Corner of Cambridge street and New South Head road ...

That address might not have been so fanciful if the government had acceded to the requirements of Paddington Council back in the day.  Published in the SMH of 1 October 1887 (copied above) was an article reporting that the Mayor of Paddington was looking to resume the Chinese market gardens in Rushcutters Bay (now White City) so that he might let Cambridge street run down and join up with New South Head rd.

For anyone with a passing interest in government decision making it would be no surprise that this very issue kept going for a number of years.  On February 10, 1894, Mr J. C. Neild MLA took the case to the Minister of Lands who didn't have the cash for it and suggested the railways department, as they had the power to make resumptions. 

The issue was still hot years later in 1896.  By that time the Chinese market gardens had been resumed and given to the Water and Sewerage Board for that dirty big stormwater drain that still exists today.  The 20 November SMH reported that Paddington Council still wanted the land given to it and still didn't want to pay the State Government. 

New South Head road was the big attraction due to the cable tram that operated along it.  The cable tram's main stop was down at Rushcutters Bay, you can see a sign about this near Reg Bartley oval. The Paddington councillors had a grand plan to get the Rushcutters Bay tramline extended into the heart of Paddington (via Cambridge street!) and then on towards Centennial Park.  As an aside, the Bellevue Hill Tramway (which ran along Hargrave street and Gurner street) was not announced until 1908.

For those interested in the price of what became White City (and more) back in 1896?  7,000 pounds baby.  The interwebs tells me that would be about $1,027,666 in 2010 money.  Substantially less than the cost of a single terrace.  Not a bad deal really.

The Terrace Houses of Paddington

There is an excellent chapter on terrace houses in the book 'History, Walking Tour and Map of Paddington' published by New Edition Bookshop and available in Paddington Library.  An extract is below:

"These rows of small houses were not built by big property owners as in London, but by small builders - carpenters, bricklayers, plasterers - who would buy one lot at auction, build themselves a house, then move in with their family. Using their first house as security, they would purchase a second lot and on it build a house for letting. You can imagine a row of terraces in the middle of the building boom, with some houses completed, others half-built, and some not yet started.

Each builder tended to try to make his house match its neighbours, at least in the main details on the front facade. He used the same design of cast iron, the same plastering tools and so on. But often the plans of the houses in a single row vary quite markedly.

The plan of the Paddington terraces was simply that of the London terrace (or any inner city terrace for that matter). The majority have five or six rooms on two floors. Indoors, the rooms into which visitors were invited - notably the hall and the 'front room' - were intended to impress, their finishes emulating the homes of the rich. They included marble fireplaces, ornate ceiling roses and cornices and deep skirting boards. Further into the house, the finishes became more humble, although ceiling heights were invariably generous, ranging from ten foot in the smallest to twelve foot in the grander dwellings.

Every back garden boasted an outside toilet - the great Aussie Dunny.  In the absence of any sewers, Paddington was built with a warren of narrow 'dunny lanes' which gave access to the Night Soil Men who emptied the dunes in the dead of the night.

The backs of the houses might have been humble. But the fronts were ornate in the extreme. On the front steps was an intricate patchwork of terracotta and turquoise tiles. Elaborate plasterwork top the windows, with plaster scrolls on each side. Lace frills hang beneath the balconies, and intricate cast iron entwined with heraldic emblems, wattle blossom and galahs form a balustrade. And surmounting the whole wedding cake confection were pediments topped with rampant lions, plaster vases, busts of classical figure and scalloped shells.

The builders vied with each other to give a greater impression of opulence. Many a humble terrace was given a romantic neo-classical name - Ion, Isis, Leona, Ariel and Ceres. Others bore the name of the builder himself - or his long suffering spouse.

Because Paddington was not being built for a big land owner, there was no estate manager to cry Halt to these builders for whom the beauty of their architecture was directly proportional to the quantity of ornament." (the illustration above ends the chapter, the author giving the impression that Cambridge Street has some examples of over-ornamentation)

Glen Avon Smuggler

This can go in the "random things that the internet throws up when you google 'Cambridge Street'" file.  The above is an endorsement given by William Austin of Cambridge Street in the Southland Times of New Zealand from 1900.  If it is too small to read the gist of it is that he used "Bonnington's Carrageen Irish Moss" on his prize dog and it made the dog better.  A little bit more googling on Glen Avon Smuggler turned up some more information.  This scotch collie won the puppy category of the NSW Poultry, Pigeon, Canary and Dog Society's 22nd annual show in April 1899  and then came out at the 23rd show in June 1900 and won in the open category.  What a champion!  Unfortunately there are no photographs extant (that I have been able to track down).

For the record, Glen Avon Smuggler (and William Austin & family) lived at 3 Cambridge Street per the Sands Directories.  And you can still buy Bonnington's Irish Moss, maybe I should try it ...

Aberdeen Villas - 61 to 69 Cambridge Street

The group of terraces from 61 to 69 Cambridge Street were built by James Dillon c1887 as part of his growing property portfolio.  They were named "Aberdeen Villas".  It is not uncommon for groups of terraces to be jointly named and you can see plenty of examples walking around Paddington where they have memorialised the name in render. This is the only example of a group name I know of on Cambridge Street, and when you don't put the name in concrete it does make it easier for the original name to fall out of use.

