Stonyfell is an eastern suburb in the foothills of

Adelaide Adelaide ( ) is the capital city of South Australia, the state's largest city and the fifth-most populous city in Australia. "Adelaide" may refer to either Greater Adelaide (including the Adelaide Hills) or the Adelaide city centre. The dem ...

, Australia, within the council area of the

City of Burnside The City of Burnside is a local government area in the South Australian city of Adelaide stretching from the Adelaide Parklands into the Adelaide foothills with an area of . It was founded in August 1856 as the District Council of Burnside, the ...

. It has parks with walking tracks, and two creeks running through it.

St Peter's Collegiate Girls' School St Peter's Girls' School (commonly known as Saints Girls) is an independent Anglican early learning, primary and secondary day school for girls located in the Adelaide suburb of Stonyfell, in South Australia, Australia. Founded in 1894 and ...

is the only school in Stonyfell. There is a

quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to reduce their envi ...

and a

winery A winery is a building or property that produces wine, or a business involved in the production of wine, such as a wine company. Some wine companies own many wineries. Besides wine making equipment, larger wineries may also feature warehouses, ...

, the present-day remnants of industries dating back to the early days of the

colonisation of South Australia British colonisation of South Australia describes the planning and establishment of the colony of South Australia by the British government, covering the period from 1829, when the idea was raised by the then-imprisoned Edward Gibbon Wakefield ...

History

The area was inhabited by the

Kaurna people The Kaurna people (, ; also Coorna, Kaura, Gaurna and other variations) are a group of Aboriginal people whose traditional lands include the Adelaide Plains of South Australia. They were known as the Adelaide tribe by the early settlers. Kaurn ...

before settlement by Europeans.}

Quarry and winery

James Edlin opened the first

in the

hundred of Adelaide The Hundred of Adelaide is a cadastral hundred in the city of Adelaide spanning all the inner suburbs south of River Torrens. It is one of the eleven hundreds of the County of Adelaide, and was one of the first hundreds to be proclaimed. Like the ...

on Section 1050 in 1837, to supply building stone and

slate Slate is a fine-grained, foliated, homogeneous metamorphic rock derived from an original shale-type sedimentary rock composed of clay or volcanic ash through low-grade regional metamorphism. It is the finest grained foliated metamorphic rock. ...

to local builders. G. Walker Johnson and Arthur Hardy took over the quarry by 1850 and it became known as Beacon Hill Quarry. In 1858, Henry Septimus Clark purchased land near the quarry from Edlin in order to establish a vineyard. His fiancée, Annie Montgomery Martin, dubbed the land "Stonyfell"Preface to 3rd edition
says 1st edition 1989; 2nd edition 2000; Amendment 1 2004; 3rd edition 2015. All sections availabl
on Burnside Council website
an
at Burnside Historical Society
(a "

fell A fell (from Old Norse ''fell'', ''fjall'', "mountain"Falk and Torp (2006:161).) is a high and barren landscape feature, such as a mountain or Moorland, moor-covered hill. The term is most often employed in Fennoscandia, Iceland, the Isle o ...

" being a term used for barren or uncultivated high ground in

Northern England Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North Country, or simply the North, is the northern area of England. It broadly corresponds to the former borders of Angle Northumbria, the Anglo-Scandinavian Kingdom of Jorvik, and the ...

). Clark started planting the original vineyard with assistance from Robert Slape. He built the two-storey wine cellars in the side of the hill, from locally quarried stone. By 1862, had been planted with vines, mostly of the Black Portugal variety.

Joseph Crompton Joseph Crompton (17 January 1840 – 27 April 1901) was a vigneron, manufacturer and exporter who founded several companies in the early days of the colony of South Australia. The eastern foothills suburb of Stonyfell was named after the property ...

assisted in the vineyard, and in 1862 established a partnership with Clark and his brother A. Sidney Clark to conduct the business of

winemaker A winemaker or vintner is a person engaged in winemaking. They are generally employed by wineries or wine companies, where their work includes: *Cooperating with viticulturists *Monitoring the maturity of grapes to ensure their quality and to deter ...

s, trading as Clark and Crompton. The company offices were in the same building as

Francis Clark and Sons Francis Clark and Son was an engineering business in the early days of South Australia, which later became Francis Clark and Sons. Francis Clark (1799–1853), previously a silversmith and magistrate in Birmingham, England, founded Francis Clark ...

