Part Two – post 1920s - Newcastle City Council

25 Frederick Ash buildings
Newcastle Council purchased all the properties of Fred c Ash Limited in 1969. The
purchase provided a foundation for subsequent plans for civic development. At first
the site of the Fred c Ash workshops on the Burwood/King Streets corner was chosen
for the City Administration Building, which was in accord with all the masterplans to
that time that focused civic buildings around Civic Park as the civic square.
The Hunter Street facing Menkens designed Fred c Ash building is today recognised as
a significant heritage item protected by a Permanent Conservation Order. The new
Fred c Ash warehouse facing Burwood Street is also significant and both have proved
pivotal to redevelopment plans for the civic precinct. Some awareness of Frederick
Ash and his business and buildings is necessary to understand the part they played in
the commercial history of Newcastle from which the heritage values have arisen.
Frederick Ash (1832-1916) was one of Newcastle’s leading businessmen and
property owners. His business included hardware, wallpaper, gas fittings and trades
related to the home and commercial building industry. He was born in England in
1832 and arrived in Newcastle in 1855. He started in business in a small cottage in
Hunter Street and after a few years moved to larger leased premises on the
King/Brown Streets corner. The business evolved into a brief partnership from 1860
to 1866, then in 1887 a limited liability company.
Importing was the major source of his supplies for which Ash made regular visits
overseas. In the early 1900s one of his sons looked after the London office.
His nephew John Ash (1850-1905) immigrated to Newcastle in 1865 and after an
apprenticeship with his uncle commenced in business independently. In the 1870s
John Ash established a timber yard, workshop and sawmills with a shop and dwelling
on land leased from J&A Brown at the side and rear of Mrs Brown’s house and the
Black Diamond Hotel. He probably leased additional land from the AA Company. In
1898 John Ash purchased several portions of this land, on both sides of the Burwood
coal railway and south of the allotments facing Hunter Street. 76
About 1900 Frederick Ash appears to have bought land in this locality and built
premises of his own. In 1901 he called tenders for a building on land that he bought
from John. 77 This land was immediately behind the site of what was to become the
Menkens’ designed building. He subsequently bought this latter site, which was part
of William Andrew Sparke’s earlier purchase. Frederick Menkens designed the 4level
shop, warehouse and office building, which was built during Ash’s absence
overseas in 1904. 78
This building is one of nine warehouses or bond store buildings, which Menkens
designed in central Newcastle and one of three completed by him in 1905 in the
Federation warehouse style. The designs of these warehouses helped establish the
characteristic townscape of the commercial centre of Newcastle.
John Ash died in Newcastle in 1905. 79
76 Godden Mackay, ‘Frederick Ash Building Conservation Plan and Civic Site Archaeological
Assessment’, draft final report, 1992 p. 23
77 Newcastle Morning Herald, 15 June 1901
78 An account of his visit to London is in Newcastle Morning Herald 7 February 1905
79 Newcastle Morning Herald 20 and 22 May 1905
Newcastle Civic and Cultural Precinct History ~ Cynthia Hunter ~ January 2003 page 52