By Lyn Collingwood
Where are we? Please send your suggestions to history@glebesociety.org.au with ‘mystery photo’ in the subject line.
And the answer is …
Wayne Carveth identified the site as Lanham’s Laundry, which occupied a large block between Forest Street and Lodge Street, Forest Lodge. On the roof are sheets and towels drying by ‘what some regard as the quaint sunshine method’.
Wayne lived in Lodge Street in the early 1970s and recalls that Lanham’s main heating source was a coal-fired boiler, its fuel probably delivered from the coal loader on Blackwattle Bay. ‘Locals would check to see if the chimney was smoking before they did their washing because specks of soot were deposited over everything nearby if it was.’
The view is towards the south-west. The photo is undated, but Wayne thought it was taken in the early 1960s because of scaffolding around the just-discernible elevated Petersham Reservoir, completed in 1965. ‘Other recognisable buildings are the spire of the Hunter Baillie Church in Annandale, the brick Venables building in Camperdown Children’s Hospital, and Rhodes House in Camperdown. Johanna O’Dea Court on Pyrmont Bridge Road was planned in 1961 and the lifts were commissioned in 1965, but you can’t see that building because it is obscured by the slate-roofed house in Forest Street’.
An article on Charles Lanham’s steam laundry was published in Bulletin 3/2021.
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