A MAN who attempted to revolutionised brickmaking in NSW will have a lane named after him.

Located on the rear of the properties of 90 to 100 Station St, Marrickville Council has decided to name it Gentle Lane, after Josiah Gentle, who was the developer of a majority of the properties adjoining this laneway and was also a brick maker in Newtown and Waterloo.

Leesha Payor, secretary of the NSW Heritage Network, said in a letter to council it supported the naming of Gentle Lane, particularly as it did not know of any wealthy brickmaker in 19th century NSW.

media_camera Historical picture of the Bedford Brickworks in St Peters.

Mr Gentle also aimed to eliminate the abusive conditions involving women and children labouring in the brickmaking industry, Ms Payor said.

“This was done by introducing steam powered machinery for dry-press brickmaking, requiring vastly improved kilns firing at a higher temperature, such as the Hoffmann Kiln, which fired greater quantities of bricks continuously,” she said.

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Mr Gentle remained devoted to the community’s welfare after the unforeseen collapse of the building industry in 1891, due to the severe, wide-reaching economic depression created by a Parliamentary Act, Ms Payor said.

“This decimated the brickmaking industry and the local populace that heavily relied on it. In a unique response, Gentle directed his capital to sustain his community, in an age of no government or other assistance to alleviate poverty,” she said.

media_camera The "Towers" circa. 1915 and Josiah Gentle media_camera Historical pictures of the Bedford Brickworks in St Peters.

He built his first home, “The Towers”, 15 Dickson Street, Newtown, in 1895; the last building of the Victorian-era scale of development in Newtown.

“Gentle’s focus was then to transition the community to form self sufficiency in trade, by providing the initial means, building his extent of shops along King Street and ‘affordable housing’,” Ms Payor said.

THE WEALTH OF GENTLE

■ The wealth of Josiah Gentle, published in the newspapers upon his death in 1912, was derived from the probate valuation of his entire brickworks, brickfields and many unfinished houses and shops being built throughout Newtown

■ But within twenty years, the Great Depression had reduced the value of the Bedford Brickworks for it to be sold in its entirety to Austral Bricks for the same price that it cost Josiah Gentle to build the largest chimney stack in the 1800s

■ The Bedford Brickworks’ remnant structures are at the corner of Sydney Park and date from the 1870s

■ Mr Gentle built and owned the five houses which now back onto the unnamed laneway and his initials are inscribed on the façade on 417a King Street, which is about the centre home in the five.