, with a warehouse in Blyth Street,

. On Henry's death, Sidney inherited his share of the business, which he sold to Crompton in 1873, though the business name remained "Clark and Crompton" until 1880. Crompton took over the Home Park Winery at

Magill ''Magill'' was an Irish politics and current affairs magazine founded by Vincent Browne and others in 1977. ''Magill'' specialised in investigative articles and colourful reportage by journalists such as Eamonn McCann (who wrote its anonymous ' ...

, at which time Henry Tyler was the winemaker. Crompton married Susan Mary, sister of Clark, in 1866. The house and property, including the vineyards and winery, was taken over by quarry operator Henry Dunstan in 1886 or 1888, after he had acquired nearby properties for quarrying in 1877. In 1892 he separated the quarry and wine business, forming two companies. He employed Henry Martin as his secretary and accountant, with the company first called "H.Dunstan & Co. Winegrowers". Martin's son Ronald joined his father in 1902, trading as H.M. & R.H. Martin. Stonyfell winery B-22705

Stonyfell took over winemaking for Arthur Formby at Langhorne Creek in 1910; in 1955 the storage was moved to Stonyfell and the grapes from the Langhorne Creek property were crushed at Stonyfell. In 1939 the winery purchased a vineyard in Rostrevor and in 1949 another property at Magill. Ronald Martin died in a car accident in 1950; in 1958 Michael Auld was managing director and John Kilgour the winemaker. By this time, the original vineyard no longer existed, but was thought to be where the Stonyfell Quarry offices stood. The great hill on the Stonyfell property was still being quarried by Dunstan's family (as Quarry Industries Ltd.) well over a century after the first rock was quarried. In 1972 the winery was owned by Dalgety Australia, but by 1978 had been taken over by

Seagram The Seagram Company Ltd. (which traded as Seagram's) was a Canadian multinational conglomerate formerly headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. Originally a distiller of Canadian whisky based in Waterloo, Ontario, it was once (in the 1990s) the lar ...

's, at which time the winemaking part of the business at Stonyfell was wound up. The Stonyfell Restaurant opened in 1981, after a -million renovation under V. Deleso, who planned to restart winery operations, using grapes from the remaining of vineyard at Stonyfell, complemented by more from

Barossa Valley The Barossa Valley ( Barossa German: ''Barossa Tal'') is a valley in South Australia located northeast of Adelaide city centre. The valley is formed by the North Para River. It is notable as a major wine-producing region and tourist destinati ...

vineyards. Promotions manager Kevin Parker said that activities in the functions cellar (which had been open since 1975 and seated about 200 people) had continued strongly, although wine-making had declined. The Stonyfell Winery and Vineyards were recommended for the local heritage list in 1986, at which time the premises comprised a restaurant and a small winery. In 2001, Amphora Wine Group bought the premises, reopening the site to the public in 2007. The winery outbuildings, including the "vintage hall", were converted into a function centre for weddings and other events, However the Stonyfell Function Centre closed on 30 June 2014.

Clifton Manor

The Clifton Manor estate was established by a

flour miller A miller is a person who operates a mill, a machine to grind a grain (for example corn or wheat) to make flour. Milling is among the oldest of human occupations. "Miller", "Milne" and other variants are common surnames, as are their equivalents ...

named George Sismey, who built the grand

Gothic Revival Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...

-style mansion in 1852. The home was first leased (in 1872) and later purchased by Nathaniel Knox, who extended and developed the gardens, planting many European trees and shrubs. The estate was subdivided in 1926 and again in 1976, reducing the size to , and since then subdivided further for housing.

