Auteur: denisbin
Beschrijving:
Mt Pleasant –first town on the Torrens.
This sprawling hills town near the source of the trickling Torrens River has an interesting history. The area was part of one of the SA Company Special Surveys of 1839. The government consequently had surveyed land to sell off which it did in 1842 to three men, Henry Giles Senior, Henry Bushell and James Phillis. They cleared a few trees, built their houses and attracted their relatives, brothers etc to come and take up land in the district. Landowner Henry Glover subdivided some of his land to create the town of Mt Pleasant in 1856 near the pre-existing Mt Pleasant Inn established in 1853. (When this Inn burnt down in 1860 a new hotel was erected called the Mt Pleasant Hotel.)
Meantime, Henry Giles also decided to subdivide some of his land in 1858 and create a township which he called Totness, immediately adjacent to Glover’s Mt Pleasant township. Giles was already operating a general store here. The two townships competed and then finally amalgamated. In Totness the hotel there opened in 1860 (it began as a single storey hotel with the second floor added in 1918 to provide accommodation for an influx of holiday makers expected with the arrival of the railway in that year). After 1860 Henry Giles developed most of the town himself with a flourmill (1865), blacksmiths, and cottages for his workers and his own residence Totness House (1840s) which is behind the Mt Pleasant Soldiers Memorial Hall. Henry Giles’ Totness roller flour mill had a complex of buildings around it and it is now a café and some shops. The complex included a wattle bark mill, a creamery and a cheese and butter factory. After a fire around 1920 the only part of the old flour mill left was the round stone base but most of the stone buildings for the bark mill, creamery and butter factory survived. Giles’ town progressed more quickly and it soon had a Bible Christian Chapel (1858) now part of the Mt Pleasant School, an Anglican Church (1860), a Presbyterian Church (1866) and a Wesley Methodist Church (1867). The Town Pound for straying animals also pre-dated Giles town of Totness as it was erected in 1855 and operating until 1944. When the former Bible Christian Chapel closed in 1861 it became the town schoolroom until finally being incorporated into a state school in 1876. Glover’s town however got the police station (1867).
From its earliest days Mt Pleasant was the service centre for some large estates in the district. By the mid 1850s when the town was established, the Melroses had Rosebank estate and the McBeans had Glen Devon estate on the outskirts of Mt Pleasant. These landed gentry had an impact on the town and by 1904 when George Melrose died the Rosebank estate had increased to around 60,000 acres. It was left to the four Melrose children, one who was married to a Murray. After George Melrose’s death there was ongoing conflict between two rival families of the McBeans and the Melroses over the location of the proposed Institute building. Lachlan McBean wanted it on the triangle of land on the main street which used to be an antique shop. He would donate the land but it was a very small odd shaped parcel of land. Robert Melrose wanted it to be on its present site on a spacious block of land that he would donate. There was no agreement on this issue amongst the local committee. The impasse was broken after Henry Giles Junior died in 1921. Robert Melrose bought up most Giles’ lands. Robert Melrose then donated the land for the hall in its present spacious site with parking and a small public reserve. Work began in 1926 and the Institute opened in 1927 but by then it was a War Memorial Hall for the soldiers and service personnel of World War One.
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