Lockley Family

The Lockley family’s history illuminates life in Pyrmont and many other societies. John Lockley was born in Wales in 1838, worked on the goldfields and arrived in Sydney as a carpenter. In 1862 he married Jane Gilmour from Scotland who worked in the shops they owned, and produced ten children. John was a collier (selling coal for domestic fuel) and ironmonger in Surry Hills, then Glebe and from 1871 Pyrmont. Their addresses in the 1880s include 88 Harris Street and (in 1890) 81 John Street. In the early 1900s he lived in Stanmore. He died in 1913.

Ten children grew up at Pyrmont. The first four attended ‘an old shack of a school in Mount Street’, but moved in about 1877 to Murray Street School.

Ted Lockley was a talented carpenter and taught at Sydney Technical College. Among other projects, he worked on the church now occupied by the Maybanke Kindergarten.

John Gilmour Lockley was born in 1865 and died in 1937. He wrote for the Herald on gardening and conservation, often under the pen-name Bluegum, and helped to get some of Henry Lawson’s work published.

Agnes, born 1867 at Glebe, was the third child.

Arthur Watkins Lockley, apprenticed at Morts Dock, worked at CSR Pyrmont between the wars, and lived at Pyrmont before moving to Brisbane.

William was born in 1873. He had a wood and coal yard at the bottom of Bathurst Street (Lockley Brothers) around 1900 and on his own in the 1920s.

Robert (Bob) was born in the John Street house in 1878. He served an engineering apprenticeship with CSR and worked as a marine engineer. He was involved in tin dredges in Queensland before returning to CSR, in their drawing office. He became Engineer-in-Charge of the Pyrmont workshops. He retired in 1938 and bought a Ford V8 which is still in family ownership at Pyrmont. During the war he returned to work, making artillery shells.

His son Noel also worked for CSR, both at Pyrmont and in Fiji (1932-34), as an electrician. Other members of the extended family worked for CSR.