What happened
John Bell, recorded as a shipowner, bought two waterfront lots at the harbour end of Darling Street in August 1840, and by the end of 1841 had built a stone wharf and a house on the corner of Weston Street. The drinking is three years younger than the house. The heritage inventory sheet for 10 Darling Street, which draws on the 1990 Leichhardt municipality heritage study, has the house leased in 1844 to William Walker, who obtained a publican's licence and opened it as the Dolphin Hotel, and Bell taking the licence over in 1846 and renaming it the Shipwright's Arms. Bell's family kept it until 1852, after which the licence changed hands repeatedly; the property was auctioned in 1878 and sold in 1883, with the shipyard next door, to the tug operator John Fenwick. The bar was refitted in 1931 and mechanical coolers went in in 1940. The house was sold to Millers Brewery in 1950 and run on under lease until Tooth & Company closed it in 1965; it was de-licensed the following year, and in 1967 new owners applied to the council to turn it into five flats. Wikipedia, citing the Balmain Association's history of the local pubs, says the licence went to Miller's Hotel at Manly Vale. The council's own record says only that the hotel was closed and then de-licensed, which is the version this page follows.
What is there now
Flats, at 10 Darling Street, looking across Sydney Harbour from above the Balmain East wharf. The council's inventory sheet records the conversion into five flats in 1967, gives the current use as office and residential against a former use of hotel, and notes the stone front being stabilised when it was inspected in 2010; OpenStreetMap maps the building as apartments. It is a heritage item of local significance in the Inner West Local Environmental Plan 2022, listed as "Formerly 'The Shipwright's Arms', including interiors".
Location recorded from OpenStreetMap way 729006122, 10 Darling Street, Balmain East (https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/729006122).
Sources
- Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org
- NSW State Heritage Register, via the Internet Archiveweb.archive.org
- openstreetmap.org
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