Holden Retirees Club

Halifax St and Gilles Street Properties.

More GMH Buildings in Adelaide for Sale?

By Neil Pogson

Research online is a funny thing.  You can be diligently searching for some fact and come across something entirely different, but interesting. So, you suddenly find yourself running down a completely different path to where you started.  This happened (again) to me recently.

While researching some data on Birkenhead in Trove, I came across a 1937 advertisement for the Sale by Auction of two buildings owned by GMH, one in Halifax Street Adelaide, and the other in Gilles Street. These two streets ran off King William Street at either end of the GMH building. The timing piqued my interest as much as anything – what was GMH doing owning buildings in that locaHailifax St adverttion in 1937, given they had vacated the King William Street premises years earlier? Why did they buy them at all?

I had not seen any previous mention of these buildings, except that I had an idea that Frank Daley had mentioned something in his History of Holden about those streets.  So, I went back to Daley and found on page 48 that by 1917 Holden and Frost had made a few bodies on special orders, and, "...there are many indications of close co-operative working with other body-making firms and, in particular, with F. T. Hack & Co., Motor Body Builders in Gilles Street, (and) with Charles Robinson, a motor trim specialist in nearby Halifax Street..”

So, were these the premises of Hack and Robinson??

 The following descriptions can be confusing with so many property numbers quoted, so it may be useful to consult the diagrams as you read on].

Firstly, I decided to draw up the locations of the buildings by following the details descriptions in the advertisements, which incidentally ran weekly from late July 1937 until the week before the Auction on 8^th September, when they ran daily. So, armed with the advertisement and the Google maps distance measuring facility, I tried to match up the descriptions with the present day ground works,

The Halifax Street site was easy, it neatly fitted onto an existing site, one block away from King William Street, as advertised.

However, the Gilles St site defied me, in that there was ambiguity in the way the extended rear section as described – was it part of the building already described, or another portion added on at the back?  Neither fitted very neatly with the current configuration.

A further complication is that I discovered that Gilles Lane did not run all the way through to Halifax Street back then!  A 1936 street directory shows it as a cul-de-sac running off Gilles Street to about the end of the current 12-24 Gilles Street building. This was confirmed by a Historic Street Names website, which says: 

"GILLES LANE - Town Acre 606 Sheet 14: A cul-de-sac, leading north off Gilles St.  Osmond Gilles was SA's first Colonial Treasurer."

But, a 1929 directory I found subsequently does show a lane running south from Halifax St, then turning East to join up with the back entrance of 27-29 Halifax St, as it does today.  However, it does not join up with Gilles Lane so there was no through laneway between Halifax and Gilles Streets. 

The difference was that Gilles lane was a recognised public road, whereas the laneway down the side of 11 Halifax St was just an unnamed private road, many of which existed around that area back then. It seemingly therefore was not considered to exist when the street re-numbering took place.

I turned to my Adelaide contacts for any assistance they might be able to offer, given their long interest in King William Street, and, after all, they lived there! But no, there was almost nothing known of these two buildings, both of which had long since disappeared.  Don Loffler, however, was motivated to take a tape measure down to Halifax and Gilles Streets and to measure out the frontages and depths of the existing buildings, and see how the current lane ways between the buildings were organised. The result of which made the position much more clear, and the locations described are believed to be roughly as shown in the attached sketch.

Having finally gained some idea of what we were looking for, I searched Trove but failed to find any helpful mentions of these addresses, apart for a very occasional advertisement for workers wanted.

So I turned to the Sands and McDougal Directories of Adelaide (an excellent selection of which are available on the South Australian State Library site) and along the way, uncovered HMBB use of several factories around the immediate area behind the King William Street building.

One fact which was confusing until the explanation was found, was that around 1920/21 the streets of Adelaide were renumbered to eliminate duplication and confusing patterns of numbers particularly in the cross streets.  Hence, the street addresses of the properties changed, but of course, the properties and the occupants remained much the same! For example, the King William Street property went from 262-266 King William St to 368-396 King William St.

