A convict town
For working class people who’d come from English and Irish cities and Towns, The Rocks felt like home. It had been built by the convicts and was their part of the town. Their cottages and huts stood higgledy piggledy along the rocky ridges and slopes. Many convicts and ex-convicts opened shops, pubs and businesses in The Rocks and bought up families there. Even after the prisoner Barracks opened in 1819, married or well behaved convicts continued to live in The Rocks, an ‘indulgence’ that became increasingly necessary as the barracks filled to overflowing with the constant arrivals from convict ships.
Convict men and women were also assigned privately as servants all over Sydney, and lived with their masters and mistresses. Those assigned to the government spent their days on work sites dotted around town; the dockyard, lumberyard, slaughterhouses, lime kilns or stone quarries.
Brickfield Hill south of Sydney (now Surry Hills) was an early manufacturing bub where convicts made bricks and tiles from the area’s good quality clay. Potteries there also made earthenware, crockery and clay pipes. Further south, Carters Barracks (where Central Railway is now) housed the gang of convict carers, who cared for teams of government horses and bullocks and delivered goods around town from the dockyard. Convict boys were also lodged here and trained in various trades.
Convict men and women were also assigned privately as servants all over Sydney, and lived with their masters and mistresses. Those assigned to the government spent their days on work sites dotted around town; the dockyard, lumberyard, slaughterhouses, lime kilns or stone quarries.
Brickfield Hill south of Sydney (now Surry Hills) was an early manufacturing bub where convicts made bricks and tiles from the area’s good quality clay. Potteries there also made earthenware, crockery and clay pipes. Further south, Carters Barracks (where Central Railway is now) housed the gang of convict carers, who cared for teams of government horses and bullocks and delivered goods around town from the dockyard. Convict boys were also lodged here and trained in various trades.