First settlers: Admiral Philip and his colonists hoist the British flag on arrival in Botany Bay to establish a penal colony in 1778

SUNDAY SUPPLEMENT: His tour of places named after Croydon has brought DAVID MORGAN all the way back to the old Parish Church, after an arduous trip to the other side of the  world

Major influence: Francis Grose

In a twist to the tales about places named Croydon, one of the leading players in the story of one of the overseas Croydons ended his days back here, buried in the churchyard of the old Parish Church, what we know today as Croydon Minster.

Francis Grose died on May 8 1814. He was 56. His part in the story goes back to the time when his military rank was major and he was appointed to be Lieutenant-Governor of New South Wales and the commandant of the New South Wales Corps, which he was appointed to raise.

Grose, his wife Fanny and their young son arrived at Port Jackson, now Sydney Harbour, in February 1792 to begin his posting. Fanny Grose would have had her eyes opened on their voyage aboard the ship Pitt. It would have been a tough time with 404 convicts on board, who were being transported overseas after having been found guilty of some offence, many relatively minor by our modern standards, in court in England.

It was recorded that 29 of the prisoners died during the long sea voyage.

Once in Australia, Grose immediately took up his duties under the Governor, Arthur Philip.

Captain Cook had “discovered” the east coast of Australia in 1770. With the Americas lost following the Revolutionary War, Britain began to look elsewhere for colonial expansion and penal outposts, and in 1786, Philip, an admiral in the Royal Navy, was tasked with establishing a permanent colony; he set off the following year with a small fleet of 11 ships, and arrived in 1788.

Fourteen years later, when Grose and his family arrived there, the settlement was still in its infancy. Known as Botany Bay back in England, the penal colony established in Sydney Cove brought great changes to the area.

Previously, long before the arrival of the British, the land was inhabited by the Kuringal and Dhrag native peoples. Together, they were known as the Wangal people.

One of the earliest British officers to arrive in the area, a Lieutenant Bradley, wrote in his diary about an encounter he had with the Wangal in 1788. He and his exploration party had stopped for breakfast when a group of seven Wangals approached them.

“They left their spears in the canoes and came over to us,” wrote Bradley. He didn’t record the nature of their interaction, noting only that after he and his soldiers resumed their patrol, the Wangals used the embers from the fire to cook mussels which had been collected from the river.

As the penal colony and settlement began to grow, the Wangal were forced to move further inland, away from their traditional homeland. Tragically, their interactions with settlers resulted in a smallpox outbreak and epidemic, which wiped out the majority of the native people, who had no immunity to this disease.

Philip’s settlement was mainly clustered around Sydney Cove, but he also founded a small farming community at what is known today as Parramatta, or Rose Hill as it was called then, to ensure there was a regular food supply. Communication between the two places was necessary and in 1791 a bush track was constructed, what was to become the Parramatta Road.

Empire-builder: Arthur Philip, first Governor of New South Wales

Grose did not have long working with Philip. The Governor’s failing health saw him return to England. This left Grose in temporary charge of running the whole of the new colony of New South Wales.

It was Grose who set about making changes that would result not only in the foundation of Croydon but the spreading of the new settlements.

Philip had relied on the government-backed farm to produce enough food, but Grose decided to encourage private farming in an attempt to improve productivity.

He awarded parcels of land to members of the military and to men or women who were previously incarcerated and who had completed their sentence. Grose’s policy was, in general, to grant 100 acres to any officer, 30 acres to any ex-convict and 25 acres to any private soldier, provided that the person receiving the grant would live on their plot, clear it, and develop the area for cultivation.

It was recorded in Burwood, the neighbouring settlement to Croydon, that the first settler there, Sarah Nelson, was granted 15 acres of land on November 19 1794 by Major Grose, to be known as Nelson’s Farm.

Sarah Nelson had sailed out to Australia at her own expense because her husband had been transported there with a seven-year sentence and she wanted to be there for him at the end of his incarceration.

Croydon first appeared on a map drawn in 1791 by William Dawes, a Royal Marine and cartographer. His map was annotated with the comment that it was “a tract of good land to appearance in many places hereabout”.

Uncharted territory: maps of the colony, this from 1791, show how little was known by British colonists of the land they had arrived in

By 1793, a stockade was established close to Croydon as an overnight resting place for convict working parties. In the October of that year, Grose sent workmen and convicts to form a timber yard. Soon, 60 acres of woodland had been cleared, to be used as farmland.

The first land grant for Croydon came in April 1793 when Captain John Townson received 100 acres on the Parrametta Road. Private J Eades received his grant of 25 acres next to Townson’s plot the following year.

Grose remained in New South Wales until December 1794. The wounds which he had received some years before fighting in America had continued to trouble him. He returned to a purely military life, albeit a desk-bound one, both in Gibraltar and in Ireland.

When he retired from the army, Grose and his wife moved back to England. They lived in The Limes on Waterhouse Lane, which ran alongside Croydon Common. Fanny Grose died on January 12 1813 aged 46, having been ill for some time. On her gravestone in Croydon Parish Church was carved the epitaph:

“Behold the bricks and mortar cover
The best of wives, the kindest mother”

In April 1814, Grose married again, to Elizabeth Paterson, the widow of one of his fellow officers in the New South Wales Corps. The new marriage was to last but a month. Grose died suddenly on May 8 and was buried with his first wife.

Property sale: towards the end of the 19th Century, Croydon was a sought-after suburb of Sydney

Back in New South Wales, the settlement of Croydon was growing slowly and was only lightly settled even by the middle of the 19th century. In 1848, Croydon was part of the parish of Concord which had a population of little more than 1,000 inhabitants.

The coming of the railways changed the area. The construction of the first line in 1855 from Sydney to Paramatta Junction bisected Croydon but brought more people into the area. The Five Dock station was later renamed Croydon Station and an area of land nearby, named Croydon Park, was auctioned off in September 1876.

In 1879, Croydon was described as a very pleasant place: “An agreeable bit of home scenery, diversified by gardens and trees, where nature has not yet been ruthlessly improved away. Streets (for the most part mere lanes) intersect this tract, whereon stand villas and gardens belonging to Sydney people, displaying a considerable amount of domestic comfort, originality and even elegance of design. Vistas of pleasant country roadways, green and as yet innocent of dust and mire, stretch up the gentle eminences to the left and right.”

Today, Croydon is a thriving suburb of Sydney, about 10 miles from the city centre. It is the home of one of most prestigious girls’ schools in Australia, the Presbyterian Ladies College, which was founded in 1888.

Grose is remembered in the suburb with a road named after him.

Further away in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales there is also a Grose Valley and a Grose River. Sadly, in our Croydon, nothing remains of his name. Perhaps this tale might rectify this.

• David Morgan, pictured right, is a former Croydon headteacher, now the volunteer education officer at Croydon Minster, who offers tours or illustrated talks on the history around the Minster for local community groups

If you would like a group tour of Croydon Minster or want to book a school visit, then ring the Minster Office on 020 688 8104 or go to the website on www.croydonminster.org and use the contact page

Other articles by David Morgan on Croydons around the world:

• How Melbourne’s White Flats is linked forever to Croydon
  
• Sharpe’s rebellion in Jamaica highlighted the plight of slaves
• The ‘incompetent’ Lebombo scout who helped win Boer War
• Croydon gold rush that saw thousands move to the outback
  
• Hard lives for the Puritan pioneers of new state New Hampshire
• How Croydon lodged itself forever in a part of Philadelphia
• Hardships and dangers on the Utah trail heading to Croydon

• For the full archive of David Morgan’s history research, click here

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