Hagley

Hagley is a rural locality and town in the local government area of Meander Valley in the Launceston region of Tasmania.

Hagley is a rural locality and town in the local government area of Meander Valley in the Launceston region of Tasmania. The locality is about 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) north-east of the town of Westbury. The 2016 census has a population of 335 for the state suburb of Hagley.The area was used by the Port Dalrymple—an early name for George Town in Northern Tasmania—Aboriginal Tasmanians until they were driven from their lands by European settlement. Land grants from the 1820s, to William Thomas Lyttleton, William Bryan and Sir Richard Dry, led to the first buildings, and later gazetting of the town in April 1866. Lyttleton was associated with Hagley Hall in England; his naming of his estate led to the town's name, and he is believed to have bequeathed the town's land. Hagley is an agricultural centre sited on largely alluvial soil near the Meander River. As of 2011, the town had a population of 330, most of whom were Australian born. Hagley is remembered as the first site of coursing in Tasmania, which started at Quamby Estate in 1878. The town has had cricket and Australian rules football teams, but it no longer fields teams.

There are four church buildings in Hagley. A Presbyterian church opened in 1879; it is now closed and in private hands. The Uniting Church building is a Modernist design built in 1957; it sits next to a wooden Methodist chapel built in 1859. St Mary's Anglican Church is a bluestone Gothic Revival building that opened for services in 1862. The lands and a significant part of the church's funds were donated by Sir Richard Dry. Dry is buried at the church and the church's tower is dedicated to his wife. Hagley Farm Primary School is the oldest agricultural school in Australia. It began as the Hagley State School in 1865 and became an area school for the surrounding districts in 1936. The school has a 64-hectare (160-acre) farm and agriculture features strongly in its curriculum.

The town has some 19th-century buildings listed on both the Register of the National Estate and the Tasmanian Heritage Register. Hagley Mill is noted as possibly the only extant mill in Australia that was horse-driven. Quamby Estate, the former estate of Sir Richard Dry, is run as a tourist attraction and has a 9-hole golf course. Hagley's reticulated water supply is sourced from a filtration and treatment plant at nearby Westbury. This plant opened in 2013; from 1902 until then the town had received untreated water. From 1871 the town was serviced by passenger rail, but this ceased prior to 1978. Hagley was originally on the main road from Launceston to Deloraine, but was bypassed in 2001 when the Hagley section of the Bass Highway was completed.

Prior to the European settlement of what was then Van Diemen's Land, the Hagley area was a camping ground for the Port Dalrymple aboriginal tribe, the area's native people; Port Dalrymple was an early name for George Town. It is uncertain if this tribe was a separate group from the aborigines near Port Sorell and the Mersey River. The Port Dalrymple tribe ventured as far as Westbury, but mainly lived and hunted nearer the Tamar River, and stone implements have been found in the Hagley area. Encounters with the natives and reports of Europeans shooting them feature in the area's history and mythology. Stephen Dry, cousin to Sir Richard Dry, was reportedly speared by an aboriginal on a hill near Hagley. On a property formerly known as Strath is a water hole named "No, No's Hole". There is a legend that

... a mob of blacks who had committed a murder on the property sought refuge there when an avenging party of whites were on their heels. They cried 'No, No,' and kept diving under the water for safety, but were all shot.

By 1830, aborigines were no longer seen in the area; they had been driven from their traditional areas by the new settlers. In October that year detachments of "The Black Line" reached nearby Westbury. This was an effort to clear Van Diemen's land of the last of the natives.William Thomas Lyttleton, William Bryan and Sir Richard Dry were all important figures in the early days of the town. These three owned most of the land of what is now the town and district of Hagley during the 1820s.Sir Richard Dry's father came to Tasmania as an "Irish Exile" with Lt Governor Colonel William Patterson, founder of Launceston. He spent 13 years as Government Storekeeper at Port Dalrymple. As recognition of his work, on retirement in 1819 he was granted 500 acres (200 ha) of land. Governor Lachlan Macquarie granted him the land that marked the foundation of settlement at Hagley. When the elder Dry died, Sir Richard inherited this and other lands in Tasmania totaling over 30,000 acres (120 km2). Quamby Estate, a property owned by Sir Richard until his death, is east of the town. Quamby is supposedly an aboriginal word - although its meaning is not certain. William Thomas Lyttleton was born in 1786 in England; he was a distant connection to those owning Hagley Hall in Worcestershire, England.He spent some years in the army, moving to Van Diemen's Land in 1822 with his family, after he retired. He was initially granted 560 acres (230 ha) near Westbury, adjacent the land owned by Richard Dry, and 800 near Meander. He called the grant near Westbury 'Hagley', in honour of the Town, Parish or Hall in England. Lyttleton built a homestead on the Hagley property in 1829, though most or all of this original building has been since demolished. He lived in the Hagley area for 14 years, before returning to England. William Bryan, builder of the first flour mill at Carrick, was granted 1,077 acres (436 ha) at Hagley in March 1825. Bryan also had holdings in Carrick and Whitemore totaling 11,000 acres (4,500 ha).Lyttleton died in England in 1839. In disposing his estate, the estate's trustee put all of the lands up for sale. Lyttleton is believed to have bequeathed the village area to the Hagley residents. The block of land containing the Lyttleton homestead was sold in 1843 to a Dr James Richardson, and the remainder of the land was sold to others in 1848.

