Beauchamp Hotel - Sydney - 1867
Cnr Oxford St & South Dowling St, Darlinghurst.
This is a handsome redbrick Victorian corner pub was originally the Ice Hotel - at a time when huge blocks of ice taken from American lakes were shipped to Australia to provide cooling for food preservation. It seems bizarre that such an industry existed, transporting ever-dwindling ice blocks across the world without refrigeration or air-conditioning. To preserve the ice, it was packed in sawdust for insulation but it is reckoned that only 40% of the ice arrived at its destination intact.
The hotel was renamed the Beauchamp in 1900 after the then Governor of NSW, William Lygon, the 7th Earl of Beauchamp (pronounced 'Beecham' in the English way). Beauchamp was later revealed to be a homosexual - a crime at the time - and upon reflection, his written enthusiasm for the physical qualities of Sydney lifesavers and his wild parties clearly gave it away before he was outed. After some years derelict, the pub is now revamped, trendy and definitely not old school. In a perhaps fitting twist, it is now popular amongst the very people that Beauchamp would have once admired and loved.
Beauchamp Hotel - Sydney - 1867
Cnr Oxford St & South Dowling St, Darlinghurst.
This is a handsome redbrick Victorian corner pub was originally the Ice Hotel - at a time when huge blocks of ice taken from American lakes were shipped to Australia to provide cooling for food preservation. It seems bizarre that such an industry existed, transporting ever-dwindling ice blocks across the world without refrigeration or air-conditioning. To preserve the ice, it was packed in sawdust for insulation but it is reckoned that only 40% of the ice arrived at its destination intact.
The hotel was renamed the Beauchamp in 1900 after the then Governor of NSW, William Lygon, the 7th Earl of Beauchamp (pronounced 'Beecham' in the English way). Beauchamp was later revealed to be a homosexual - a crime at the time - and upon reflection, his written enthusiasm for the physical qualities of Sydney lifesavers and his wild parties clearly gave it away before he was outed. After some years derelict, the pub is now revamped, trendy and definitely not old school. In a perhaps fitting twist, it is now popular amongst the very people that Beauchamp would have once admired and loved.