Ditchingham Farm Historic Site 1840s

Ditchingham Farm Historic Site 1840s
An early farm on the east bank of the Brunswick River in Australind was named Ditchingham Farm by the Bedingfield family after the village they came from in England.

Thomas Forrester Bedingfeld arrived on the Simon Taylor in 1842 and married Elizabeth Boys from Perth. They took up land on the border of the Australind Settlement and the Brunswick River.

Medically trained but unqualified, Bedingfield succeeded Dr Ferguson as the Western Australia Land Company Surgeon.

In Bedingfeld’s absence, William J. Wood, who married Sarah Hurst, worked the property and raised two children.

Unhappy with his first land holdings, pioneer settler James Piggott, who had arrived on the Trusty in 1844, became a tenant, then owner of Ditchingham Farm and used the banks of the Brunswick River to graze goats. In 1852, he married Johanna Simmons and raised three children, William, Elizabeth and Joseph.

Later, the Woodley family managed and lived at Ditchingham Farm. Charles Woodley was a pardoned convict. He arrived in 1851 on the ship Pyrenees as Convict Number 469. Charles was granted a conditional pardon in 1853. Charles married Emma Gardiner, who came to Australind on the Trusty with her family as an 8-year-old. They had 11 children.

In 1926, a storm sadly destroyed much of the homestead and surrounding trees.

By 1938, D.C. Clifton held Ditchingham Farm and sold it to Campbell Keith Pascoe. Frederick William Howson, a butcher, took over in 1945 and set up a small abattoir there.

The Australind by-pass construction split the property. The homestead once stood where the Leschenault Leisure Centre is located and the river flats that once grazed Ditchingham’s dairy cattle are now the suburb of Kingston.

 

Ditchingham Farm Historic Site

Ditchingham Park

Old Ditchingham Farm Trail

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