City baths, drinking fountains spring up with reticulated water supply to Adelaide from Thorndon Park in 1860
Top left: A drinking fountain on Rundle Street, Adelaide (top left), outside Holden & Birks, saddlers, in 1872; later J.A. Holden & Co that became Holden Motor Body Builders. Top right: The ornate fountain at Colley Reserve, Glenelg, donated by William Townsend MP. Bottom: The large fountain, financed by A.H. Gouge, in the middle of Currie Street intersection with King William Street, Adelaide, in 1864.
Images courtesy State Library of South Australia
Along with the city baths, 13 drinking fountains were installed around Adelaide city after its first supply of reticulated water arrived from Thorndon Park reservoir in 1860.
The first site recommended for a city drinking fountain was in the middle of Currie Street at the intersection with King William Street. A.H. Gouge, who’d won the contract to build Thorndon Park Reservoir, sponsored the 15-feet-high fountain with a five-feet-square base and made of Macclesfield marble at Kellett’s stoneyard. It also featured three glass panels for advertising that set off worries about following the London trend of products being promoted on pillars around lamp posts.
Although Gouge said proceeds from the advertising would be “handed over to the Society of Arts, to be distributed as prizes to the youth of this colony at their annual exhibitions,” the glass panels didn’t last long. They were shot out by three suspects on horseback and Gouge offered a £10 reward for “conviction of the rascal or rascals” but replaced the panels with marble.
By about 1880, the fountain was moved to Hurtle Square, Adelaide, and with the advent of electric trams in 1908, to the corner of West Terrace and Henley Beach Road. The city council wasn’t pleased when the cost of maintaining the foundations was handed to them by the government in 1894.
Elaborate drinking fountains also became a feature in Adelaide suburbs. These includes the one presented to the mayor and corporation of Glenelg by William Townsend for Colley Reserve in 1877. (Now at Partridge House.) Another four-arch iron-bronze fountain stood eight feet tall on Macclesfield marble and Mintaro slate, in tribute to Port Adelaide mayor John Formby 1870-73, on North Parade (now on St Vincent Street) Port Adelaide.
A fountain on Portrush Road, at the end of High Street, Kensington, was “erected by public subscription in affectionate remembrance of the late John Benson, surgeon, 1877”.
Although there were local foundries, such as Wyatt’s, these three fountains were ordered from Walter Macfarlane & Co's Saracen foundry in Glasgow.
