At first glance I agree with the previous postings... the geography looks wrong. However, the building on the far right will be Maitland Hospital. If we assume the patterns are gardens, then these have since been removed and the slope cut into for another set of buildings and the carpark. more buildings have since been added to the left and the right. At the end of the Long Bridge is the house called "Roads End". It looks similar in the sketch to the current building. To the left of this, the land is falling. First glance sees this as rising but in fact the rising land is the hill behind. This overlook the low part of Telarah to the hill to the west of Farley (then called Parsons Hill). To the left of Roads End, the land falls away as it currently does at the beginning of Regent St. The question remains as to the identity of the large building with the chimney. It may simply have been one of the two story residences in Regent St, although it looks like the chimney arises from the ground, suggesting a factory. According to the 1912 parish map, the east of Regent St up to the railway was still in three titles. The first of these was the portion 139, originally owned by John Thompson and appears to have been called "Mt Pleasant" (yes, I know the current Mt Pleasant is further over). the only part of his 36acre property suitable for building would have been adjoining Regent St. Did he build a large home? The hut in the foreground looks interesting. It has a tiny room and a fireplace/chimney. I wonder if it originally had been for a toll collector. There was toll over Wallis Creek, the Hunter River at Lorn, the Great North Rd near Rutherford. Was there one one the Long Bridge initially? John Goswell At 11:13 AM 4/10/2009, you wrote: >Hello All. >I am hoping that listers who are very familiar with West Maitland might be >able to help me out with more details about the photograph of the Long >Bridge, in the link below -- which is to a photo of the sketch, in the >National Library of Australia -- on its web-site.

Hello John. Once more I thank YOU for your always-so-valuable input. Just to reply to a couple of your points which I have left in the note below. Yes, John THOMPSON gave the name "Mount Pleasant" to his grant there. Upon my visit to Maitland, after I had obtained the land grant details, I too was struck by the fact that Mount Pleasant Street was nowhere near the grant. Accordingly, I don't think that there is any real connection between the two names. So far I have never been able to find out what might have impelled John THOMPSON to call his grant "Mount Pleasant". John, in answer to your question about the house which he built upon the land, as far as I know, he didn't build anything there himself. Rather, after the governor had caused the land grants to be issued to the Veterans; he also provided them with a hut, on their property. From a sketched outline which I saw once at NSW State Records, my belief is that this hut was built for him on the Thompson's Lane /Bull Street portion of his grant. And I was thrilled to have the wonderful Singleton historian Ian WEBB point out to me a few years back, that in fact Thompson's future son-in-law Edward HAWKINS was instructed to have his Newcastle Bridge Party take some time out from building the Long Bridge, to construct those huts. As HAWKINS had been described as a "carpenter" or "carpenter's apprentice" in his convict documentation, it would appear that he may have had the knowledge to supervise this construction. (Ian WEBB has written a wonderful article about Edward HAWKINS in "The Pick of the Great North Road": ... the Journal of the Convict Trail Project; volume 1, 2003, pages 3 to 9. And for anyone interested in how convict road gangs worked, he has written a wonderful, small monograph for the same Project, titled "Convict Road Gangs 1826-1836". Two other histories which he has written are to do with the building of the Great North Road: "Blood Sweat and Irons"; and Road's End. These last two are published by the Dharug & Lower Hawkesbury Historical Society.) John: Regarding tolls over the Long Bridge. Now, here my memory becomes faulty. When I first read Reverend W. Allan WOOD's wonderful "Dawn in the Valley", I thought that he described the bridge as having been built by private contractors who then had the right to charge a toll; but that was before I had been pointed towards the paperwork for its construction by the Newcastle Bridge Party. Therefore, I now think that it was probably the Wallis Creek Bridge which he mentioned in that segment (and I had misunderstood). And I was not aware that there was actually a toll on the Great North Road at any time. So thank you again for that information. Regards: Ray ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Goswell" <[email protected]> At the end of the Long Bridge is the house called "Roads End". It looks similar in the sketch to the current building. ... According to the 1912 parish map, the east of Regent St up to the railway was still in three titles. The first of these was the portion 139, originally owned by John Thompson and appears to have been called "Mt Pleasant" (yes, I know the current Mt Pleasant is further > over). the only part of his 36acre property suitable for building would > have been adjoining Regent St. Did he build a large home? The hut in the foreground looks interesting. It has a tiny room and a fireplace/chimney. I wonder if it originally had been for a toll collector. There was toll over Wallis Creek, the Hunter River at Lorn, the Great North Rd near Rutherford. Was there one one the Long Bridge initially? ...