A symbolic aeroplane and the bold letters ‘PROGRESS’ keep no secret that William Claude Johnston, who published this booklet, had a clear message to communicate. It was 1935, and the 50th anniversary of his family’s footwear business coincided with the centenary of the proclamation of West and East Maitland. It was a golden opportunity to […]
Sometime in 1934 or after, a librarian at Maitland Girls’ High School picked up a rubber stamp with the institution’s name on it, dabbed it on an inkpad, and stamped the first inside page of this booklet. It had recently been printed by West Maitland printer T. Dimmock for St Peter’s Anglican Church, of East […]
In the 2004 book Time gentlemen, please!: Maitland’s Hotels Past & Present, a redrawn copy of this old undated plan of West Maitland was published, with an estimate that it was drawn around, or at least represents, the year 1858. But what evidence places it in the 1850s? For the Wonnarua people, the area depicted […]
How do you face bank robbers, sex-offenders, drug traffickers, and murderers every day at work? Tasked with confining and rehabilitating some of the toughest criminals Australia has ever seen, the guards of Maitland Gaol needed to maintain their self-defence skills throughout the prison’s 150 years of operation (1848-1998). In a shooting range along the perimeter […]
‘Potter’s clay sticks to the fingers’, replied Alice Fieldsend when asked why her family stayed with the craft. The alchemy of pottery, from clay to mould and kiln was with her from childhood as she watched her father, James Silcock, work the potter’s wheel. Alice married Frederick Fieldsend and together they established the F.J. Fieldsend […]
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