Have you ever wondered how the street you live on got its name? While many have, finding that information can be difficult.
In this edition, we start our series about the street names of Kent Town and the person they were named after (noting that the origin of some street names was not always clear, so we use the most likely scenario).
We welcome other interpretations by readers. If you find additional information that informs the article, please feel free to forward the details to the Secretary of KTRA. Early photos of the area are particularly welcome.
But first, Kent Town itself.
Kent Town was named after Dr Benjamin Archer Kent who arrived in South Australia in April 1840 and erected a timber cottage in a grove of wattles on the corner of Rundle Street and Dequetteville Terrace.
For a number of years, Dr Kent’s house was the only building between the City of Adelaide and Kensington Village, with the country between described as ‘heavily timbered with an abundance of wildlife.
A Street Naming Committee was set up to decide the names of the streets, the squares and the river of the new settlement of Adelaide, as it had been laid out by Colonel William Light in 1837. The committee met on 23 May 1837 and chose the names, which were gazetted on 3 June.
The Street Naming Committee comprised:
- Governor John Hindmarsh
- Osmond Gilles, Colonial Treasurer
- Judge Sir John Jeffcott
- Thomas Gilbert, Colonial Storekeeper
- James Hurtle Fisher, first Resident Commissioner
- John Morphett
- Robert Gouger, first Colonial Secretary
- John Barton Hack
- Colonel William Light, Surveyor-General
- Edward Stephens, cashier and accountant of the South Australian Company
- John Brown, Immigration Officer
- Thomas Bewes Strangways
The following are the streets in Kent Town, together with the person who they were named after. Note that the origin of some of the names of streets was not 100% clear in every case and we used the most likely scenario. We welcome other interpretations by readers.
Name | Origin |
Angas Street Little Angas Street |
The South Australia Company was a commercial enterprise, and not officially connected to the British Government or the Colonisation Commission, but turned out to be indispensable in allowing emigration to the new colony to begin. The founding board of the company, headed by George Fife Angas, consisted of wealthy British merchants, with the purpose of developing a new settlement in South Australia, building a new colony by meeting an essential financial obligation of the South Australia Act 1834. It bought up unsold land to the level required by the Act for emigration to be allowed to begin. During the first years of settlement, the company built a great deal of infrastructure and contributed to the creation of industries such as fishing and mining, and it continued to play an important part in the business affairs of the colony (and later state) of South Australia for over 100 years. It ended business on 17 March 1949, when it was liquidated by Elders Trustee & Executor Company Ltd. Many streets in Adelaide were named after men associated with the company. Sources: Wikipedia and https://www.weekendnotes.com/top-discoveries-angas-street-adelaide/ |
Benda Street | Mr Francis Ernest Benda was an accountant of the Insolvency Court. He retired after 52 years of valuable service to the State. Francis Benda was born on 26 January 1856 in Currie Street (at the corner with Leigh Street), on the site where Messrs AM Bickford & Sons warehouse stood. |
Capper Street Little Capper Street | The Evening Journal, Saturday 28 October 28 1876, refers to the street as Great Capper Street. At a meeting of ratepayers on 27 October in the Kent Town Hotel, Councillor Hayes as Chairman considered a proposition from mainly residents in Great Capper Street to borrow £500 to erect a bridge with the necessary cuttings and approaches to define and make footpaths for the inhabitants. The motion was amended to request subscriptions from owners be solicited to make the bridge and the amount raised to be supplemented by the Government. History is not clear as to who the street was named after, but a contender is John Henry Capper, a Home Office clerk who succeeded Aaron Graham as Inspector of the Hulk Establishment at the end of 1814. He was given an annual salary of £400, with an allowance of £131 a year for the use of his home. Capper carried out the recommendations of the 1811 Committee by