Join us for our AGM in The Hall, Ngutungka Henley and enjoy a presentation by historian Patricia Sumerling about her newly released book, Hotels of Adelaide: An Illustrated History, with a focus on the pubs of Henley and Grange.
While pubs exist primarily to sell alcohol, it’s where friends meet and enjoy the entertainment on offer, whether planned or unexpected. Formed as ‘public houses’ to serve mainly workers, each has their own story which Patricia Sumerling teases out from the nearly 200 hotels that were licensed since 1837, leaving 47 trading in 2022.
Often in bluestone, sandstone or brick, and located on main street corners, some of Adelaide’s hotels were adorned in iron-laced balconies and verandahs, all of which create a distinctive visual charm in the streetscapes. Endless shaggy dog tales and improbable myths, involving owners, publicans and patrons, linger within these architectural gems.
Biography
Patricia Sumerling is an Adelaide-based professional historian who believes some of the unresolved tales she comes across in her work are ripe for unravelling and for imaginative reconstruction as distinctively South Australian stories.
Patricia is a co-author of the landmark publication Heritage of the City of Adelaide: An illustrated guide (1990) and the author of The Adelaide Park Lands: A social history (2011). She is author of Elephants and Egotists: In search of Samorn of the Adelaide Zoo (2016) and debuted as a novelist in 2010 with the historical crime mystery The Noon Lady of Towitta. Patricia Sumerling’s first book about hotels, published in 1998, was Down at the Local: The history of hotels in Kensington, Norwood and Kent Town.