Hidden Hamilton

My first impression was of some kind of a discovery garden - but it is a public primary school. Buildings are plain and functional and there...

‘This must be the best position in Hamilton,’ Des Ramplin observed to his wife Marie, as they were discussing the prospect of buying the 110...

Hundreds of children were on the march, a more-or-less orderly line snaking its way from St Peter’s Anglican Church to Hamilton Station. At ...

When I first heard Colin Chapman’s name spoken, it was in reverential tones. ‘Of course, you know of Colin Chapman.’ I didn’t, then – but n...

There was no celebratory clinking of glasses of Scotch whisky when Fanny Gow, aged 42, gave birth to a boy in 1886, after 10 girls in succes...

It continued to await its future, concealed in a battle axe block behind 195 Denison Street. This compact nineteenth century residence was o...

It was a house everyone admired – an elegant, two story residence at the west end of Hamilton – belonging to the Americans. A medical doctor...

Acrobatic dogs balanced on two front legs on impossibly slim posts, somersaulted, danced and waved goodbye. Responding to the skilful hands ...

It’s the cosmopolitan Eat Street of Newcastle – and so much more. Say ‘Beaumont Street’ and ‘multicultural eats’ springs to mind – not just ...

The towering silos of the Hamilton Flour Mill had stood as Hamilton’s most prominent landmark for over 90 years in Hudson Street, Hamilton. ...

When you were growing up in Hamilton’, I asked memoir writer Margaret Colditz ‘where was the money?’  ‘The money’, she responded without a ...

Status is having a house on the crest of a hill, fireplaces in every room, and your own underground water tank  so you don’t have to queue t...

There was not a decent street or footpath in Hamilton; they had creeks and watercourses in every direction. [1] Truly, the place looked...

The queue surged with a life of its own along Beaumont Street. An excited buzz rose from the young crowd, dressed to dazzle in their up-to-t...

'I rushed out the front door - everyone was coming out of their homes. I looked towards Beaumont Street from our elevated front driveway...

It means 'a pile of rough stones'. One of Hamilton’s rare surviving late Victorian homes, Fettercairn is truly a survivor. Over the ...

'A couple of days after the earthquake, I was at home in the parsonage in Beaumont Street when there was a knock on the door. I opened i...

Pressing his nose against the glass as I hold him up to our high front window, my three year old grandson stares transfixed at the floodlit ...

Wrestling with the unwieldy pipes, the busy scaffolder took little notice of the small sculpture above the doorway, the head of a bearded ma...

At the end of last week’s post, I reflected on the lost hotels of Denison Street, and asked the question – why do some buildings endure, wh...