Sydney is chock full of locality names—names like Taverners Hill, Clifton Gardens, Pearces Corner, Tom Ugly’s Point, Russell Lea, Camp Cove, Tumble Down Dick, Bushrangers Hill, Brush Farm, Strawberry Hills, Charing Cross, etc—places on or off the map not big enough or important enough to warrant the status of ‘suburb’ in their own right.

‘Plan de la Ville de Sydney’ (Lesueur’s Map, 1802) (Source: State Library, NSW)

One of the earliest in the Sydney colony with an interesting back story is Brickfield Hill. Located on indigenous Gadigal country at the south end of the CBD, Brickfield Hill is a loosely-demarcated area❋ with a small hill, the place where the early colony’s clay was sourced for the making of bricks and tiles…bricks plus a hill, hence the name “Brickfield Hill”. This endeavour started virtually from year one of the European takeover of the Great South Land…the First Fleet in 1788 included  convicts with brick-making experience – James Bloodworth, the most significant of them was to prove invaluable to the embryonic settlement’s progress. With only makeshift accommodation in the form of canvas tents, the construction of more secure and permanent housing was of the highest priority. Bloodworth was immediately appointed master brick-maker for the Port Jackson colony by Governor Phillip, assigned labourers and tasked with the job of manufacturing 30,000 tiles per month [Ringer, Ron, Bricks, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, http://dictionary of Sydney.org/entry/bricks, viewed 19 Nov 2020 ; ‘Brickfield Hill’, www.kathyprokhovik.com), 06-May-2018].

The public brickfield on the ‘Hill’ became such a hub of activity that in 1799 it was described as “a suburb of the town of Sydney … within a few yards of the main road” (George Street) [‘Bricks and Nails: Building Materials as Criteria for Dating in Sydney and Environs from 1788’, Robert Victor Johannes Varman, (Unpublished PhD thesis from the University of Sydney, Sept. 1993), www.ses.library.usyd.edu.au].

Brickfield Hill, George Street (Photo: JR Clarke / State Library, NSW)

By 1804 there were 72 houses within the village of Brickfield Hill, but it wasn’t the most salubrious part of Sydney to live…that part of George Street was “infamous for its steep, dangerous and dusty road” (Varman). The “exceedingly unpleasant” place, “covered by a filthy brown haze and choking dust storms of windy days” the southerlies that swept along the street were given the name the ‘Brickfielder’ [“Brickaholic’s tales behind the history of Sydney’s ‘golden mile’”, (John Huxley), Sydney Morning Herald, 26-Sep-2008, www.smh.com.au]. By 1840 the public brickfields had become a blot on the landscape…the dusty brick pits and polluting kilns were not conducive to the increasing residential composition of the village. Its dingy, seedy taverns were dens of crime and rampant practices of bestial cruelty. In 1841 the government ended the brick industry in the locality. In it’s place small brick-making concerns in private hands fanned out in directions south and west to suburbs such as Newtown, Camperdown, Pyrmont, Glebe and to St Peters which eventually emerged as the premier site for brick-making in Sydney. Merchant stores, warehouses and more housing (leading to slum conditions) helped fill the void in Brickfield Hill (Varman).

(Source: SL – NSW)

Gradient was a sizeable issue in Brickfield Hill in the early period … the steeply sloping terrain along that section of George Street impeded the transport of heavily-laden carts. During the 1830s the authorities finally addressed this. A colonial earth-moving project succeeded in reducing the gradient between Bathurst and Liverpool Streets to a more gradual and manageable slope [‘Brickfield Hill (1) – The Hill’, Sydney Eye, www.sydneyeye.blogspot.com/].

At the beginning of the 20th century Brickfield Hill achieved the kudos of an altogether different association as the new home of one of Sydney’s early retail giants. In 1905 Anthony Hordern and Sons opened its “Palace Emporium” on the site, their mega-department store rose up on the ‘Hill’ – six stories high and comprising 21 hectares of retail space. At its zenith Hordern’s Brickfield Hill emporium was reputedly the largest department store in the world. [‘Brickfield Hill’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

In its post-department store life the Hordern building’s vast “rabbit-warren” network of rooms and corridors was home to the Business School of the NSW Institute of Technology until the 1980s. Acquired by Malaysian property developer Ipoh Garden Development in 1985, it was demolished the following year amid considerable controversy to make way for the World Square complex⍉ [‘Anthony Hordern & Sons’, www.wikiwand.com].

With the leveling of Hordern’s Palace Emporium building and the earlier closure of the Brickfield Hill post office, Brickfield Hill’s long existence as an identifiable locality in Sydney’s CBD was consigned to the past.

PostScript: The Hordern story
From humble beginnings as a King Street (Sydney) drapery shop in 1823, Hordern and Sons built up an Australian retail empire.  After a stint in Melbourne retailing, Anthony Hordern (Senior) built his first Sydney emporium in Chinatown (Haymarket). The AH showcase, opened in 1905 to replace the fire-destroyed Haymarket emporium, was the new Palace Emporium (AKA the “Senior Store”). The Brickfield Hill retail ”super-store“—with a main entrance of imported Italian marble—later diversified its commercial activities to include a branch of the Commonwealth Bank, tea rooms, a post and parcel office, rest rooms, public phone booths and a Thomas Cook travel agency. Expansion of the business occurred from the Fifties with new Hordern & Sons stores opening in Canberra, Wollongong, West Ryde and Mid-City Pitt Street.  By the late 1960s Anthony Hordern & Sons was massively losing business to suburban malls and to city competitors…it’s retail empire crumbling, the Brickfield Hill flagship was acquired by Waltons Ltd. In early 1973 the doors of the iconic retailer, once lauded as a “colossal business premises”, closed for good. (Wikiwand entry).

🔽 (Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection. Sydney Living Museums. [TC 658.871 HOR/54]) 

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❋ roughly covering the area from Sydney Town Hall (Bathurst Street) to Central Station, skirting the present-day locales and suburbs of Haymarket and Surry Hills

⍉ which then stayed as a gigantic hole In the ground for 18 years until World Square was completed in 2004

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