Holden Retirees Club

Woodville Plant (Adelaide).

Woodville property acquisitions.

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Background:

Holden’s Motor Body Builders finished doubling the size of their King William Street factory in 1922, but soon after became aware that at their current rate of growth, they would very soon again be out of room to accommodate the volumes being sold.  They already owned virtually all of the city block that included the new factory, with operations spread out through a number of adjacent but isolated smaller factory buildings of varying condition.  Their major shortfall was in the wood mill area, so they leased a premises at 12 Halifax Street, opposite their new factory, to accommodate a Carpenters shop. 

As mentioned elsewhere in these pages, they also responded to a government initiative by tendering to build railway carriages for the South Australian State railways. Their shortage of room for their usual activities meant that they went looking for, and on 2^nd May 1923 purchased, a factory on the corner of Gilbert Street and Vinrace Street especially to accommodate the building of Railway carriages.

[They moved their activities to Woodville in 1925, leasing the building to Whittingslow Engineering, who continued to make metal parts for Holden until a disastrous fire razed the building in November, 1925.   Holden later sold the site to the South Australian Gas Company on 2^nd October, 1926.]

These were only short term solutions, but for the long term, Holden’s decided to look for a large site suitable to build another new factory and have room to expand.

Finding the site.

In her book, “So Great a Change”, Edward Holden’s daughter Nancy Buttfield claims that in 1922, Henry’s youngest son William was “sent out on a motor bike to scour outlying districts in search of a 12 acre site, accessible to a railway line and close to Port Adelaide.” Here history and Ms Buttfield diverge.  She attests that he found a twelve acre site at Woodville, then a sleepy hollow about half way between the city and the Port, but the Directors then sent William out again to look for even more land, and he knocked on cottage doors so successfully that he took the holding to almost 22 acres and later, to 72 acres.

Holden did buy a site on the corner of Port Rd and Cheltenham Rd at Woodville around 9^th April, 1923, but it was only 5 acres, and soon after bought another 22½ acres from the “Executor Trustee and Agency Company of South Australia” [who were acting as Executors of the will of David Bower – “The Bower Estate”]. This land became the main HMBB site, bounded by the Railway line on two sides, Port Rd and the boundary of Section 407 on the others, and was registered on 14 July 1925. However, HMBB were building on the land in 1923, so obviously had some financial interest in the land from mid-1923. The Mail reported HJ Holden on 2 June 1923 as saying "We are extending our factory to a site at Woodville, where a duplicate building is being erected. There we have purchased 22 acres of land."

The exact order of purchase is difficult to determine absolutely, given other articles such as a report in the Melbourne Herald of 4 May, 1925 which said an "....important development was the addition of the Woodville Plant on a 22-1/2 acre site in 1923. This has been found to be insufficient and a further five acres has been taken in". This is at odds with the dates of registration of the Lots, however does support that the first (?) lot was five acres, not twelve as claimed by Ms Buttfield. 

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[Many books say that HMBB bought the land from competitors, Duncan and Fraser.  This has been proven to be incorrect. In 1884 Duncan & Fraser had purchased land at Kilkenny (adjacent suburb to Woodville) and erected a factory at the Kilkenny Railway Sidings, adjacent to the Kilkenny Railway station. This was some 3 Kms from the site that HMBB bought at Woodville. Also Duncan and Fraser only occupied that factory until 1892, thirty years before the HMBB purchase!

Given the wide spread belief that GMH bought D&F land, it is pertinent to add some detail to the Duncan and Fraser history at Kilkenny. Duncan & Fraser were Ford car assemblers, as well as making some vehicles of their own design plus some Railway Carriages.  It was the Carriage business that took them to Kilkenny. Here they found a large piece of ground (1.45 Ha) adjacent to the Kilkenny Railway siding and on the Eastern side of Aroona Rd North. They leased the land on 1^st Feb 1883 for a 3 year term but then bought it, the sale registered on 31 July 1885.  As the land was much bigger than they required for a factory, they set about selling off building blocks around the sides and north end of their property. The subdivision contained 82 Lots, of which No 81 was the factory site. It appears they sold 14 lots in the initial sale by Dec 1885. Title 491-37 was reissued then for the remaining 68 lots remaining. This title records the Death of Fraser on 1^st August, 1886, although this was not registered until 4^th December 1891. As a tribute to his late partner, Duncan retained the Duncan and Fraser name for the business.

All on the same day, Lot 16 was paid up and released from the Mortgage and was subsequently sold to Margret Herrington, registered on 4^th December, 1891.  The title 556-46 for the remaining 67 lots was issued on 14^th December 1891.

