Location
Fairfield is a western suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Being in the centre of the Cumberland Plain, Fairfield is located 29 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre for the local government area of the City of Fairfield. Though a very small portion of it is part of the Cumberland Council. (wikipedia)
History
For more than 30,000 years, Aboriginal people from the Cabrogal-Gandangara tribe have lived in the Fairfield area.
The earliest recorded white settlement in the Fairfield district is described in William Bradley’s Journal where he noted an expedition from Rose Hill to Prospect Creek to determine whether Prospect Creek led to Botany Bay. Bradley described a place on the Creek where the water changed from fresh to salt with a drop of 4 feet (1.2 m). The presence of salt water confirmed Prospect Creek’s connection to the sea.
Breton Gabriel Louis Marie Huon de Kerrileau, a soldier in the NSW Corps arrived in the colony in 1794, having fled France during the French Revolution. In 1807 he received a grant of 100 acres (40 ha) in the centre of Fairfield, which he named Castel Paul. This was an Englished form of the town in which he was born in Brittany, Kastell-Paol, Saint-Pol-de-Léon in French. By 1814 Castel Paul had been combined, by subsequent owners, with several similarly sized grants to form a largely uncleared 700 acres (280 ha) estate.
The free settler John Horsley purchased the estate in that year and named it Mark Lodge, after family properties in Essex, England. Horsley, a Magistrate and Coroner at Liverpool (1825-1834), and his large family were among the pioneers of white settlement in the Fairfield District. Later, a Colonial Treasurer, Thomas Ware Smart (1810–1881) bought the estate and in the 1860s built the mansion, ‘Fairfield House’.
Fairfield railway station was opened in 1856 and has the oldest surviving railway building in New South Wales. Development began in the mid 19th century supported by railway construction in 1856. Around the start of the 20th century the area had a population of 2,500 people and with fertile soils, produced crops for distribution in Sydney. Electricity was connected in 1921.
Rapid population increase after World War II saw the settlement of many ex-service men and European migrants. Large scale Housing Commission development in the 1950s swelled the population to 38,000. By 1979, the population had reached 120,000 and the City was becoming one of the larger Local Government Areas in New South Wales. During the 1980s war between Iraq and Iran, large number of Assyrians fled Iraq and settled in Fairfield, making it the most popular settlement for Assyrians. (wikipedia)
Places of Interest
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