Alfred Delves Broughton and the Broughton Estate

by Leigh Chamberlain

From the early 1860s West Toowong was initially known as the Broughton Estate, named in honour of Queensland politician Alfred Delves Broughton.

Alfred Delves Broughton’s career was initially as a stock and station agent and general merchant in Ipswich. Then he was appointed the police magistrate for Drayton and Toowoomba, which position he held from 1855 to 1860.

Prior to this, on 24th September 1851 a notice by E. Deas Thomson of the Colonial Secretary’s Office included in the New South Wales Government Gazette announced Broughton had been appointed by His Excellency the Governor-General to be Clerk to the Assistant Commissioner of Crown Lands at Sofala.

Broughton was elected in the Queensland 1860 colonial election for the first Parliament of Queensland as a member of the Queensland Legislative Assembly. The first elections after Separation from New South Wales in 1859 for the Queensland Legislative Assembly were held between 27th April and 11th May 1860 across 16 electorates, with 26 MLAs elected. The electoral districts of The Town of Ipswich and of West Moreton were both multi-member electorates with three members elected for each seat.

Broughton represented the electoral district of West Moreton and he took office on 3rd May 1860 and served with George Thorn, William Nelson and Joseph Fleming (who was elected in a by-election on 9th July 1860). Parliament met for the first time on 22nd May 1860 in converted military and convict barracks in Queen Street, Brisbane. The term of the first parliament lasted until 20th May 1863.

Broughton resigned the seat of West Moreton on 21 December 1860 to take up the position of police magistrate in Drayton. Henry Challinor won the resulting by-election on 12 January 1861. By 1862 Broughton had moved to Ashfield, New South Wales, and was an estate agent.

Personal Life:

Broughton was born in England on 20 November 1826, the 15th of 18 children of Sir Henry Broughton and his wife Mary (née Pigott).

On 16 March 1858 Broughton married Clemence La Monnerie dit Fattorini at St James’ Church, Sydney, New South Wales. The couple had 2 sons and 2 daughters:

• Vernon Lamonnerie Delves (1859—1935)

• Dora Ethelind Lamonnerie (1861—1864)

• Mary Clemence (1862—)

• Ernest Clement Vermont (1865—1917)

Broughton’s religion was Church of England.

According to his biography on the Queensland Parliament website, Broughton died on 10 March 1895 in Sydney, New South Wales. However, Wikipedia claims he died in England on 10 March 1895 in Surrey, England.

The local streets of West Toowong

The Broughton Estate was one of the first subdivisions in the West Toowong area.

West Toowong is bounded to the east by Miskin Street, named after William Henry Miskin (1842-1913), the founding President of the Shire of Toowong in 1880. He was the President of the Royal Society of Queensland in 1890 and a member of the board of trustees of the Queensland Museum. He lived at Dovercourt, Sherwood Road until he left his wife and eloped with his servant.

Bywong Street is used as a major thoroughfare in West Toowong and the below 1904 map shows streets in its vicinity.

In 1904, Bywong Street was then named Grosvenor Street. Grosvenor Street may have been named for Hugh Lupus Grosvenor, KG, PC, JP (13 October 1825 – 22 December 1899), the 1st Duke of Westminster. He was known as the Marquess of Westminster. His titles were Viscount Belgrave between 1831 and 1845; Earl Grosvenor between 1845 and 1869; and 3rd Marquess of Westminster between 1869 and 1874. He was created the first Duke of Westminster, the most recent dukedom conferred on someone not related to the British royal family, and created by Queen Victoria, in 1874.

He was an English landowner, politician and racehorse owner. Although he was a member of parliament from the age of 22, and then a member of the House of Lords, his main interests were not in politics, but rather in his estates, in horse racing, and in country pursuits. He developed the stud at Eaton Hall and achieved success in racing his horses, winning the Derby on four occasions. Grosvenor also took an interest in a range of charities. At his death he was considered to be the richest man in Britain.

The street name ‘’Grosvenor’’ seemed to be still in use in 1944, and the change to ‘’Bywong’’ most likely occurred because of the Brisbane City Council’s policy of removing duplicate street names across Brisbane.

Bywong means ‘’Big Hill’’, and the word appears to be sourced from Bywong, a rural residential area in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia in the Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council LGA. It is approximately 24 kilometres north-east of the Australian city of Canberra on the Federal Highway. It is also traversed by Macs Reef Road, Shingle Hill Way and Bungendore Road, the last two roads connecting Gundaroo and Bungendore. Its name is derived from an Aboriginal word for “big hill”.

Bywong Street adjoins Orchard Street to the north and Stanley Terrace to the south.

 

The street named Water Street is the short dead-end street that today borders the northern side of West Toowong Bowls Club. If required, Water Street enables WTBC access to its grounds from this end. The origin of the street name as Water Street is obvious as it ends at the water’s edge of the local creek. It may have had a small creek flowing along it in earlier times.

Two of the neighbouring streets on the western side of the West Toowong Bowls Club are Duke and Camp Streets.

The 1904 map shows Duke and Camp Streets running parallel to Bywong Street. There is a third street, named as Glower Street marked on the map, which also runs parallel to Grosvenor Street. Unlike Grosvenor Street, Camp and Duke Streets have retained their 1904 names to this day, but by 1905, Glower Street had morphed into Gower Street. The origin of this street name is also not known at this stage.