I started looking in Sands from 1915, and worked forward though most years until 1973 (the last Directory available online) as appropriate, looking for mentions of Holden related occupation of buildings in the relevant places. Note that the Sands Directories only list occupant’s names, not owner’s names (unless the occupant owned the property, of course).

Understanding the street numbering (apart from issue of the renumbering) was tricky, until I put together two other facts: that the nominal block size was 21 feet (from the re-numbering article) and that the laneway off Halifax street was not a recognised road.  Adding in the width of the lane as a building block gave reality to the number of 21 foot blocks that could fit along to Symonds Place, so that adjacent buildings numbered 15-19 and 27-29 suddenly made sense, given that blocks 21 to 25 were just blank walls or doorways.

The drawing that Don Loffler made with his dimensions shown has been marked up to show the way the numbers ran.  Note that the drawing is not to scale, but when dimensions are considered, it works.

In summary, the findings are these:

Daley says that in 1917, Holden worked with F. T. Hack & Co., Motor Body Builders in Gilles Street, and with Charles Robinson, a motor trim specialist in nearby Halifax Street.  He is probably not quite correct on either score, although the Hack site was said to be acre in size and so may have had some frontage to Gilles Street, but the building frontage was to King William Street. The history concerning the Robinson's involvement is explored later.

At the time Holden was setting up in 1916/17, Fred. T. Hack & Co was listed as being at 262 - 266 King William Street, adjacent to where Antrim Place seems to have been. In the same period, a coach trimmer named W.A. Robinson was located in Antrim Place. In September 1917, H.J. Holden bought up all the shares in Fred. T. Hack & Co.

Fredrick Hack left Adelaide in 1918 and went to Sydney, where he established again in Camperdown, later becoming Missenden Motors in Missenden Rd, Camperdown which was ultimately bought by Richards around 1927.

The ex-Hack property at 262 - 266 became the first HMBB factory in King William Street in 1917, although Frank Daley does say that the Fred T Hack name lived on in Adelaide until 1920 when it went into voluntary liquidation; and he Hack name still appeared in  Sands Directories for 1918 and 1919 at the 262-266 King William St address. Also shown in 1919 as being at 5-7 Halifax Street (the block adjoining King William Street corner), which must have been operated by HMBB as Fred Hack had already left the State. The address seems to have been renumbered to 15 Halifax Street in 1922. This was the building which was the first property mentioned on the sale notice.

Interestingly, Number 11 is shown as being occupied by W.H.J. Purdie, Foreman, Holden's Motor Works, from 1923 and 1924. 

HMBB is shown as having occupied the 15 Halifax St site until 1928, except that by 1923 they had also acquired the remaining properties on the block down to Symonds Place, and was now numbered as 15-29 Halifax Street, comprising two sites, numbers 15 - 19 (the blue building), and 27 to 29 Halifax St. (the red building).  

Also in Halifax Street, HMBB  occupied a property on the North side from 1925 to 1927 at Number 12 Halifax Street, where they located their Carpentry Department.

---ooo---

William A Robinson

Turning to W.A. (William) Robinson, Motor Trimmer of Antrim Place.  William Robinson was a very busy man so the company had been mainly run by his son, Charles (who was said to be an excellent tradesman). 

Born in London, William came with his parents to Richmond, Victoria, at the age of eleven. In 1869 he was apprenticed to a coachbuilding firm in Melbourne to learn the trade, which he followed for a number of years. Moving to SA, he soon became identified with the Labor movement, and in 1888, he was elected Secretary of the Engineman’s, Fireman’s and Cleaner’s Association of South Australia, a position he held for 22 years.  He was secretary of the Railways Hospital Fund until his death. He had been a member of the Legislative Council from 1893 to 1899, and was a prominent figure in the early days of the Labor movement in South Australia. He was one it the trustees when the Trades Hall was built and secretary to the Trades and Labor Council tor some years. In Freemasonry, Mr. Robinson was Past Master of the Lodge of Truth, and he was once a secretary of the Buffalo Order in South Australia.

