline.
I haven't found a date for the demolition of either Roslyn Street mill, but we do know where the stone went. The Morawa records say the stones of Barker's mill were used for two houses near the site about 1863–66. The Dictionary of Sydney says they are "two terrace houses in Kellet Street, Kings Cross which remain today on the corner of Kellet Lane". The Potts Point Preservation Group tells the same story. The Roslyn Hall estate was subdivided in 1889, and the house itself came down in the 1930s.
What's There Today
The mill site is the block on the south-east corner of Darlinghurst Road and Roslyn Street, right at the T-intersection, among the shops, money exchanges and backpacker hostels of the Cross. The painter William Dobell lived on the corner of Darlinghurst Road and Roslyn Street in the early 1940s, about a hundred years after Peacock painted the mills. If you want to touch the past, walk round into Kellett Street and look at the old sandstone in those two terraces near the lane.
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Hyndes' Mill – The Giant of the Ridge
The Roslyn Street pair had a big neighbour up the hill. In 1825 Henry Ashley and Thomas Hyndes asked for land on the South Head Road to build a windmill, and a grant was promised on 14 June 1825. That June they advertised for "stonemasons, bricklayers, and millwrights". Ashley dropped out, and the mill opened in 1829. The Sydney Gazette praised it as spacious and very handsome. It stood beside Major Thomas Mitchell's Craigend, which is why it later became known as the Craigend mill.
It had a long line of owners and tenants:
- Leased to John Hill in the 1830s, hence "Hill's mill"
- Sold to John Terry Hughes in 1834 and back with Hyndes in 1840
- Run by Macdonald and Airth, who went insolvent in 1843, then by Wascoe and Moody
- Put up for auction in 1848 and, when that failed, offered to let
- Run by James Fidden and then, from 1851 to 1863, by John Jenkins (it was "Jenkin's mill" by 1857)
Under Fidden it was the Oak Mill (Jack) or "Fiddon's or Hope mill" (Bertie). In 1865 Captain Robert Towns owned it and planned to turn it into workmen's dwellings.
That plan gives us the best story. The young architect John Horbury Hunt was drawing up the conversion, and on 17 January 1865 he wrote in his diary:
"Old windmill—got up on top platform, climbed out on shaft, as one of the arms was standing perpendicular climbed up it and with Jack knife cut a strip of wood off the arm, pointed it, and stuck it into the end of the arm at 105 feet from the ground."
Years later he added, "Being a yachtsman in those days accounts for the feat." Bertie says the sweeps were "fully forty feet long". By 1871 the mill was "out of repair, no sails, roof bad", and it was reportedly pulled down around 1873. A late-1860s State Library panorama of Craigend with Hyndes' windmill on the right can be seen on the My Darling Darlinghurst blog. There's also a 1865–69 view, "Windmill Hill from Upper Liverpool Street", on the City of Sydney's Darlinghurst Stories site. Stone from the mill is said to have gone into Beare's Stairs in Caldwell Street, and possibly four terraces there too. The Dictionary of Sydney places the mill roughly at today's Royston Place, at the top of those stairs.
Steam Takes Over
John Dickson brought the colony's first steam engine out in 1813 and set it up on Cockle Bay, and for nearly ten years his was the only steam mill. In 1825 Daniel Cooper and Solomon Levey built a steam mill on Cockle Bay. Barker bought it in 1826 for £6,000, according to Sybil Jack (the ADB says about 1828), and built it up into his big Sussex Street mills. Girard built his own steam mill at the other end of Darling Harbour in 1833–34. By 1838 Maclehose was counting eight steam mills on Darling Harbour.
A steam mill didn't sit idle on a still day. Sybil Jack says windmills could still pay until the 1850s, but one by one the sails came down on the ridge. As the Herald's 1896 writer put it, "The windmills and water-wheels were in time superseded by steam flour mills. Among the earliest of these to be erected were Barker's Mills, in Sussex-street."
The last of them all was out at Waverley. Henry Hough's post mill in Mill Hill Road, on the site of St Barnabas's church, was "levelled to the ground on October 1 1878", according to Selfe, and Heaton's Dictionary of Dates gives the same day. A pencil note on an old picture gives 1881, and a writer in Truth in 1902 said it "disappeared in the mid-seventies". Bertie was tempted to call his windmill chapter "What Sydney lost by steam", and I think he was right.
Timeline
- 1797 – First government windmill working on Flagstaff (Observatory) Hill; some of its sails are stolen.
- 1798–1802 – Military windmill begun, wrecked by the June 1799 storm, rebuilt.
- c.1819 – Thomas Clarkson's mill, the first on the Darlinghurst ridge.
- 1825 – Hyndes and Ashley promised land on the South Head Road; advertise for masons.
- June 1826 – Barker–Smith partnership dissolved; Barker finishes the mill.
- Sept 1826 – Barker's Hope Mill "ready to receive WHEAT".
