Paddington Town Hall clock ...

A diversion off Cambridge Street today to look at the Paddington Town Hall clocktower.  The Town Hall was built in around the same time as most of the residences on Cambridge Street, officially opening in 1891.  The clock tower came later.  In 1902, the Empire had a new king (Edward VII) and the residents of Paddington thought it fitting that they honour him in a clock tower (as you do).  Here is a link to the SMH article of the day (link to Trove here) where the residents discuss the scheme.  As you can see from the article the two suggestions discussed at the public meeting were "Edward the VII" and "Edwardus 1902" - both of these fine suggestions having 12 letters each.  The council ended up cleverly going with "Edwardus The VII" which is 14 letters except that they made the VII actually correspond to the 7 o'clock.  You can see the detail in the above photo with the E for Edwardus starting at the 8 o'clock.  This is the side that faces Oxford Street.  

The clock was started on 30 August 1905 by the Premier of NSW.  From the comments attributed him by the SMH of the day (again, link to Trove here) he was most excited that the residents had paid for this themselves and not relied on his Government.  He also thought that the day on which peace had been declared between Russia and Japan (ending the Russo-Japanese War) was a fitting time to set it in motion and hoped there would be peace and goodwill on earth as long as the clock continued to go.  Someone tell Sydney Council to stop stopping it!

Emma Chisett?

This post isn't on Cambridge Street but about another interesting little building not far from here.  The above is 81 Cameron Street.  This corner building has tonnes of character and I love the handpainted house name on the apex of the corner.  But who was Emma Chisett and why is this house named for her?  Time to bust out the history detective skills ...

There are quite a few references and old photos of this place.  Not surprising given how notable it is architecturally.  The image above is meant to be from the 1960's and shows it as a corner store.  The internet tells me (most likely from the Sands Directory) that this had long been a corner store.  Bridget Wines was running a grocery store from 81 Cameron Street since the 1880s.  Still that isn't Emma.

Here's another photo, this one from the collection of the Powerhouse Museum.  This is part of the collection of David Mist who was a fashion photographer back in the day.  This image is from a book of his published in 'Sydney: A book of photographs' published in 1969.  Still no Emma.

Aha.  Here we go.  Emma Chisett in the house!  And this photo dates from 1974 according to the State Library.  It is interesting to see how this building has deteriorated in a decade.  From quite neat and tidy to a bit grimy with the balcony half falling off.

And in this shot the balcony is totally gone.   But what of the name?  Well the story is that this became a second hand furniture / bric a brac shop and the shop was itself called Emma Chisett.  This is based on some Australian slang introduced in 1964 by visiting UK author Monica Dickens (see more here).  The story is that she was doing a book signing and an Australian lady came up in a broad ocker accent and asked "how much is it?" about the book.  Monica didn't miss a beat and inscribed the tome 'Emma Chisit'.  This story was apparently picked up by the Sydney Morning Herald and the rest is history.  I don't know how the proprietors decided on Chisett rather than Chisit, perhaps they had just heard the story.  Anyway, well done on the renovation and top marks for the sign.

Woollahra local history plaque scheme comes to Paddo ...

Sadly not to Cambridge St, or just yet anyway - we did get 2 on the shortlist!  See the full list below.  But the local heritage plaque scheme that we mentioned in October last year has announced the first 4 plaques.  The first one has already been unveiled in Watsons Bay and Rudy Komon's plaque (see above for details) will be unveiled in the new year (I think in March '14 to coincide with Art Month).  The Rudy Komon art gallery at 124 Jersey Road is now the endota day spa.

Nominations are again now open for the next round of plaques (the Council will make another 4 next year) so once again lets get some Paddington (and Cambridge St) entries in there.  Here is the link to the online nomination form.