Olives

The Stonyfell Olive Company was founded by Joseph Crompton with William Mair and Sidney Clark in 1873, with planting continuing until 1882. By the 1900 had a planted with about 10,000

olive The olive, botanical name ''Olea europaea'', meaning 'European olive' in Latin, is a species of small tree or shrub in the family Oleaceae, found traditionally in the Mediterranean Basin. When in shrub form, it is known as ''Olea europaea'' ...

trees, around Penfold Road. In 1901, the company employed 81 workers. This business became largely owned by the family of Owen Crompton (1875–1923) after his marriage to Sarah Simpson, daughter of A. M. Simpson, who settled on her the whole of his considerable stake in the company. With the inexorable expansion of Adelaide's suburbs, the land was sold to developers. The olive crushing plant was actually in what is now the suburb of Wattle Park, at the western end of Crompton Drive. In August 1932, the Stonyfell Olive Company was the largest producer of olive oil in South Australia, and it entered into an agreement with Bickford's (manufacturers of drinks and cordials) to do the bottling of the oil.

Chiverton

Another grand manor, Chiverton, was built in the

Italianate The Italianate style was a distinct 19th-century phase in the history of Classical architecture. Like Palladianism and Neoclassicism, the Italianate style drew its inspiration from the models and architectural vocabulary of 16th-century Italian R ...

style in 1880 for merchant John Nankivell, but he soon afterwards leased the house to Harry Bickford, the manufacturer of drinks, cordials and syrups. The house was purchased by the Anglican Community of Sisters in 1894, who established a school on the premises. In 1957 the Sisters moved their

North Adelaide North Adelaide is a predominantly residential precinct and suburb of the City of Adelaide in South Australia, situated north of the River Torrens and within the Adelaide Park Lands. History Surveyor-General Colonel William Light of the colo ...

school, St Peter's Girls' School, to the Stonyfell building. The house, stables and coach house were made of stone from the nearby quarry, and are now

heritage-listed This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and man-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In many ...

. The house is used as the school's administration building

Description

Stonyfell Creek arises on the eastern border of Stonyfell, flowing through several suburbs before joining Second Creek. St Peter's Girls' School was founded in 1894 in

and moved to its current site on Hallett Road in Stonyfell in 1957. The cellars of the old Stonyfell winery now house Massey wines, while Stonyfell Wines now uses vineyards at Langhorne Creek. There is still a

operating at Stonyfell , operated by

Boral Boral Limited is Australia's largest building and construction materials supplier, with market-leading positions in quarries, cement, concrete and asphalt. Boral is actively pursuing a decarbonisation strategy through recycling of demolition ma ...

since the 1980s and extracting

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates) ...

and

quartzite Quartzite is a hard, non- foliated metamorphic rock which was originally pure quartz sandstone.Essentials of Geology, 3rd Edition, Stephen Marshak, p 182 Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tect ...

. The Stonyfell Quarry Reserve is on Penfold Road.

Parks and reserves

The Ferguson Conservation Park, adjacent to St Peter's School, was dedicated as a conservation park on 2 June 1977. It is a Category III protected area. In 1980, the conservation park was listed on the former

Register of the National Estate The Register of the National Estate was a heritage register that listed natural and cultural heritage places in Australia that was closed in 2007. Phasing out began in 2003, when the Australian National Heritage List and the Commonwealth Heritag ...

. The Michael Perry Botanic Reserve, comprising a long strip of land along Second Creek, originally part of the Clifton Manor estate, was created in the 1970s. It is named after Michael Perry, who was a councillor, alderman and Mayor of Burnside between 1958 and 1983. A Vegetation Management Plan for the reserve was published by the council in 2012, which recommended a return to the native vegetation of the area. Restoration work has been undertaken by the council and

biodiversity Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...

contractors since then. Part of the

revegetation Revegetation is the process of replanting and rebuilding the soil of disturbed land. This may be a natural process produced by plant colonization and succession, manmade rewilding projects, accelerated process designed to repair damage to a land ...

project was undertaken by a collaboration involving Burnside Council and Boral, as a corporate partner of

Conservation Volunteers Australia Conservation Volunteers Australia is an Australian Non-profit, not-for-profit conservation organisation that attracts and co-ordinates Volunteering, volunteers for environmental restoration projects. History The organisation was founded in ...

(CVA), and 17 volunteers. More than 500 native seedlings were planted, and a new walking track was constructed in 2017. In 2019, the ''Michael Perry Reserve Historic Garden Adaptation Plan'' was developed by council, "to guide the restoration of the historic garden areas of the reserve".