The Terrace Detective: Albion Avenue

Another column and another Terrace Detective first. We’ve done streets, we’ve done roads and now we will sleuth our first avenue. I guess your first question will be, what is the difference between a street, a road and an avenue? 

Well, the NSW Movement and Place team (yes, that is what they are calling themselves — I suspect it is just a trendy name for some division of what used to be the planning department) tells me that “streets are places for the community to spend time, while roads are avenues for the community to save time”. 

So, with that all cleared up, let me explain how we chose the subject site for this column. After the roaring success of our adventures in South Paddington (Local Paddo, Autumn 2024) I’ve decided to explore another pocket of Paddington. 

It’s that little rectangle south of Oxford St, but west of the Victoria Barracks, closest to Surry Hills. I’m reasonably familiar with this spot as I cut through here on the way to one of my favourite lunch spots, South Dowling Sandwiches (I recommend the Hugo with avocado on brown if you are interested). 

There are a lot of wonderful pedestrian streets in this locale, but I have picked Albion Ave as the survey site. Now let’s try to find some terrace names.

In our previous columns we touched upon why some terraces have names. I’ll give you a quick recap. During the early days of Paddington’s development, it was often unclear how many houses were going to be built on a street. House names were therefore invaluable for working out who lived where before the street numbers were finally allocated. They can also help personalise houses that were often built in groups.  

We will once again call on the local historians' toolkit — the trusty Sands Postal Directory (available online via the City of Sydney archives) as well as the National Library of Australia’s Trove website to see if we can learn more about Albion Ave in its earliest days.  

The visual inspection comes first. Albion Ave is really only two small blocks between Greens Rd and South Dowling St — and it has been cut off from South Dowling by a little park. My suspicion is that this is why this part is called an avenue so as to distinguish it from Albion St, which continues into Surry Hills. 

Half of the north side is taken up by what is now the UNSW School of Art & Design but which will forever be known to me as COFA. I am going to get a bit sidetracked (for a change) because I already know the history of this site back from my days on the Glenmore Rd Public School P&C.

The Albion St Public School was originally built in 1883 as one of the three Paddington schools, along with Glenmore Rd Public School (sometimes called Gurner’s Hill in the early days) and the Oxford St school (now Paddington Public). 

Albion St received a new building in 1894 (this heritage building is still there). The buildings were converted to the Sydney Technical High School from 1925 to 1956, (Clive James being one of the more famous alumni from this time), before becoming the Alexander Mackie College and then finally an art school. 

Now, where were we? The visual inspection only turns up two extant terrace names — Alma House at 17 Albion and Ursula for the cottage at 16 Albion. Alma House may provide a link between the avenue and its large neighbour to the east — Victoria Barracks. 

The 1854 Battle of the Alma took place during the Crimean War and the 50th (West Kent) Regiment, which served in that campaign, came to NSW in 1866, leaving in 1869. Many soldiers were discharged and stayed in the colonies so perhaps a veteran was behind this name? Sadly, the regimental records are a little hard for me to sleuth so I can’t formally make this connection. 

The Sands Directory proves a little parsimonious with the terrace names for this section of Paddington. I’ve got an Erie House on the north side, but by cross-checking my notes from the visual inspection this looks to be a long-lost house which is now part of the UNSW site. The 1895 Trove provides Weybourne Cottage at 14 Albion but then I have to trawl back to 1884-82 to get Verner Cottage at 23 Albion. 

Switching to Trove and crossing my fingers, I am rewarded with a big terrace group courtesy of classified advertising. The large group of seven terraces from 35 to 47 Albion was originally known as 1-7 Porchester Terrace. We also get the Buena Vista at 31 Albion, which was a boarding house operated by the Oram family. 

With the terrace names drying up, I switch tack to see if I can find out anything about the earliest residents of this street. Sometimes this involves just trawling through the Sands Directory seeing if I recognise a name, or ‘Troving’ something that sounds promising. 

A boyhood spent trawling cricket statistics proves useful when A.C. Bannerman at 12 Albion rings a bell for me. Alexander Chalmers Bannerman had the distinction of scoring the first ever Test run in England when opening the batting for the Australians in the 1880 Test match at The Oval. 

He made six tours with the Australian XI to England and, after his playing days were over, became the coach of the NSW Cricket Association, then based at the SCG. His obituary in The Daily Telegraph of September 20, 1924, actually provides yet another terrace name — that of Booligal. Wisden’s Cricket Almanac describes him as “the most famous of all stone-walling batsmen, his patience was inexhaustible”. 

My patience, however, is quite exhaustible. And with the results drying up, I will sadly call stumps on Albion Ave. We’ve managed to uncover a handful of names, linked the avenue to the SCG and perhaps to Victoria Barracks, and learnt more about one its famous residents. 

Regular readers will know what this means: Case closed.