Nedlands history: Ned’s land, the tramway estate and the bridal suburb

Nedlands is named after a colonel’s son called Ned. A tramline to the river in 1908 opened up the land, and returned soldiers and their brides settled there in the 1920s.

How Nedlands got its name

Landgate records that in 1854 Colonel John Bruce, the colony’s Military Commandant, bought land here meaning it for his son Edward, and is said to have called it Ned’s Land. Edward Bruce, later a major in the 19th Bengal Lancers, visited Western Australia in 1883, and a mortgage dated 29 June 1883 already describes the land as known as Nedlands. The City of Nedlands adds that Bruce had arrived in 1850 to head the Pensioner Guard, and that he paid Edward Hamersley £200 for 40 acres. The City’s own timeline tells it differently, with Bruce buying Location 85, about 320 acres, in the 1860s as an investment for Ned.

Ned Bruce became a career soldier, served in the Second Afghan War and on the Indian frontier, and retired in 1901. Several streets carry the family’s story: Bruce Street for the family, Edward Street for Ned, Webster Street for his wife’s maiden name, Thomas Street for their second son, Stanley and Tyrell Streets for two younger sons who died in the First World War, and Kitchener Street for the general Ned served under.

Before the suburb

Sir George Shenton was granted land on the Crawley foreshore in 1873 and bought Swan Location 689 in 1877, part of which later became the Kings Park Estate. From 1893 the area was run by the Claremont Road Board, which was formed mainly to look after the Perth to Fremantle road.

How it grew

The Nedlands Park Tramway Estate was surveyed in 1907 with about 800 building lots, keeping the foreshore for public use and laying out Broadway as its main road. In October 1908 a tram began running from Subiaco to the Nedlands Park Hotel, and the jetty and swimming baths were finished in 1908 and 1909. Nedlands Primary School opened in 1913, and houses were going up along Kingsway from about 1914. Landgate dates most of the suburb’s development to between 1910 and 1920.

After the First World War, so many ex-servicemen and their brides settled here that Nedlands was called the bridal suburb. In the late 1920s and 1930s, Hollywood films and the University of Western Australia’s new buildings of 1929 to 1932 helped make the Spanish Mission style popular. In 1932 the Claremont Road Board became the Nedlands Road Board, and blocks of flats such as Stirling Court appeared from 1935. The Windsor picture theatre opened on Stirling Highway in 1937.

A military hospital on Monash Avenue became the Repatriation General Hospital, Hollywood in 1947 and Hollywood Private Hospital in 1994. The Perth Chest Hospital opened in 1958, was renamed Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital in 1963, and its site became the Queen Elizabeth II Medical Centre in the late 1970s. The City of Nedlands says Nedlands became a municipality on 1 March 1956 and a city on 1 July 1959. Landgate gives 17 February 1956 and 5 June 1959. The swimming baths closed in 1975.

Places that tell the story

The Nedlands Park Hotel building, which opened in December 1908 at the corner of Broadway and The Avenue, marks the end of the tramline. Rockton Road keeps several pairs of Federation Queen Anne houses from about 1900 to 1915, and Greystones at 35 Gordon Street is dated to between about 1895 and 1915.

On Stirling Highway, Stirling Court at number 48 (1935) and Portland Flats at number 55 (1940) show the inter-war move to flats, and the Windsor at number 100, designed by the firm Baxter, Cox and Leighton for the E. P. Nelson cinema circuit, is classified by the National Trust. The Peace Memorial Rose Garden, also on Stirling Highway, was dedicated in 1950.

Nedlands today

The 2021 Census counted 10,561 people in Nedlands. The 1907 estate’s Broadway, the 1908 hotel building near the river and the Bruce family’s street names still trace how the suburb began.

More about Nedlands

For what Nedlands is like to live in now, read our Nedlands suburb profile. If you own a property in Nedlands and are thinking about selling, start with buyers for your property.

Sources

• Landgate: Perth and surrounds suburb names (archived 2022)
• City of Nedlands: History uncovered, Ned’s medals
• City of Nedlands: Timeline
• City of Nedlands: Local Heritage Survey
• inHerit: Windsor Theatre, Nedlands
• inHerit: Windsor Theatre and Commercial Building
• Nedlands Primary School
• ABS 2021 Census QuickStats: Nedlands
• inHerit: Steve’s Hotel (Nedlands Park Hotel)

Top image: The Avenue, Nedlands, 2014. Photo: Zigzig20s, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Dates and names are drawn from the sources above. Where sources differ, we have said so or given an approximate date.

By Key Performance Real Estate, 338 Beaufort Street, Perth