In 1894, he set up W.A Robinson and Co, Coach Trimmers in Grote Street, Adelaide, and was in business there until 1915, when the business moved to Antrim Place, off King William Street.

---ooo---

Charles W. Robinson

Piecing together facts from many sources, it appears that the following outlines the relationship between Charles Robinson and Holden’s:

In December 1917, having made a handful of bodies with great success, Holden’s moved into the Fred. T Hack factory to reorganise, reequip and manage the operation.  In getting to this stage, they had worked with a Trimmer, Charles Robinson, son of William Robinson of W.A. Robinson and Co., just around the corner in Antrim Place.

They offered Charles full time employment as a Motor Body Builder (no doubt, as a Trimmer), which he accepted and joined HMBB. Robinson had been paid £7 a week by Hack and Holden increased this to £8.  In April 1918, William A. Robinson who was then aged 66, decided to retire and closed down the Antrim Place business.

Sands Directory shows Charles living at 9 Scott St., Dulwich at the time, and he continued to live there as a Motor Body Builder until 1926, when he was promoted to a Manager at HMBB.  He then moved nearby to a bigger house at 31 Dulwich Ave, Dulwich (on the corner of Scott Street).

It is not recorded what part of the business was managed by Charles, but the timing and later events suggest that it might have been the Body Repair business which HMBB advertised in April 1926 and subsequently.

Charles is shown in Sands again in 1927 as a Manager at the Dulwich Ave address.

In July 1927, William Robertson passed away, leaving two daughters and Charles. 

Meanwhile, through 1927 HMBB had announced that they were transferring all their business to their new Woodville Plant, and their announcement included the advice that a Body Repair Station would be maintained at the King William Street premises. However, at the same time, they would have wanted to divest themselves of as much business at King William Street as they could.

Perhaps Charles had inherited some funds from the passing of William, but either way, he formed a company called “C.W. Robinson and Coy.” and took over the Body Repair Shop at Holden’s King William Street building. The first advertisement for his services there seems to have appeared on 25 February, 1928.

However, HMBB was in discussions with Myer Emporium, who wanted to buy the King William Street building so by 13 June 1928, C.W. Robertson had relocated to “Holden’s Halifax Street buildings” and was now advertising his Repair services there.

In November 1928, a preliminary Sale notice announced that all the King William Street building had been sold, and the remainder of the Holden’s buildings facing Halifax Street and Gilles Street would sold the following February. However there was a further announcement on 17^th December that C. W. Robinson and Co had purchased the 15 to 29 Halifax Street buildings.  They occupied them until 1935, when they downsized to the 27-29 Halifax St building, which the company subsequently occupied all the way through until Dec 2015! 

The vacated premises (15-27 Halifax St) were leased out. GMAC moved into Number 21 Halifax Street in 1935 until 1938, and C.C. Wakefield, Oil Merchants, took over number 23 and stayed there until 1961.

Mark Robinson (Grandson) remembers 15-27 Halifax Street had a pit in the ground (used to allow work on the underside of the vehicles in Production) and a lay shaft up high on the front wall, used to power belt-driven machinery.  Next door had small railway line tracks in the floor for assembly trollies to follow.

The business later traded as Robinson’s Accident Repair centre at that same address. In 2015 Robinson’s merged with Claridges Crash Repairs to trade as Claridge Crash. At the time of writing (June 2019), the Halifax Street building still stands empty.

---ooo---

Antrim Place itself is an enigma.   It appears in the Sands directory until 1920 as being adjacent to the Fred Hack premises, running off between 254 and 262 King William Street. Newspaper advertisements for W.A. Robinson confirm this.  However, Trove also has a number of items concerning Antrim Place off Halifax Street. In particular, there are reports of sly grog sales in a house in Antrim Place, at the rear of the "Nurse's House", which was located at 248 King William Street. A house for sale says that it adjoins Fred Hack's Factory. There are rooms for rent as well.

