Marie Slyth and her book A Heritage Walk.

AFTER reading our recent histories of the Pickle District, Voice reader Marie Slyth got in touch to offer her piece ‘Memories of Golding Street, Newcastle Street and Strathcona Street’ from her book “A Heritage Walk”, reminiscing on how the district got its new name.

[KIT] Woods mentions Sandovers — the furniture and hardware factory which occupied a number of lots beside the paddock at the top east end of the corner of Golding Street and Newcastle Street. 

South of the paddock on the east side of Golding Street were four semi-detached houses beside a small vinegar factory up from the corner of Aberdeen Street.

I seem to recall that the factory was formerly the Best West Pickle factory from which the surrounding residents regularly experienced the pungent odours which it frequently emitted. 

Kit’s husband Laurie Woods worked there. 

Tony Waters remembers walking down Golding Street from Florence Steet as a boy to get the vinegar bottle filled up at the Vinegar Factory for his mother and seeing big vats inside.

Across Aberdeen Street was Hamilton Park. 

Laurie Woods’ family — the Goldings – actually had some dairy cattle which grazed in Hamilton Park before it was ever a park. It is believed Golding Street was named after that family.

Mrs Woods owned a house in Golding Street on the west side of the street — again, here were four semi-detached houses on that side of Golding Street. Her house was beside the Old Flour Mill which was on the west corner of Aberdeen and Golding Streets.

When Mrs Woods was first married she and her husband Laurie lived in one of the houses in Newcastle Street opposite the bottom of Strathcona Street. 

They sold their house there and moved into 12 Strathcona Street which they bought in approximately 1956/57, next door to the Slyth family at number 10. She has lived at Strathcona Street for nearly 60 years now.

The Woods’ two boys went to the Newcastle Street Infants School and then later to Leederville State School.

Mrs Woods remembers the Australian family, the Wignalls, who owned the corner shop on the corner of Strathcona and Carr Streets in the 1940s.