An old-time resident claimed that Camp Street was used in earlier times as a camp by drovers taking cattle across the district. There were at least 5 recorded drovers trails down from the Brisbane Valley through the foothills of Mt Coot-tha where the cattle was agisted before being taken along Milton Road and Sylvan Road to River Road, and thence to the cattle slaughter yards on the north side of Brisbane. The drovers then proceeded back to the Brisbane Valley to Nanango via Caboolture. This saga was captured in Sali Mendelsohn’s ballad Brisbane Ladies (or alternatively titled Augathella Station or Ladies of Toowong).

It was said that the streets in the area followed cattle trails. More information is not available, and the statement is based upon hearsay passed down from older residents.

However Toowong butcher William Land, of Lands Butchers, owned a 40 acre-sized holding paddock fronting Stanley Parade, Taringa. He also owned a property in Toowong (where Land Street is now located) close to his Sylvan Road Butchery premises. Prior to the 1900s William Land may have moved cattle through west Toowong between these two properties.

There was a dairy farm situated further towards the west that owned by the Dempster family. Dempster Street takes its name from the owners of the farm.

Duke Street was possibly named after Queen Victoria’s son, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. Prince Albert was the first member of the Royal Family to visit Australia in 1867, and did so during his ’round-the-world’ voyage. Stops were made at Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. The Duke was shot by Henry James O’Farrell in an assassination attempt while picnicking on the beach in the Sydney suburb of Clontarf, on 12 March 1868. The Duke recovered fully and continued on to New Zealand seven months later.

If one looks closely at the above map, one note notices that Gower Street was marked as Glower Street. At this stage the source for this street name is not known.

Gower, Duke, Camp and Grosvenor Streets all run off Stanley Terrace, which runs along the top of the ridge from Miskin Street to Taringa where it adjoins Taringa Parade. Stanley Terrace is named after Brisbane architect Francis Drummond Stanley (1839-1897). Stanley had purchased a large property off Stanley Terrace and built a house upon it where he resided. He sold the property to Sir Arthur Palmer, and relocated to a house he built in Jephson Street called Ardencraig.

Sir Arthur Palmer retained Stanley to make modifications to the house, and to enlarge it. The property was renamed as Easton Grey. Later Palmer subdivided a large section of the land to form Mossman, Hunter and Palmer Streets. Today these streets all run downhill from Stanley Terrace to the vicinity of the current QSMT Academy.

The choice of street names are pertinent to the Palmer family history. Sir Arthur Palmer’s wife, Lady Palmer was Cecilia Jessie Mosman before she married. She was also the sister of North Queensland identity Hugh Mosman for whom the town of Mossman was named. Note how both the street name and the township’s name has erroneously acquired an extra ‘s’. Hugh Mosman lived at Easton Grey and continued to do so after the death of his brother-in-law, and later, his sister. He also agisted his racehorses here. ‘’Hunter’’ is Sir Arthur’s second name, named for his mother’s maiden name, Emily Palmer nee Hunter. Of course, the source of name of Palmer Street is self-explanatory.

Ecksleigh, a property bounded by Camp, Exmouth, Duke, and Market Streets, was owned by JB Fewing’s daughter, Ethel Charlotte Maud Munro Hull and her husband George Munro Hull, and included a farm. Later, the family moved to first to Dean Street, and then to Eumundi and operated a banana farm. It is possible that Camden, the property across the road from Ecksleigh, had been carved off the original Ecksleigh property. It is suggested that the street named Market Street is related to the farming activity in the area, and that Orchard Street’s name had the same origins.

When Exmouth Street was formed is still to be researched, and the origin of its name to be explained, as is the street name of ‘’Kapunda’’. Both may be the names of immigrant ships that carried immigrants to Australia, or have as yet unexplained associations to places elsewhere in Australia, such as Exmouth Gulf and Kapunda in South Australia.

Soudan Street’s name reflects the siege of Khartoum and the death of General Gordon. In 1884 Gordon was sent to the Sudan for the second time by the British government to evacuate Egyptian forces from Khartoum, which was threatened by the Mahdists, followers of Muhammad Ahmad al-Mahd. Reappointed governor-general, Gordon arrived in Khartoum in February. Khartoum came under siege a month later, and on Jan. 26, 1885, some 50,000 Mahdists, taking advantage of a gap in the ramparts along the White Nile and bursting through the Masallamiyyah Gate, stormed the city, overwhelming the defenders, and killed Gordon and the other defenders. The British public reacted to his death by acclaiming “Gordon of Khartoum” a martyred warrior-saint and by blaming the government for failure to relieve the siege. However, some biographers, such as the noted Lytton Strachey, have suggested that Gordon, in defiance of his government’s orders, had deliberately refused to evacuate Khartoum, even though evacuation was still possible until late in the siege.

Researched and written by Leigh Chamberlain.

Sources:

Re-Member Database: Queensland Parliament. Retrieved 10 August 2023.

Wikapedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Broughton (Australian_politician) retrieved 10 August 2023

NSW Govt Gazette, 108, p.1529 Friday, 26 September 1851·