This suggests that Antrim Place was an 'L' shaped lane, which possibly ran behind in from King William Street, then turned left and ran along behind the houses to Halifax Street,  This would put it about on the alignment of the now existing Gilles lane extension to Halifax St.

But Antrim Place does not rate a mention in Sands Directory as entering Halifax Street.  Nor could the researchers at the State Library of South Australian find any depiction of Antrim Place on any maps of the period. That it existed is sure, but so far, we have not been able to see any reference to it apart from the King William St section in Sands, and newspaper reports.

Mark Robinson remembers 'fingers of land" or laneways running between buildings in Halifax Street. They were privately owned, so diod not appear as lanes on official documents.

Antrim Place seemingly went under the new building erected by HMBB in King William St., so when Daley joined Holden in 1931, it would have been just a memory. 

---ooo---

By 1929, GMH had removed all their activities to "their vast new site at Woodville" so had no further need of the King William Street building or the properties in the surrounding streets. On 21st February, they held a major Auction sale of all their properties, but their advertisement noted that prior to that Auction, the King William Street four story warehouse had already been sold to The Myer Emporium, the Office Block section had sold to Muirden College, and C W Robertson had bought the Halifax st property.

The advertisement listed for Auction a two story property in Halifax St, two large three story premises in Gilles St, an extensive single storey property in Symonds Place and a five room cottage in Gilles St.  It is not clear what the outcome of the Auction was, except that most of these properties were sold later, so were presumably passed in at the Auction..

The 21 Halifax St property was sold in 1941 to the Boys Brigade, who held it until 1953. The two Gilles St premises together were sold to Charles Birk and Co. in 1940 who held them until 1963 when they passed to David Jones (Adelaide) as storage.

So, in short, Daley said Fred Hack & Co  was in Gilles St, just off King William St. – apparently it never was, having started business in  King William Street and selling to Holden at that site.  And Charles Robinson was not at 15-29 Halifax St until sometime in 1928!  W.A. Robinson was in Antrim Place back when Holden was starting up, although it seems that William's son Charles was the person who assisted Holden's with the first bodies.  Remember, Charles Robinson had moved to Halifax St when Daley joined Holden in 1931.

In Gilles Street, property Number 12  was occupied by HMBB in 1923, but by the following year they had occupied numbers 12 to 22A, and did so until 1928. The ground floor apparently housed the Blacksmiths section. This was almost all the entire block facing Gilles Street, except for a few cottages at the Symonds Place end, and around the corner in Symonds Place itself.

This was the second property listed for sale in 1937.

To summarise by property:

Halifax St (South Side)

5-7 Halifax St: South side: 1919 Fred T Hack (HMBB??); 1920, 1921 HMBB

15 Halifax St: 1922 HMBB

15-29 Halifax St: 1923 to 1928 HMBB

15-29 Halifax St: 1928 to 1935 C W Robinson and co.

21 Halifax St: 1935 -1938 GMAC

27-29 Halifax St: 1935 to 2015 C W Robinson and Co

Halifax St (North Side)

12 Halifax St North side: 1925 to 1927 HMBB (Carpentry Department)

Gilles St

12 Gilles St North side.  1923 HMBB  (16 - 20 vacant, 22-22a Whitehall second hand clothes):

12, 16, 18, 20, 22, 22A Gilles St North side: 1924 to 1928 HMBB

Nothing else listed until:

12-24 Gilles St North side: 1940 Charles Birks, bulk store and factory

12 - 30 Gilles St North side: 1957 Charles Birk, bulk store and factory

12 - 30 Gilles St North: 1964 David Jones (Adelaide) acquired the site as a storage area.

Today, 12 -24 Gilles Street is an Office Block and Car Park.

Maps:

Documents:

Photographs: