Smithfield is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Smithfield is located west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government areas of the City of Fairfield and Cumberland Council. Located in the Greater Western Sydney region, the suburb is one of the largest in Fairfield City by area. The suburb is a mix of residential, industrial, recreational, rural and commercial areas, and is mostly characterized by low-density housing.Fairfield City Council (1994) Local Environment Plan Fairfield City Council
Established in 1836, Smithfield was the first major settlement of the Fairfield LGA.Fairfield City Council (February 1999) Know your suburb – Smithfield Fairfield City Council The original 1838 summary plan of Smithfield shows the suburb laid out in a grid pattern with most of the streets having the same names as they do today.George V (1991) Fairfield – A History of the District – second edition Fairfield City Council The name of Smithfield is linked with the cattle markets of London and Dublin. In the 19th century, Smithfield used to be a semi-rural village, before becoming a large commercial centre in the early 20th century, in addition to featuring a significant employment centre in south-western Sydney.
Located partially in the suburb, the Smithfield-Wetherill Park Industrial Estate is the largest industrial estate in the southern hemisphere and is the centre of manufacturing and distribution in greater western Sydney.Smithfield-Wetherill ParkDon’t forget the Southern Hemisphere’s Largest Industrial Zone by Marie Hogg and Simon Benson, Fairfield Advance, 13 November 2015 A working class area, Smithfield is also multicultural, with over 130 different nationalities and 70 different languages being spoken.
History Aboriginal people from the Cabrogal tribe, a sub-group of the Gandangara tribe, have lived in the Fairfield area for over 30,000 years. In the area that is now Smithfield, the tribe was found near the banks of Prospect Creek.
Early settlement White settlement began in the area in the early 19th century. The first significant settlement in the Fairfield area was at Smithfield due to its good soil on the Prospect Creek banks, a reliable water supply, and proximate access to Parramatta and Prospect. In June 1791 convicts John Williams and John Brown were granted 50 and 60 acres of land between Prospect Hill and present-day Hassall Street in Smithfield, and only six settlers remained there. Their grants can be considered as the first land grants to appear in the Fairfield local government area and ‘the first white settlers of the future Fairfield City district’, according to historian Vance George. In 1803, homeless children were becoming a problem after convicts turned their children out into the streets. As a consequence, Governor Philip Gidley King, put aside a large area of for a Male Orphan School. By 1836, some of this land was offered for sale by the colonial government of the time. Timber-cutting provided the income of the early settlers.
Some of the best farming land was in the district to the west and southwest of the Smithfield area. Smithfield comprised the original grant of given to James Chisholm, and the area was initially called 'Chisholm's Bush'. John Ryan Brenan (1798–1868), an attorney who was appointed Police Magistrate in 1836, bought here. After subdividing the estate, Brennan initially titled his land 'Donnybrook' (after the Irish market town of the same name). Early settlers, many being Irish Catholics, were attracted to Smithfield by its good soil, dependable water supply and easy access to the Colony's established towns. Brennan Street is where the cattle sale yards were originally located. Sale yards opened in 1841, but the project to establish a village around the yards failed.Smithfield Town Talk and Shopping Guide by Trove. 25 May 1960. Retrieved 13 December 2023. English farmers mostly settled on lands along the Sherwood side of the Prospect Creek and a small colony of Italians assembled together just north of the village, and for many years the whole region was renowned for its beautiful vineyards.
Colonial expansion
In 1841, Victoria Street was a broad boulevard that ran through the wool market in the Queen's Square. The 'Smithfield Market and fair Green' was a semi-circular area that featured 42 stalls of various sizes for the sale of thousands of livestock, in addition to cheese and butter. In 1842, Brennan changed the name from Donnybrook to 'Smithfield Market, Town of Prospect' as he assumed the area would extend to the proximate village at Prospect Hill. In July 1842, Smithfield Market was pompously described as "...without exception the largest and best constructed in the world". The suburb's grid pattern of streets in the older areas were influenced by a marketplace near London.
According to historian John Wilkinson, the name of the project was swiftly diminished to Smithfield by common practice in the hope that cattle sales will be held there. Although Smithfield was more like a 'tent city' than a flourishing urban center (especially after the markets closed down in 1845), it still became a thriving commercial centre. In the subdivision, Brenan offered an extra adjoining allotment to any buyer who built a cottage with a brick chimney and enclosed the property with a fence. The public school opened in 1850 and by the 1880s Smithfield was well provided with churches, many of which still remain today as important relics of Smithfield's rich local heritage. The first recorded religious service in Smithfield was held by the Baptists in the 1840s, as many Baptists bought lands in the township to escape ridicule of their adult baptism in Cooks River. Their settlement in Smithfield was described as "carving out a new town in the wild bush". Although Smithfield had a large Irish Catholic population, the Catholic Church struggled to obtain acknowledgment by the early colonial power.