Here are some advertisements from the SMH for the Villas back in the day.  The top one is from 24 October 1887 and the below from 23 January 1888.

In a typical Paddington terrace development an owner may buy two blocks from a subdivision and build three or more houses.  So one issue for being the first to build on the street was that you wouldn't definitively know your actual house number until the whole street had been built out (which for the east side of Cambridge Street was by 1890).  In that sense, it helped to have a house name to identify your residence. For the residents of Aberdeen Villas they actually had 'sub-numbers' as this advertisement from May of 1888 shows. I would guess that No. 2 Aberdeen Villas would now be known as 63 Cambridge Street.

The name Aberdeen Villas gradually fell from use, the latest reference I found was from a funeral notice from December 1902. In it, the late resident of 65 Cambridge Street refers to his house as 'Aberdeen Villa'. 

State Election 1894.

Given today is the local government elections I thought it fitting to look at some past results.  Here are the results from the State Election of 1894 for the Division of Paddington (remember there were no Federal Elections back then):

Candidate (Party) - Votes

Byrne, Stephen Albyn (Labor Party) 309 

Cowper, William (Ind. Free Trade) 2 

Dillon, James (Ind. Free Trade) 77

Godfrey, Alfred (Ind. Free Trade) 4

Kirby, Roger Thomas (Ind. Protectionist) 38

Robinson, John (Ind. Protectionist) 7

Shipway, William Charles (Free Trade) 731

West, Thomas John (Ind. Free Trade) 390

White, John (Protectionist) 420

Whysall, Maitland Edwin Smedley (Ind. Free Trade) 15

Formal votes - 1,993

The first thing I noticed is that it didn't take much to be elected to Parliament back in the day.  But you need to remember that not everyone got to vote back then. Certainly not women, they were to get the vote in NSW in 1902. To get an "Elector's Right" (see photo above for an example) you had to be "qualified in respect of Manhood and in Residence of such Division". Qualifying for manhood was simple, you needed to be a bloke and over 21. Of course, you did need to be a natural born citizen or a naturalised person who had resided in NSW for three years. Residence is also fairly straightforward but the 1894 election was the first to happen without "plural voting", which was being able to vote anywhere you qualified, this meant if you were a landowner in multiple electorates you had a vote in each, from 1894 onwards it was only one vote per man (or from 1902 per person) where you lived. If you think this governance set-up was primitive remember that prior to the Electoral Reform Act of 1858 only landowners could vote (only an estimated 25% of the male population). The 1858 Act also brought in secret voting which was such a novelty it was referred to as the "Australian ballot" worldwide.

The second thing I noticed was that these elections were first past the post so Shipway was returned for Paddington with only just over 36% of the vote. Another thing is the proliferation of candidates nominally attached to one of the major parties.  Despite that, it appears Paddington was definitely a bastion of free trade back in the day with the Protectionists not doing so well (the Free Traders won the election of 1894 with Sir George Reid becoming Premier).

Eagle-eyed readers may recognise a name from the Sands Directory of 1893.  That is Cambridge Street's own Roger Kirby of "Candelo", 46 Cambridge Street.  He only garnered 38 votes but that placed him a respectable 6th place (out of ten).  Local landlord and alderman James Dillon fared only marginally better with his 77 votes securing 5th place.  I did a little more research on Roger as I figured he must have been fairly well known to throw his hat in the ring and I was right.

Turns out Roger was an Alderman on Paddington Council. The following extract from the SMH of 10 February 1886 has the electoral results. Roger Kirby remained on council until 1890.

In 1899 he attained a little notoriety from an incident when he appeared at the Water Police Court before Mr GH Smithers Stipendiary Magistrate, charged with drunkenness and "maliciously injuring the uniform cape" of Constable Linegar. He was ordered to pay a fine of 5s for the drunkenness and a fine of 10s, with 27s 4d amount of damage, or go to prison for 21 days for the uniform discretion. At the time he was 62 years old and described of independent means.

But it turns he was a bit of a political animal back in the day.  In the NSW election prior to 1894, held in 1891, Roger Kirby also threw his hat in the ring. Strangely not for the Paddington electorate but for the South Coast electorate of Eden (despite being a Sydney resident). At the time it was actually quite common to contest electorates as a non-resident but even today that 450km journey from Paddington is estimated by google maps as taking 6 hours.

A little more digging turns up that Roger had earlier set himself up down there. In a little southern NSW town called Candelo no less (which is in the Bega shire and would've been in the Eden electorate back then). The following is from the Australian Town and Country Journal from November 1877:

So it looks like you can take the boy out of Candelo but you can't take the Candelo out of the boy, and solves one question as to why 46 Cambridge Street was named "Candelo" in the first place.  

