Location
Petersham is a suburb in the Inner West of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Petersham is located 6 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of Inner West Council.
Petersham is bordered by the suburbs of Leichhardt to the north, Stanmore to the east, Marrickville to the south and Lewisham to the west. Taverners Hill, named after Fred Taverner, is a locality in the western part of the suburb. The iconic pub of the area is the Petersham Inn Hotel, located on Parramatta Rd. (wikipedia)
History
Major Francis Grose sent workmen to the area in 1793 to clear the bush and plant corn and wheat. He named the area Peters-Ham or Petersham after his native village in Surrey, England.[citation needed] Petersham remained an agricultural area, winning awards for some of the best crops and stock in the colony in 1803. Kangaroo hunting was also popular in the area. The name was also used for the surrounding parish.
Dr Robert Wardell (1793–1834) purchased land from many grantees in the district and in 1831 his estate eventually stretched 2,000 acres from Petersham to the Cooks River. Following his murder by escaped convicts in 1834, the estate was subdivided. The train line from Sydney to Parramatta opened in 1855 and trains stopped here from 1857. A platform was built in 1863. The original Petersham post office became Annandale in 1855. Another post office opened as Norwood in May 1860 and was moved to Petersham station in 1870. The first public school opened in 1878.
Petersham municipality was incorporated in 1872. The local council merged with Marrickville and St Peters in 1948 to form the Municipality of Marrickville. In 1916, the Boys’ section of Fort Street High School moved to Petersham from Observatory Hill, followed by the Girls’ section in 1975.
Wartime plane crash
Mosquito HR576 RAF (UK) disintegrated over the inner western Sydney suburbs of Leichhardt and Petersham on 2 May 1945 during an air test flight. The crew of two were killed but no one on the ground was seriously injured by the falling debris of the Mosquito. The Daily Telegraph of 3 May 1945 stated that two civilians were injured and a total of 18 properties were damaged. Five houses were set on fire by the falling debris.
It was suspected that a violent pull out from a power dive, with its associated high ‘g’ forces may have led to the structural failure of the aircraft. The two crew members tried to escape from the aircraft but they were not high enough for their parachutes to open. Flight Lieutenant David Rochford of Oxford, England, and LAC Charles Boydell from Mosman were both killed. Flight Lieutenant Rochford’s body was found in the playground of Petersham Public School while LAC Boydell’s body was found on the roof of a railway building about 100 metres away. (wikipedia)
Places of Interest
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