There’s nothing to see on the south side of Bridge Street now — offices, traffic, the usual CBD scramble — but this block between George and Pitt, running toward the Tank Stream, was the Government Lumber Yard. A short walk from the early bridge that gave the street its name. An earlier yard elsewhere was destroyed by fire; the Bridge Street complex became the main Sydney lumber yard from around the turn of the nineteenth century and was the colony’s central convict workshop. Sawyers, carpenters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, coopers, tinsmiths, tailors, shoemakers and other gangs turned out tools, fittings, furniture, clothing and ironwork for government use.
Overseers and clerks kept the place running under military and civil supervision; convicts were marched to and from barracks. Governor Macquarie’s papers record a reward to long-serving clerk-overseer William Noah: a salary arrangement in 1818 and a pardon that year after “long and faithful services.” By about 1832 the Bridge Street yard closed and works shifted toward a smaller establishment near Hyde Park Barracks; the George–Bridge corner was subdivided and sold in the early 1830s. Nothing of the lumber-yard enclosures survives above ground. This is site-memory only, not a standing heritage building.
The Lumber Yard Bridge Street, Southern Side, Between George And Pitt Streets
Convict Tradesmen Were Employed In The Lumber Yard, An Enclosure Between George Street And The Tank Stream.
An Interesting Character That Worked At The Lumber Yard Was William Noah, From Shropshire, Who Had Been Sentenced to Death For Burglary, Reprieved, And Banished To Botany Bay For Life
On The 28th April 1818 Governor Macquarie Wrote - "Because Of His Long And Faithful Services As Clerk Overseer Of The Lumber Yard, I Have Agreed To Pay William Noah A Salary Of Fifteen Pounds Sterling, From This Date."
And In That Year Governor Macquarie Gave Him A Full Pardon.