Emeline Carter

Miss Emeline Carter lived on Cambridge Street back in the day. Emeline Carter was the daughter of Mrs Mary Carter, who was both a resident and landlord on Cambridge Street - owning 46-52 Cambridge Street and 81 Cambridge on the other side. (As an aside, it is interesting looking at how Mrs Carter changed her principal place of residence through the years but that is for a separate post)

The Carter's landholdings in Paddington at the turn of the century when it was quite the respectable place to live suggest they were relatively well off.  This evidently gave them the means to send their daughter to Paris for two years to learn singing at one of the world's top schools.  Emeline studied under Madame Mathilde Marchesi.  Madame Marchesi was a renowned teacher of singing who operated a school on the Rue Jouffroy in Paris.  She was well known in Australia due to her instruction of Dame Nellie Melba. If you are that way inclined you can learn more about Marchesi here.

Emeline Carter returned to Sydney in 1903 and gave a series of concerts.  Her debut, at the Town Hall, was on 20 August 1903 and the advertisements set a high benchmark for the young soprano (the one below from the 8 August SMH).

The reviews were mixed.  You can find the SMH review of 21 August 1903 on Trove.  It is quite long so I'll provide some excerpts ...

"The interest of a debutante's concert may be due entirely to the rare quality of her own performance, though such occasions are unfortunately few and far between, yet it should always be possible for a young singer to ensure an enjoyable evening's entertainment. This can be done, as it was done by Miss Emeline Carter at the Town Hall last night, by introducing new music, by keeping the general standard of selection to a good level, and by engaging competent artistic support. The young soprano must be congratulated upon the result in this way achieved."

"As regards, the singer herself, she showed in the long excerpt from "La Sonnambula" the well known fact that a naturally fine voice must be the first basis of success, and that two years at the Marchesi School in Paris, even with the hardest study, can only carry the student up to a certain point."

"Miss Emeline Carter made her success, however, in Guy d'Hardelot's "Invocation". This captivating piece of music was charmingly given by the singer, whose French was pronounced with exquisite clearness. This delightful ensemble was encored with enthusiasm and the soprano also responded to plenteous floral presentations after Amina's scena."

Despite the SMH reviewer predicting the new soprano's domain of "light comic opera numbers, ballads and such pieces of general sentiment" it doesn't appear as though Emeline developed her singing career, giving only a handful of concerts before switching to focus on teaching. Through to 1909, Miss Carter gave singing and voice lessons both in the city and at her residence at 52 Cambridge Street Paddington as attested by the following SMH advert.

1958 streetscape ...

Here is a photo of 52 Cambridge taken c.1958.  This is part of the Woollahra Local History centre collection.  This is one of the few photos they have of the street that you can get online.  We've taken a photo (below) to show the same view today.  Pretty similar although you can see a wooden lean to in the 1958 photo that isn't there today. Some of the landscaping has changed with the street trees being the most noticeable in todays photo.

34 Cambridge Street

34 Cambridge Street is currently on the market so of course we went to have a look at the layout on this great terrace house.  It is marketed by Di Jones who describe it is "architecturally recreated, featuring an expertly conceived layout designed to accommodate a family's changing needs, this custom-finished terrace enjoys an elevated setting on one of Paddington's best streets". We agree with Di on the street! My favourite feature was definitely the finished basement wine cellar, a great use of space.

We have had a quick look to see if we could turn up any interesting historical things about this house. According to the Paddington Rate Books, the group of terraces from 22 to 34 were all owned by a JH Rowe and appear to be constructed c.1890.  These were the last group of houses to be built on the west side of the street. Its neighbour at 36 Cambridge was built c. 1888, you can see quite clearly the "double wall" on the right hand side of the property in the above photo where the two terrace groups meet. These group of terraces were built to be rentals, some advertisements in the 1896 Sydney Morning Herald describe 34 Cambridge Street as having "6 rooms, folding doors, bathroom, washhouse and every convenience, asphalt yard, nice locality, sanitation perfect, harbour view, near school and a minute to Hargrave St bus" (the tram came, and went, later).

Of course we will try to answer the question of "Who's been sleeping in my house?" for the future owners. Being a rental there were quite a few tenants through here back in the day according to the Sands Directory. One such tenant from the 1890s was listed as "Lane B. J., artist" so we tried his details on Trove and came up with an interesting article (link here). Benjamin James Lane certainly lived a full life, born in 1846 in Great Yarmouth he lived into his 90s before passing away in Hobart in 1939. He originally moved out to New Zealand before arriving in Sydney in 1890 where he took up a position as an artist on the Illustrated Sydney News (which was published up to 1894). In 1894 he moved down to Hobart where, except for a stint at the Melbourne Zoo, he remained until his death. He and his wife had 12 kids, I am not sure how many were living with him and his wife whilst they were at 34 Cambridge but it does show you can fit a big family there! The photo below is from the Hobart Mercury when he was 89.

Another random hit was that 34 Cambridge Street was one of 50 two bedroom houses which were allotted to former WWII servicemen by ballot in November 1946. Over 5,000 former servicemen applied for the houses and Seamen William Henry Dexter, who had served on HMAS Napier in 1943 whilst it protected convoys on the Africa - Bombay route, was lucky enough to score 34 Cambridge Street. There are some other random hits you get on other residents so have a look at some of the photos we've put in here from the Sands Directory if you want to try your own!