Dunheved

In 1806 Governor Philip Gidley King made several large land grants totalling 3780 acres to his son and three daughters, and the following year Governor William Bligh granted an additional 790 acres to Anna Josepha King, the ex-governor's wife.The latter property was named Thanks but the Kings returned to England soon after and Philip Gidley King died there in 1808. Meanwhile the estate was managed by Rowland Hassall with William Hayes as overseer. While Phillip Parker King - the ex-governor's - son returned to Australia with his wife and the former Harriet Lethbridge - in 1817, he was more involved with naval matters than the land at this time. It wasn't until his mother returned to Australia in 1832 that the property was renamed Dunhaved - which means ﾑhill-head' - after the 13th century keep of the old castle in Launceston Cornwall, the town of her late husband's birth. Dunhaved House was built on the property by Phillip Parker King. The estate of Dunhaved was one of the largest in the Colony. Large numbers of cattle, sheep, pigs, and horses were bred here; grain was grown; and orchards developed. The cattle herd in particular was highly praised, and between 80 and 100 servants were employed to work the place. When the property was sold in 1904 and it became a suburb, the name began to change, first of all to Dunheaved and in the 1950s to Dunheved, the name it now bears.Sadly this once great property is no longer in existence. The house was demolished and a large munitions factory was built on the bulk of the estate in 1942, together with a railway station called Dunheved, to transport all the workers involved at the site. After the Second World War, there was considerable expansion. The area immediately to the south of Dunhaved House became mainly an industrial sub-division and housing estate. The western end, a heavily wooded area, later became the suburb of Kingswood, and the remaining open grasslands disappeared under housing estates in the rapid expansion of the 1960s and 1970s.