SYDNEY once had a booming suburb with thriving industrial business, but it is now nothing but a lost piece of history.

It was called Collingwood but was swallowed by Liverpool and now no longer exists.

The suburb was created by a 19th Century entrepreneur named James Atkinson. He had an estate about a mile down the road from Liverpool in Sydney’s south west.

It was the 1850s and he had grand plans for what the suburb would be. He built his own rail hub to transfer meat from his pig farm to the middle of Sydney and had plans to build a school.

There were residences that looked like gingerbread houses lined up near where the Hume Highway is now, and a Collingwood service station for the locals, which has since been rebranded as Shell. Collingwood Street ran through the middle of the town, and crossed with Atkinson Street, which the entrepreneur named after himself.

Atkinson owned a piggery with 500 pigs, an orchard, and an estate that was next to the Georges River.

In 1868 a woolwash operation was built before the opening of the largest paper mill in Australia, originally known as the Collingwood Paper Works.

There were three pubs opened in Collingwood but only one still stands today and still holds its original name, Collingwood Hotel.

President of the City of Liverpool and District Historical Society, Glen op den Brouw, said in Collingwood there were general stores, a blacksmith and a number of other shops. There was also a racecourse that held weekly racing meets.

It even hosted Sydney’s first Easter show in the late 1850s, according to Mr op den Brouw.

He grew up in Collingwood but never knew of its history. There is just one woman in her 90s who still lives there, and still knows it as Collingwood.

Collingwood had been building up for just over a decade before Atkinson, also a former member of state parliament, went broke.

“At the time, in the mid 1800s, it was certainly a boom place for industrialisation in the Liverpool area,” Mr op den Brouw said.

“Once James Atkinson left, the drive and impetus fell away. But it was still a strong industrial area and subsequently the paper mill was built.”

After Atkinson left the town the locals attempted to keep it going and a gas works was opened in the 1890s, bringing light to Liverpool and Collingwood.

Mr op den Brouw said people ended up complaining about Collingwood’s industrialisation, with odours and pollution getting out of control.

All industrial companies ended up closing in the early 1900s, except for a woollen mill, which didn’t shut down until 1975.

As Liverpool expanded and engulfed Collingwood, people began to forget about the once booming town.

Even the row of the gingerbread houses were demolished.

The remains of the houses are still in Liverpool, but were used for road fill.

Mr op den Brouw said Atkinson had been forgotten as quick as Collingwood.

He searched for his headstone and found it shattered at Rookwood Cemetery.

“I’d love to see his headstone restored, he tried and he was one of the great entrepreneurs of the 1850s and was part of parliament,” he said.

Mr op den Brouw said not many knew about Collingwood’s past and it only took a generation to forget.

“Collingwood is a piece of lost history,” he said.