dividing the convict ships into compartments. In 1822, he wrote Two Reports [on Transportation] detailing expenses and chaplains’ reports on convict hulks for the House of Commons, and also authored a report on the employment of prisoners at Bermuda. Capper’s book, The Emigrant’s Guide to Australia, went to at least three editions by 1856, and a condensed facsimile edition was issued in Melbourne by Hawthorn Press in 1973. It is a particularly detailed guide for emigrants, including suggestions on clothing, organising passage, shipboard life, requirements for ‘bush life’ and regulations relating to gold mining. John Henry Capper, Home Office Clerk & Author (circa 1780s-?) (museumsvictoria.com.au) |
College Road | College Road was named after St Peter’s College, an Anglican boys day and boarding school. |
Dequetteville Terrace | The name appears as Dequeteville on a plan of the subdivision of Kent Town lodged in the General Registry Office (no 226 of 1852) by the subdividers, Henry Ayers and James Robin. The latter was born in Guernsey, Channel Isles in 1817, and his mother was a daughter of Rev John de Quetteville, the first Wesleyan Minister in the Isles. Rodney Cockburn records that a John DeQuetteville Robin was a trustee of Dr Kent. Source: https://published.collections.slsa.sa.gov.au/placenamesofsouthaustralia/D.pdf Geoffrey H Manning, June 2000, The Place Names of South Australia
The Kent Town Brewery on Dequetteville Tce, now the site of the Brewery Apartments |
Dew Street Little Dew Street | Henry Dew occupied 107 Rundle Street as a tenant from 1866, and became the registered owner in 1876 following Sarah Jenkins’ death when application for the transfer of the old title was made (refer 238/192). Henry Dew came from a family of bakers and went on to serve on the Kensington and Norwood Council as a councillor for Kent Ward, from 1871 to 1882. It was possibly at this time that the brick ovens were put in place at the property. Henry was born at Thebarton in July 1843, His father and mother, George and Dinah Dew (nee Pumroy), migrated to South Australia from Wiltshire in 1838. George was a ‘master baker’ and well known in the western suburbs of Adelaide where Dew and George Streets in Thebarton were named after him. George died in 1877 and Dinah in 1866. The family were committed Wesleyan Methodists and indeed Henry Dew married Caroline Martin on the 5 March 1863 at the Norwood Wesley Church (Kent Town Wesley was not built until 1864). Henry Dew continued to own and operate the bakehouse at 107 Rundle Street until 1886, when the property was transferred to Mrs Hannah Hobkirk who had previously lived in King William Street, Kent Town. After the departure of Henry Dew, the bakehouse was operated by a William Johnson (1887-88) and Charles Eldridge. 2.2.1_Tin_Cat_-_Kent_Town_Part_C.pdf (saplanningcommission.sa.gov.au) |
Flinders Street |
It acknowledges Captain Matthew Flinders who, as commander of the Investigator, conducted the first detailed survey of the South Australian coast. On the same voyage (1801–03), his ship completed the first circumnavigation of Australia. Source: https://sahistoryhub.history.sa.gov.au/places/flinders-street |
Fullarton Road | Fullarton Road was first developed by James Frew, who laid out the area on Section 252 in 1849, and named it after his wife, formerly Jane Fullarton. The death of James Frew is reported in The Observer, 29 June 1878, page 11f. Source: Geoffrey H Manning, June 2000, The Place Names of South Australia |
Grenfell Street Little Grenfell Street | Pascoe St Leger Grenfell (1761-1838), an MP, anti-slavery advocate and father of Sir Francis Grenfell – a British Army General. Active in his membership of the SA Church Society Grenfell – donated the Town Acre on which Adelaide’s first permanent church building, Holy Trinity North Tce, was erected, plus glebe land in the suburbs which in time became known as Trinity Gardens. His death so soon after the colony’s foundation robbed SA of sympathetic professional financial advice, for which he had been long respected in his development of the Anglesey and Cornish copper mining industry. Pascoe Grenfell is commemorated by one of Adelaide’s original public streets. Sources: Wikipedia and https://localwiki.org/adelaide/Adelaide_Street_Names_-_Details |
King William Street and Little King William Street | King William Street was named after King William IV, the monarch of Great Britain and Ireland (1830-1837) at the time of Adelaide’s founding. Source: https://sahistoryhub.history.sa.gov.au/places/king-william-street |