The first building in the town was a brick church built on the side of the road from Launceston to Westbury. This road was known as the "Westbury Road", now called the Meander Valley Highway.The church was built for Church of England services and opened in 1848. It was built at the behest of Sir Richard Dry and Archdeacon R. R. Davies, the latter trustee of the Lyttleton estate, on part of the former estate. The land was a gift to the Church of England by Davies in his capacity as a trustee. By 1849, the town's buildings were the Hagley Church of England, an inn—built and run by the East Family opposite the church—and three paling-clad cottages occupied by separate families. At this time the Westbury Road was often a muddy quagmire and land, especially near Quamby bend, that is now cleared was dense forest.The Hagley Inn was opened c.1850, it was first called "The Country Inn", by James East, who had run the earlier inn in Hagley. Over time the inn has been extensively altered and it closed as a hotel in the late 1980s. In 1850 Hagley's buildings comprised ... the church, the Hagley Inn, a blacksmith's shop, a cottage occupied by Mr. Fryett, and one occupied by F.J.Flight, who died recently at Forth; also one built, I think, by a Mr. Lyons.

Hagley's population increased significantly during the 1850s as people moved both to the village, and to farming properties in the district. A doctor was practicing in the area by 1854, and in 1855 a school opened in the Church of England; paid for with funds raised by local residents. That year a postal service began in Hagley. David Parry was appointed postmaster on 1 July 1855, probably operating an unofficial post office from the Hagley Inn. A post office officially opened on 10 June 1865, in a building that was demolished in 1970. This building also had a store called the "six day store" run by the postmaster and his wife. The town gained a second hotel in 1857 with Carmody's Meander Hotel, though this remained open for only a few years.In 1857 also the town's first community organisation was formed, the Hagley Ploughing Association, and regular ploughing matches began. A second church was built, a Methodist Chapel on the Westbury road, in 1859.Mrs Bryan and her husband were concerned about the lack of education in the area. In the early 1860s they provided two acres of land at nearby Glenore, and built a brick school and school house. The Glenore school was finished in 1862, and it was accompanied by a 260-acre (110 ha) farm whose rent was to pay for a teacher and building upkeep. A new church, for the Church of England, was built just outside Hagley. St Mary's Church of Hagley and Quamby was completed and opened in 1862. The first church continued in use as a school until 1865. In the prior year construction had begun on a public school, a two-room building with an adjacent 8-room teacher's residence; the school opened in 1865. Hagley was gazetted as a town in April 1866. By that time it had a number of stores, a blacksmith, a boot maker, a saddler, a wheelwright, two churches, two schools, two hotels, a resident seamstress and a midwife. By the late 1870s the town had gained, in addition to houses, a police station, gaol, engineering works, one steam mill run by the Noake Family and another at nearby Quamby. A rail line opened, from Launceston to Westbury, in 1871, though its station was 2 miles (3.2 km) from Hagley. In the 1880s a siding was added at Hoggs Lane, and a passenger platform at the siding in 1910. Using the new rail line, by the 1880s the post office was receiving four deliveries each weekday and two on Saturday.Electricity reached Hagley in 1928, supplied by the Tasmanian Hydro-Electric Commission. Prior to this—the year is unknown—there was some street lighting in the form of four dim Kerosine lamps set on 10-foot (3 m) posts. These lights were manually lit and extinguished daily. In 1941 the Hagley Flax Mill began operating to process locally grown flax. This mill was on the Meander River's bank, three miles from the centre of Hagley.Hagley was gazetted as a locality in 1968.