West Street, Darlinghurst, is named for Thomas West, the emancipist millwright who in 1810 got Governor Macquarie’s backing to put a water-powered flour mill on the creek falling to Rushcutters Bay. West called the estate Barcom Glen after the Barcombe mills in Sussex. On 14 January 1812 Macquarie and Elizabeth came out to set the mill going and grind the first wheat — she was patron of the opening gift of grain. Macquarie later called it the first water mill in the immediate vicinity of the town. The mill worked into the 1830s; millstones survive in the Powerhouse collection. Aboriginal people continued to camp and gather along the glen — West’s Bush — well into the nineteenth century.
Adjoining land granted in the 1850s to the Sisters of Charity became St Vincent’s Hospital (purpose-built hospital opened 1870), which still dominates the ridge above. Parts of West Street were later closed or reshaped as the hospital and Barcom Avenue Reserve expanded; Boundary Street formalised the Paddington / Sydney edge along the buried creek line. A local heritage marker summarises the 1810 mill grant and the hospital/park succession — a caption cue, not the whole story.
