Then and Now 10 – Lambton Panorama

1904

Lambton NSW 1904
Lambton, looking south from North Lambton hill. Photo by George Henry Dawkins. The University of Newcastle, Living Histories.

2014

IMG_2602


Additional Information

[See also my February 2024 article: A Panoramic Peep Over Lambton and New Lambton]

Lambton Lodge
Croudace St slopes right to left up the hill. In the top right hand corner, Lambton Lodge, the home of Thomas Croudace can be seen. This house is now part of the hospital complex.
Red Lion Inn
The former Red Lion Inn (corner of Morehead St and Newcastle Rd) can be seen in the 1904 photograph, and in the lower photograph.
Site of Electric Light Generating station?
Site of Electric Light Generating station?

I believe that the empty site in the middle of this picture is the where the generating station for the electric lights in Lambton was located. The generators were situated between Young St (now Newcastle Rd) and High St, in a former quarry. The electric lighting scheme sent the council bankrupt, and the generators were sold off in 1904 and the building housing them demolished. An earlier photo of the generating station from 1890 (below) taken looking north from Young St/Newcastle Rd shows a long thin rectangular building behind it, and I believe this is the same rectangular building that can be seen in the photo above.

Lambton Electric Light Generating Station 1890. Photo by Ralph Snowball. Newcastle Libraries Online Collection 001 001174.


A close up from another photo of Lambton from 1900 (below), looking north, shows buildings that match the photo above.

Location of Lambton electric light generating station.
Location of Lambton electric light generating station.

I have created an annotated version of the panorama photograph with the following streets markedĀ  …

  • High St
  • Hill St
  • Young St (Newcastle Rd)
  • Morehead St
  • Howe St
  • Croudace St
  • Grainger St
  • Noble St

and the following items of interest marked …

  • Post Office
  • Mechanics Institute
  • Lambton Park Rotunda
  • Lambton Colliery railway bridges over the tramway and Howe St
  • Exchange Hotel (now Lambton Park Hotel)
  • Old Stone House in Howe St
  • Red Lion Inn
  • St Johns Church of England
  • Congregational Church
  • Site of Lambton Electric Light generating station
  • Lambton/Jesmond tramway cutting
  • Lambton Lodge (home of Thomas Croudace)
  • Lambton Public School
Lambton1904AnnotatedSmall
Annotated panorama of Lambton in 1904. Click on image for larger version. (6MB)

Technical note to myself: The annotations were done using Visio 2013, but unfortunately Visio doesn’t handle exporting to raster image formats when there is a large image involved – it just gives a horribly unhelpful “Visio is unable to complete exporting” error message. To get around this, I exported to SVG format, then used the CloudConvert online image conversion site to convert the SVG to a JPG file.

3 thoughts on “Then and Now 10 – Lambton Panorama

  1. I recently discovered my third great grandfather had the licence for the Red Lion Hotel/Inn briefly back in 1878. I’d actually been curious about that building on the corner as I live in Lambton, and now I know what it is. This family history caper is fascinating. Thank you for your work on this!

  2. This is great work I have seen all these photo’s and also read your work on the old Electricity Station in Lambton, I am very interested in the History of Lambton as some of my family came from Lambton and I worked there for a few years and got to know it well. I grew up in Birmingham Gardens. You have done a great job in putting this all together congratulations.

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