- 1827 – Girard refused a grant (April); buys one acre and builds a stone mill beside Barker's.
- 1828 – Soldiers' bread riot at Girard's; Girard's new mill damaged by storm (September).
- 1829 – Hyndes' (Craigend) mill opens; Girard turns to steam.
- 1833 – Barker takes up the Roslyn Hall estate beside his mills.
- c.1835 – Five (or six) windmills along the ridge.
- 1844 – Peacock paints "Mr. Barker's house and mills".
- 1845 – Both Roslyn Street mills still standing.
- 1848 – "Mr. Barker's windmill" to let; Hyndes' mill offered at auction.
- c.1863–66 – Stone from Barker's mill used for two houses in Kellett Street.
- 1865 – Horbury Hunt climbs the arm of the Craigend mill, 105 feet up.
- c.1873 – Hyndes' (Craigend) mill reportedly demolished.
- 1878 – Hough's mill at Waverley, probably the last, is levelled.
Where the Sources Disagree
- The second Roslyn Street mill: Barker's (ADB, and Peacock's title), Girard's (Dictionary of Sydney, Dutton, Morawa), or "Girard or Hyndes" (Selfe, via Bertie).
- Builder of Girard's mill: Ashley and Hyndes (Sybil Jack), or Girard himself with his own quarry stone (Dutton).
- "Hope Mill": Barker's mill (Dictionary of Sydney, Morawa), or the Craigend mill (Bertie).
- Girard's sale: February 1831 (Morawa) or around 1833 (Dutton). His 1829 steam engine: Robert Cooper's at Blackwattle Swamp (Dutton, Morawa), or the Cooper and Levey mill on Cockle Bay (Jack).
- Barker's steam mill purchase: 1826 (Jack), 1827 (Dictionary of Sydney) or about 1828 (ADB).
- Clarkson's mill: a stone tower (Bertie, Dictionary of Sydney, Morawa) or a post mill (Jack).
- Roslyn Hall: nine acres on Woolloomooloo Hill, or 16 acres at Darling Point (two different Dictionary of Sydney pages).
- Hough's mill: gone on 1 October 1878, in 1881, or in "the mid-seventies".
My Earlier Posts
- Windmills of Old Sydney
- Craigend – Darlinghurst – Darlinghurst Villas – Demolished 1922
- Original Villas Of Darlinghurst
- Original Villas Of Woolloomooloo Hill, Potts Point & Elizabeth Bay
- Darlinghurst Gaol & Darlinghurst Court
- Hangings at Darlinghurst Gaol
- St John's Church – Darlinghurst Road
- The Battle of Blood Alley – Eaton Avenue – Kings Cross – 7 May 1929
- Barncleuth – Potts Point
- Observatory Hill – Fort Phillip – Sydney Observatory
- Windmill Street Quarry – Millers Point
- The Government Domain
Sources
- Catie Gilchrist, Windmills of Sydney, Dictionary of Sydney, 2016.
- Sybil Jack, Sydney Flour Mills before 1850, Dictionary of Sydney, 2017.
- Dictionary of Sydney records for Barker's Windmill, Girard's windmill, Craigend Mill, Clarkson's mill and Thomas Barker.
- Mark Dunn, Darlinghurst, and Kings Cross, Dictionary of Sydney.
- Charles H. Bertie, Stories of Old Sydney, illustrated by Sydney Ure Smith, Sydney, 1912: "The Windmills of Old Sydney" (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3); scanned book at Internet Archive.
- Norman Selfe, "Some Notes on the Sydney Windmills", Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 1, part 6 (1902–03), as quoted by Bertie and the Dictionary of Sydney.
- D. R. Walsh, Barker, Thomas (1799–1875), Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1966.
- Kenneth R. Dutton, "A Colonial Entrepreneur: François Girard (1792–1859)", Explorations no. 39, December 2005 (online copy).
- Morawa Historical Society Museum, Australian Windmills – Flour Mills (Sydney: Kings Cross – Hope Mill; Girard; Darlinghurst – Hyndes and Ashley; Post Mills 1 and 2; Clarkson).
- Potts Point Preservation Group, Roslyn Street Potts Point.
- City of Sydney, Darlinghurst Stories, The cottages, the windmills and the paddocks.
- My Darling Darlinghurst blog, Windmills.
- Sydney Morning Herald, "The Old Windmills of Sydney. II", 26 December 1896, p. 8 (Trove).
- Sydney Morning Herald, "Old Windmills", F. J. Croft, 2 April 1938, p. 7 (Trove).
- Sydney Morning Herald, obituary of Thomas Barker, 20 March 1875, p. 6 (Trove).
- Truth (Sydney), "Old Sydney", 2 February 1902, p. 7 (Trove).
- George Edwards Peacock, View of part of Wooloomooloo and Mr. Barker's house and mills with Bradleys Point, 1844, State Library of NSW.
- Images: Wikimedia Commons, as credited under each picture.