No further action was recorded until on 16^th March 1907, the Crown acquired a large parcel (“Lot 81”)  bounded by the railway, Sackville Rd, Castle St and Aroona Rd. This is now most of the area for Reserve (Title 761-182). All the remaining property was sold By James Duncan on 4^th February 1910 to Jane Matters who then sold a further approx. 20 lots over the next four years.]

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Holden’s immediately commenced planning for the new Body Assembly plant and associated works.  A report on 29th August, 1923 says “Tenders amounting to £40,000 have been accepted by Holden’s Motor Body Builders Ltd. for the erection of additional works on 22 ½ acres of land adjoining Woodville station on the Port Adelaide – Adelaide railway line. The works when completed will have a capacity of producing 200 bodies per week, and it hoped that the buildings will be completed and ready for occupation by the beginning of December.”

Other land purchases

While all this was going on, HMBB were seemingly active in land sales around Adelaide:

- On 3rd March 1923, Holden purchased three adjoining lots in Dodd Avenue, Port Noalinga for use as holiday accommodation for employees.

-  On 8^th August 1923 they registered the transfer of 40 acres of land at (now) Dudley Park, further down the road past Kilkenny and adjacent to the Gawler rail line. It was also adjacent to the then very desirable suburb of Prospect. They only held it for 16 months, registering the on-sale of the whole site to a “Lucas de Garis” on 8 Dec 1924. It seems that some years later it subsequently became the site of the Dudley Park (Islington) Cemetery, which still exists in that location. 

- The “Holden Gardens Estate”. On 24th October, 1924, HMBB registered the purchase of some 49 blocks of land on the south side of Port Road, almost opposite the site of their factories. The purchase was given the grand title of the “Holden Gardens Estate” although later it became “Holden Park”, and seems to have been purely a land speculation.   They sold six lots to builders Fox, Ey and Thomas Ltd on 5th December 1924, two lots to William and Jemina Muir on 3rd February 1925, a single lot to Augustus Filsell on 27 May 1925, four lots to George Osbourne on 27th March 1925, a further two lots to Fox, Ey and Thomas on 5th May 1926 and one lot each to Lucy Miller on 30th July 1926 and to Frederick Coffey on 12th August 1926 - which accounts for 17 of the original 49 blocks that HMBB bought in one parcel. The remainder of the land (some 32 blocks) were sold in one parcel to Randolph Pitman on 21st December 1926, who on the same day immediately on-sold ten of those blocks to George Day.

So, in two years HMBB only succeeded in selling 17 plots, which is probably why they sold the rest in one batch to Randolph Pitman, who was a local Builder of note.

The Woodville site expands

Returning to the main Woodville site, on 24 April 1925 HMBB bought Lot 43 Port Road, which effectively joined their two existing sites together.

On 15 July 1925, a property was bought on Lot 60, Rowley Terrace.  This was directly across the Railway line from the Plant, but a pedestrian crossing ave direct access to the plant from that house.  It is believed this was a house for the head of Plant Security and family to live close to the Plant in case of alarms at night. The property was sold to Emanuel (No 5) on 29 July 1984. Today, a block of Town Houses is on the site, now No 14 Rowley Terrace.

For the rest of 1925, HMBB began buying up properties in Wotton and Carnarvon Streets. A period of relative quite then followed through most of 1926, until December, when attention turned to Dudley St, and continued in 1927.   By May 1927, HMBB had acquired most properties in Dudley St, Warwick St, and more of Carnarvon St. In 1928, HMBB succeeded in having parts of Carnarvon St closed which had separated lots they owned.

1941 saw a concerted effort to buy all the remaining plots in Carnarvon St and Warwick St, which they mostly achieved by June. They then obtained a further three lots in Railway Terrace.

The rest of the 1940’s were quite, and it was not until the early 1950’s that further acquisitions were made. In 1951, all remaining Warwick St lots were mopped up, and in 1953/1954, Railway Terrace was targeted, and in early 1954, Lee St.  By October 1955, all those properties were now part of the HMBB site.

A detailed collection of correspondence concerning the 1954 purchases can be found below.

References:

Land Titles.

Notes: - Some titles rely on a sketch and/or reference to a plan  to show the location, and only mention on the title that it is part of Section 407 (for instance). Hence there is no Lot number shown for those titles.

-P.T.A = Part Town Acre

Street map, West side of Plant site.

Holden Gardens Estate

 Duncan and Fletcher

Correspondence