A national school building was established in January 1851, and it still is one of the state's oldest public school buildings. In the 1860s, Smithfield was mostly populated by vine growers, gardeners, wood timber cutters, orchards and tanneries. In 1866, Smithfield was a postal village lying on fertile lands in the Parish of Saint Luke and had a population of 500 people in a land that was reasonably woody. The village featured one Church of England (the first service in the wider area) and a Baptist chapel, in addition to two hotels called the ‘Lucky Bushman’ and ‘The Smithfield Inn’. Residents in the area were mostly farmers, fruit growers and workers at hide-tanning factories.
In 1871, the township had 264 residents. In the late 1880s, Smithfield was a prominent town in the areas, and it expanded in population due to the significant construction project of the Prospect reservoir. A slab cottage built in 1880 in what was the Queen's Square site (now Chifley Street) still remains in the area, in addition to being listed on the Fairfield City Council Heritage List since 1997. In 1887, J.a.M. Mclean established a vineyard called 'Kaluna' on The Horsley Drive until the land was subdivided in 1959.
Urban development
In 1888, an agreement was accomplished between Smithfield and Fairfield to become a merged municipal council; The ‘Smithfield and Fairfield Municipality’, which had a population of about 1200 and included 250 houses, before changing to 'Fairfield' in 1920, reflecting the growth of the Fairfield CBD. Although Fairfield's commercial area was growing during the 1890s to 1910s, Smithfield was still the district’s largest commercial and religious centre, which included various stores, shops and churches. A literary institute Hall was built in the early 1900s, and in 1913 it became the first ever movie theater in the district. Chifley Street used to be 'Water Street' until the 1950s. There was also George Street, which ran through what is now Rosford Park, while Dublin Street formerly extended north through the area now occupied by the park, where it connected with Gipps Road, until the park was established in the early 1980s.
In a 1918 news article by The Cumberland Argus and Fruitgrowers' Advocate, Smithfield was described as "one of the oldest villages in the greater Parramatta district" and lagging behind Fairfield CBD. In 1924, the Sydney and Suburban Blue Metal Quarries constructed the Widemere Quarry Line to connect the Booth mine at Prospect Hill with Fairfield railway station. The railway passed through what is now The Horsley Drive (then Smithfield Street) and Dublin Street, before closing in 1945. At this time, German, Italian, Maltese and Chinese immigration to the area started to grow. The Fairfield Motor Cycle Club formed in 1935 and it was provided a circuit track in Dublin Street, Smithfield, before closing down in the 1960s.
In the 1940s, the areas near Prospect Creek still had many dairies, vineyards and market gardens, including woodcutting industries as timber was still abundant, and Smithfield was still neither a rural township, nor a remarkably urban area. In the 1940s and 1950s, garbage dumps and sewerage outlets were installed in the suburb, and the area that is now Brenan Park was a landfill up until 1980, before becoming the aforementioned urban park. In 1970s, politician Janice Crosio stated she partook in local politics because she could not stand seeing Smithfield underwater during floods. In the early 1970s, millions of dollars were spent on demolishing older structures and constructing modern offices, in addition to establishing a supermarket in Smithfield Mall. In February 1990, the suburb was affected by the worst flooding in its history where six houses were inundated above the floor level. In 2010, a proposal to establish a new locality named Brenan Heights around Brenan Park was put to residents and property owners by ballot, but failed to gain sufficient community support. In February 2011, the suburb made national headlines when a light aircraft crash landed in Brenan Street, where it caused power loss to 7000 businesses and homes after the plane knocked down multiple power lines.
Geography
The northern part of Smithfield, comprising the industrial precinct north of Prospect Creek, lies within the Cumberland City Council local government area, with the creek forming the local government boundary between Cumberland City Council and the City of Fairfield. This portion of the suburb is entirely industrial in character and contains no residential development, with all residential neighbourhoods located south of the creek within the City of Fairfield. The suburb incorporates Smithfield West, which is mostly a residential locality in the western portion of Smithfield, in addition to being an unofficial designation for the region westwards from Dublin Street to the boundary of Wetherill Park.
Smithfield is within the plant community called the Cumberland Plain Woodland and contains a small patch of the threatened Cooks River/Castlereagh Ironbark Forest (within Smithfield Cemetery), which feature Eucalyptus fibrosa, Melaleuca decora and Eucalyptus moluccana as the dominant canopy species.Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water (NSW) (2010) Cumberland Plain, Recovery Plan, Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water (NSW), Sydney. Somewhat hilly, Smithfield's altitude ranges from above sea level, with its highest elevations around Brenan Park, along its western boundary with Wetherill Park at Wetherill Street, and along its northeastern boundary with Woodpark and Greystanes. The lowest-lying areas are in the central and southeastern parts of the suburb.