THE WOOLWICH SHOPS

At the time of writing, June 2000, no shops are left in the Woolwich area. One by one they have been demolished or turned into offices or restaurants. They were an important part of the social life at the end of the nineteenth century and for most of the twentieth. The following account tells of their rise and fall. The appendix gives a more detailed, but by no means complete, list of dates and shopkeepers.

There were a number of shops near the Woolwich dock and pub. Trades and owners changed over the decades, and it is often difficult to be sure about each transition. Most of the information which follows comes from the memories of older residents, or from Sands Sydney Street Directories, 1858-1932/3. The occupations of store-keepers and some tradesmen and professional people were noted in Sands in most years, but not all. From about 1880 the directories usually listed residents on each side of the main streets in geographical order, but before that the names are only in alphabetical order. There were no house numbers, but the more substantial houses were often identified by name.

Many commercial transactions which added to social life slip through the gap between Sands and memories. Nobody offered publishable stories about the great flow of money and people through the pub, because people preferred to forget them. There was a small flow of petrol from a bowser outside the Universal Woodworking Company, to service its own vehicle and the few private cars. Stories about SP bookmakers were also not printable, and although all but the innocent agreed that there had been a number of brothels, only one was clearly identified. The only printable story is of a non-brothel. One of the two storey stone houses opposite Valentia Street had red glass panels in its front doors. A drunken sailor was sure that this entitled him to access, especially when the owner’s daughter was revealed coming down the steps just inside the front door in her dressing gown. Next day the owners changed the colour of their glass.

The location of “proper” shops is guided by their position in relation to side streets named in Sands. In the area near the dock the side streets on the south side of Woolwich Road changed name or status, perhaps depending on how well a horse and dray could make the grade. Margaret St was named fairly early, but was reckoned to be an impractical method of reaching the river. Elgin-Alfred was listed for this purpose. “Little St.” appears for a few years, about 1896-1901, immediately east of the house built by the quarry-owner, C.E.Little, now no. 99 on the corner of Woolwich and Franki. It disappeared after Mort’s Dock & Engineering Company bought out the Atlas Engineering Co. in 1898 and before the dock opened in 1902.

William Avenue, the most easterly side street from Woolwich Rd, started approximately opposite the present covered area of the beer garden of the Woolwich Pier Hotel, and ran across the head of the dock. It was not an easterly continuation of Gale St. and was considered too steep to be useful. In 1913, when Mort’s wanted to extend the length of the dock in order to accommodate two ships at once, they arranged an exchange with Hunters Hill Council, whereby Mort’s resumed and abolished William Avenue and gave the Council an equivalent strip of land to the west, to be called Franki Avenue, in honour of the Managing Director of Mort’s. A special Bill had to be passed in the Legislative Council to authorize the exchange (Mort’s Dock & Engineering Co Enabling Act 1913 (NSW Legislative Council, 1913)).

The original Franki Avenue was only 25 feet wide. It started between the Little’s house, called “Walton”, and the Woolwich General Store and Post Office, then owned by the McKunes.

After the Woolwich dock closed and before Franki was widened to accommodate the Army, 1964/5, the old shop at 101 Woolwich Rd was demolished. A new brick residence was built next to the “mixed business”, now Bardelli’s restaurant, which had been the Clarke grocer shop at the turn of the century. The police lock-up in Franki was also abolished. The following sketch of the shops and houses at the eastern end of Woolwich Road, based on a Water Board map 1936, was supplied by Hunters Hill Council. Some labels have been added. An extra apppendix giving more details of the lengthening of the dock is attached to a report offered to the Hunters Hill Museum.

Mr & Mrs McKune started in 1913, and the daughters Nell and Gracie took over in about 1925. Nell ran the Post Office for few years before she married one of the Solomon family, who were local builders. Miss Llewellyn sorted out the confusion and transferred the Post office to the north side of Woolwich Road in 1931. Gracie remained a few years until the shop was demolished. After 1931 the part of the building which had been the old post office is remembered, by older residents, as sometimes a dress shop, a haberdasher, hairdresser or cake shop. A lane beside these shops led to old sheds or stables and to the backs of two houses which probably fronted onto Clarke Road or the abolished William Avenue.

During WW2, people were encouraged to register with a single grocer and many McKune customers transferred their accounts across the road to the newer shop at Bonnington’s. McKune’s was more and more deserted and by the fifties there were few customers and little stock left. The shop was demolished a few years before Franki was widened.

The McKune family was well-loved in the district because of generous credit given during the 1930s depression. Dusty windows went with kind hearts. Kath Christie, who has lived in Woolwich for nearly all of her ninety years, says that for as long as she can remember there were unchanging rows of cracked old shoes across the front window. The inside of the store was dark, and in later years, smelled deliciously of spirits, for comfort, not for sale, and fetched daily from the pub. Joyce Hercuss, as a schoolgirl, helped pack the orders, unsupervised when Gracie was indisposed. The weather vane for Gracie’s state of health was a caged green parrot in the doorway. She forgot to put it out, when overcome. Miss McKune’s messenger boy was Dick, who later became the Woolwich Postman. When he retired after many years, without superannuation, money was collected to help pay for an eye operation to arrest his increasing blindness.

