Richard Hamilton wine dynasty begins in 1840 on vineyards in the future southwest suburbs of Adelaide
Hamilton wine family members, in about 1908, entering the third and fourth generation. From left: Charlie, Jack, George, Walter, Frank.
Image courtesy Richard Hamilton Wines.
Richard Hamilton, a tailor in Dover, Kent, sold property on Long Island, New York, in 1837 to buy an 80-acre section in Glenelg, South Australia, and that year emigrated with his wife and their seven children on the Katherine Stewart Forbes for Adelaide.
By 1840, his Ewell Farm (named after Ewell Surrey) was operating with a vineyard of five acres, planted with cuttings bought en route in South Africa. In 1841 the vineyard produced South Australia's first commercial wine.
Son Henry Hamilton stayed in England at Christ’s Hospital bluecoat school before arriving in Adelaide in 1841 and working for two years on a sheep station near Burra. He bought an Oaklands property where he settled next his father's. He inherited his father's Glenelg property but later sold it.
Ill in his later years, Henry Hamilton handed over Ewell Vineyard in 1890 to his son F. E. “Frank” Hamilton, a longtime Marion Council member. Ewell Vineyards at this time covered 156 acres (with groves of almonds and other fruit). Frank Hamilton married Violet a granddaughter of Dr George Hamilton Ayliffe. Their eldest son (Frank) Eric Hamilton took over management, with another son Sydney as winemaker. They rebuilt the winery with a distillery and the company restructured as Hamilton's Ewell Vineyards in 1934.
The Hamiltons remain an original Australian winemaking families into the 21st Century taking bold new directions adapting to change including the dwindling of their original vineyard.
From the 1950s, with the spread of southwest suburban Adelaide, the company sold large swathes of land, much to the South Australian Housing Trust for “austerity housing”. In 1968, 30 acres was compulsorily bought to create Glengowrie High School (now part of Hamilton Secondary College). Another 15 acres was lost in 1975 for the Metropolitan Tramways Trustbus depot. The Laffer's Triangle section the Hamiltons bought from the Laffer family was leased to Flinders University, then sold to the South Australian government and now includes Sturt police station.
By the turn of the 21st Century, only tiny patches of vines remained on Oaklands Road, maintained by Marion Council, and Laffers Triangle, for 20 years overrun with wild olive trees, became the site for the Darlington roads upgrade.