North Terrace | Soon after settlers began arriving on the mainland in 1836, they moved from Holdfast Bay (Glenelg) to the proposed site of Adelaide. They camped near the River Torrens, not far from the current north-east corner of North Terrace and West Terrace. Their reed huts were arranged in two rows – Buffalo Row and Coromandel Row – named after the ships that brought them to the colony. The start of Light’s survey on 11 January 1837 was marked by a monument erected by the Adelaide City Council in 1928. In Light’s Plan of Adelaide, North Terrace connects West Terrace and East Terrace. Between West Terrace and King William Street, North Terrace is bisected by Morphett Street. Although Light set out the main city streets, they were named by the Street Naming Committee on 23 May 1837. Source: https://sahistoryhub.history.sa.gov.au/places/north-terrace-west |
Pirie Street | Pirie Street took its name from Sir John Pirie, a shipbroker and alderman in London. In the 1830s, Pirie pursued Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s principles of colonisation and settlement. Sir John was a founding director and one of the largest financiers of the South Australian Company. He was also a director of the New Zealand Company and the East India Company. Pirie was Lord Mayor of London from 1841 to 1842. One of the first three ships despatched in 1836 to found the colony of South Australia, also took its name from John Pirie. The street was named on 23 May 1837 by the Street Naming Committee. Pirie Street extended eastwards from King William Street; the street westwards was named Waymouth Street. in 1969-70, Prince Alfred College purchased the south-western end of Pirie Street, which adjoined Dequetteville Terrace, from Kensington and Norwood Council. Sources: https://sahistoryhub.history.sa.gov.au/browse/place/Pirie and Prince Alfred College Chronicle 1969. |
Rundle Street Little Rundle Street | Rundle Street was named after John Rundle, a director and financier of the South Australia Company. Rundle was a successful businessman and a Whig politician in the British House of Commons. Rundle Street has been the retail heart of the City of Adelaide since the 1880s. Source: https://sahistoryhub.history.sa.gov.au/places/rundle-street |
A view of Rundle Street, Kent Town looking north-east from the Kent Town Brewery. Fields and gardens surround neat stone cottages. The nearest of the cottages on the north side of Rundle Street is about 95 yards east of Dequetteville Terrace. | |
The Parade West (formerly Young Street) Little Young Street |
Norwood Parade is named after Norwood, then a village south of London. Source: Wikipedia Little Young Street was named after Sir Henry Young, Governor of South Australia at the time Kent Town was laid out. |
Wakefield Road Little Wakefield Street | The street was named after Daniel Bell Wakefield, the solicitor who drafted the Act which proclaimed Adelaide. Like his brother, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, he was also involved in the South Australia Association in London, but never visited Adelaide. |
White Street | History is not clear who this street was named after. One likely option may be John White who arrived in December 1836. He was attracted by the tall gums, meandering streams and apparent fertility of the district around Fulham. White built on the south-west corner of what is now Henley Beach Road and Tapleys Hill Road, near the old course of the Torrens. He was an architect by profession, and built his home in 1840. He also built a chapel for the use of residents. He initially had 134 acres sown with wheat, barley, oats and potatoes, and erected on “Fulham Farm” two houses, two cottages, a dairy and a stockyard. 3-Western-Adelaide-Region-Heritage-Survey.pdf (environment.sa.gov.au) |
The street is named after George Fife Angas (1 May 1789 – 15 May 1879) in recognition of his chairmanship of the South Australian Company.
Flinders Street was one of the 63 streets in Colonel William Light’s Plan of Adelaide named by the Street Naming Committee.
The Parade West is a continuation of The Parade which is a major arterial road of Adelaide, connecting its inner eastern suburbs to the western foot of the Mount Lofty Ranges.Acknowledgement: Photographs are from the State Library of South Australia collection