The second long-lasting shop on the south side was in the building east of McKune’s, now occupied by Bardelli’s. Edwin, and later Alfred, Clarke ran a grocery store here for 25 years, from 1895 to 1919. Goods were weighed out for each customer – even butter. From 1920–1922 Sands directories note A.H.Gabell at the Clarke site, but do not attribute a trade. Mrs. Pat Gabell-Cox of Hunters Hill found a note amongst the papers of her former husband’s father labelled “Side-awning - Shop next door to P.O.Woolwich”. Gil Wahlquist suggests that Gabell may have had an Australian Wine Licence. This was a government initiative to promote the sale of Australian wine. Licensees could sell fortified Australian wines by the glass or bottle, but not beer or spirits, so as not to compete with the pubs.

By 1923 the Clarke shop was occupied by fruiterers, first William Glenn, then P.Bonnington, then his younger brother Alf. Alf moved across Woolwich Road and built a new shop and residence on the north side in about 1934. The business passed to his daughter Heather, married to Ken Blakey. Theo Karelas and then Con Pieri took over. In June 2000 the shop, which had been the last survivor in the Woolwich area, is expected to close, overcome by cars, supermarkets and the looming GST. In the meantime, the old Clarke store had reverted from fruiterer to “mixed business” with milk, cakes and lunches for dockworkers run by the Hilliers, then by the Yee family, who remained for about forty years.

For many years there was a third shop, to the east of Clarke’s grocery, on land which is now part of the Woolwich Lookout reserve. The most eastern shop shown on the 1936 map seems to have been a small stall attached to the front of a house. At least five bootmakers are listed there between 1880 and 1925, though there were gaps with no bootmaker named. By 1931 Mrs. Church may have sold milk from the stall.

There were other shops a little further up the peninsula. Mrs. Gallagher’s shop on the corner of Margaret and Woolwich sold a few sweets and groceries until it burned down in about 1960. It had been the site of the Arnold Buhr’s Woolwich Bakery in the early 1890s, and even before that Evan Bouget(1880) and Clarke, A.&W (1883) are listed as bakers in Woolwich Rd, probably at the same place. Buhr was followed by Byford (1896) and Edmanson (1901) so the neighbourhood may have had two decades of really local bakers. After the bakers there was a succession of small businesses and confectioners, including one of the Solomons. One business was reputed to be a front for an SP bookmaker.

There was another shop in the area between Elgin and Franki. This was run by Thomas Pilkington, a greengrocer, whose name appears here from 1910 to 1915, when Clarke’s shop was a grocer and there were no other established shops for fruit and vegetables. It was probably displaced when “Solomon’s Row”, the stone and brick houses numbers 81-91 Woolwich Road, were built in 1914/15.

As well as the shops there were visiting carts. For some years a Chinese man with baskets on his shoulders did the rounds. Meat came by cart from Cuneo’s in Hunter’s Hill, and milk was delivered twice a day, into billies on the gate posts, by the Gladesville Dairy.

The closing of the last shop was celebrated and mourned by a street party held outside Con’s shop on a cold evening towards the end of June. It was a good occasion for the meeting of old, new and middling residents of the once industrial village.

See also:
The Industrial Village of Woolwich, Connie Ewald & Hunters Hill Trust, Inc. 1999

Appendix 1: Shop Owners or Operators

South side of Woolwich Road:
101 Woolwich Rd. Woolwich Post Office and General Store.
Mrs. A.M.Taylor, grocer, on the site? 1892, E.C.Lawrence, 1893- 1910 Joseph Hutton 1911-12, George Clancy 1913, Mr. & Mrs.William McKune 1914 -25, Miss Nell Mckune as postmistress 1925. Miss Llewellyn as postmistress 1926-31. Miss Grace McKune to the late fifties.

103 Woolwich Rd. Grocer, then fruiterer, then mixed business grocers: Edwin Clarke then Alfred Clarke. 1895 - 1919 Australian Wine Licence?: A.H. Gabell 1920-22 fruiterers: H.Glenn 1923-24, P. Bonnington 1925, Alf Bonnington to about 1934 mixed business: Hilliers, then Yee family, for about 40 years to late eighties. Bardelli’s shop then Bardelli’s restaurant.

East of 103 Woolwich Rd.
Bootmakers, Kelly 1880, de Monchaux1910, Percy Dorsett 1913, Alfred Weaver 1914-15, Mortimer & sons 1925.

77 Woolwich Rd. cr. Margaret St. Baker, then confectioner, etc. bakers: Evan Bouget? 1880, A&W Clarke? 1883, Arnold Buhr 1893-4, Joseph Byford 1895-6, Edmanson to 1903. Confectioners: Edmanson 1905, Solomon 1910, Maxwell Niemeier 1915-1920. (and others). Mixed business: E & O Wilson 1930, Mrs. Gallagher 1950s.

Between Elgin & Franki. Address unknown, fruiterer Thomas Pilkington 1910 –1915.

North side of Woolwich Rd.
98 Woolwich Rd. Woolwich Post Office Agency Miss Llewellyn 1931, Mr. Hamilton Mrs. Gledhill 1958-1987,then offices.

96 Woolwich Rd. John Watson Chemist G.W.Mason 1971-80, later, doll shop, children’s parties, then offices.

94 Woolwich Rd. Mixed business, Alf Bonnington 1934/5, Heather & Ken Blakey 1950s, Theo Karelas 1986, Con Pieri 1986 – 2000.

Appendix 2: Lengthening of Mort’s Dock and & Creation of Franki Avenue