Carrington Hotel, Bourke Street, Surry Hills

G’day, Charles Touma here, and today I’m on Bourke Street in the fantastic suburb of Surry Hills to talk about one of the street’s many iconic buildings. The Carrington Hotel was built in 1877 by an Irish immigrant, Thomas Whitty. At the time, Sydney’s population was exploding from just 40,000 in 1851 to almost 500,000 in 1901 as commerce and exports started to grow, particularly gold, wool, meat, and minerals. This gave entrepreneurs like Thomas Whitty a great opportunity to build a strong business. The business was originally called the Criterion Hotel. Whitty was living on Marshall Street in Surry Hills when he bought a large corner block of land on Bourke and Arthur Streets. After the pub was constructed, he had some spare land left over, so built a shop next to the pub that he leased to a boot maker. In 1882, professional wrestling matches were staged in the yard at the back of the hotel. Initially, prizes varied between 10 pounds and 30 pounds, and the venue hosted the New South Wales Wrestling Championship.

In 1884, Patrick Knowles took over the pub from Whitty and re-named it the Athboy Hotel. However, it only lasted about a year, until Nat Thompson, who played cricket for Australia, took over and re-named it the Thompson Family Hotel. Two years later, the Carrington Athletic Grounds opened across the road on a vacant block between Bourke and Dowling Streets. In those days there was plenty of athletic competition, and in fact, various sprint distances were used, as well as handicapping. Prize money for the races grew and a betting market developed. The betting side caused all sorts of trickery. Some athletes competed under false names, some athletes hid past performances to get better handicaps, and corrupt officials were sometimes believed to take bribes. The opening of the Carrington Athletic Grounds brought a huge and consistent crowd that would drink at the hotel during, before, and after the events. There would often be a hot air balloon taking off from the Grounds as crowd entertainment.

In 1904, the Athletic Ground was subdivided for residential and commercial use, which led to terraces being built along the south side of Arthur Street. In 1886, the hotel was renamed the Carrington Grounds Hotel. Since those days, in the 1980s drag shows became common at the hotel after a two-story extension was added into the rear yard and an extra bar called Annie’s was established. The Carrington Hotel goes back longer than virtually any other building in Surry Hills, and it’s such a true piece of the Surry Hills local history. Now I’ve been selling on Bourke Street and Surry Hills for almost 20 years. One of my more recent sales was number 720, down the Redfern end, which we sold last year for $2,000,000. We’ve also got 477 Riley Street in Surry Hills hitting the market shortly, along with 118 Reservoir in Surry Hills. I hope you found this quick dip into the local iconic building, the Carrington, interesting. Once again, I’m Charles Touma, my office on Thurlow Street is always open to having a chat.