page_title: Newtown, New South Wales
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Newtown, New South Wales / History / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: TITLE Newtown Bridge ADDRESS View from Eliza St DESCRIPTION Newtown Bridge is the junction of King St and Enmore Rd, with the rail lines passing underneath. FORMAT Coloured postcard RECORDSERIES Sydney Reference Collection CITATION SRC734 PROVENANCE City of Sydney Archives
context_page_description: Newtown, a suburb of Sydney's inner west, is located approximately four kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, straddling the local government areas of the City of Sydney and Inner West Council in the state of New South Wales, Australia.
  King Street is the main street of Newtown and centre of commercial and entertainment activity. The street follows the spine of a long ridge that rises up near Sydney University and extends to the south, becoming the Princes Highway at its southern end.
  Enmore Road branches off King Street towards the suburb of Enmore at Newtown Bridge, where the road passes over the railway line at Newtown Station. Enmore Road and King Street together comprise 9.1 kilometres of over 600 shopfronts. The main shopping strip of Newtown is the longest and most complete commercial precinct of the late Victorian and Federation period in Australia. King Street is often referred to as "Eat Street" in the media due to the large number of cafés, pubs and restaurants of various cultures. Cafés, restaurants and galleries can also be found in the streets surrounding King Street.
context_section_description: Newtown was established as a residential and farming area in the early 19th century. The area took its name from a grocery store opened there by John and Margaret Webster in 1832, at a site close to where the Newtown railway station stands today. They placed a sign atop their store that read "New Town Stores". 
  Captain Sylvester John Browne, father of Thomas Alexander Browne ("Rolf Boldrewood"), built "Newtown House" in the area around the same time, which has also been cited as the source of the name.
  The name New Town was adopted, at first unofficially, with the space disappearing to form the name Newtown.
  The part of Newtown lying south of King Street was a portion of the two estates granted by Governor Arthur Phillip to the Superintendent of Convicts, Nicholas Devine, in 1794 and 1799. Erskineville and much of Macdonaldtown were also once part of Devine's grant. In 1827, when Devine was aged about 90, this land was acquired from him by a convict, Bernard Rochford, who sold it to many of Sydney's wealthiest and most influential inhabitants, including the mayor. Devine's heir, John Devine, a coachbuilder of Birmingham, challenged the will, which was blatantly fraudulent. The "Newtown Ejectment Case" was eventually settled out of court by the payment to Devine of an unknown sum of money said to have been "considerable". The land was further divided into the housing that is now evidenced by the rows of terrace houses and commercial and industrial premises. 
  Part of the area now falling within the present boundaries of Newtown, north of King Street, was originally part of Camperdown. This area was named by Governor William Bligh, who received it as a land grant in 1806 and passed it to his daughter and son-in-law on his return to England in 1810. In 1848 part of this land was acquired by the Sydney Church of England Cemetery Company to create a general cemetery beyond the boundary of the City of Sydney. Camperdown Cemetery, just one block away from King Street, was to become significant in the life of the suburb. Between its consecration in 1849 and its closure to further sales in 1868 it saw 15,000 burials of people from all over Sydney. Of that number, approximately half were paupers buried in unmarked and often communal graves, sometimes as many as 12 in a day during a measles epidemic. Camperdown Cemetery remains, though much reduced in size, as a rare example of mid-19th-century cemetery landscaping. It retains the Cemetery Lodge and huge fig tree dating from 1848, as well as a number of oak trees of the same date. It survived to become the main green space of Newtown. Among the notables buried in the cemetery are explorer-surveyor Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, Major Edmund Lockyer and Mary, Lady Jamison (widow of the colonial pioneer landowner, physician, constitutional reformer and "knight of the realm", Sir John Jamison), and Eliza Emily Donnithorne, recluse and rumoured inspiration for Miss Havisham. The cemetery also holds the remains of many of the victims of the wreck of the Dunbar in 1857.
  From 1845, when the first Anglican church was built on the site of the present Community Centre on Stephen Street, by Edmund Blacket, a number of churches were established, including St Joseph's Roman Catholic church in the 1850s, the Methodist church on King Street, now Newtown Mission, and the Baptist church in Church Street. The present St Stephen's Anglican church, a fine example of Victorian Gothic architecture, was designed, like its predecessor, by Blacket, and built in the grounds of cemetery between 1871 and 1880. Both it and the cemetery are on the National Trust register of buildings of national significance. Its Mears and Stainbank carillon is unique in Australia, while its Walker and Sons organ of 1874 is regarded as one of the finest in New South Wales.
  On 12 December 1862 the Municipality of Newtown was incorporated and divided into three wards: O'Connell, Kingston and Enmore, covering 480 acres (194.25 ha). In 1893 a plan was discussed to rename the council area "South Sydney" (as three municipalities Nor
caption: King Street and Newtown Railway Station from a coloured postcard. c.1906
exif: {}