A2ZACT With Brent Ford – Charnwood

Charnwood has a bit of a reputation as a rough suburb, also for great hot chicken and chips.

Charnwood is named after the former homestead on which Henry Hall obtained a grant of 3,492 acres of land which he named ‘Charnwood’, after the Forest of Charnwood in England. Regal Takeaway does the best chicken and scallops in Canberra. Spicy run in 33 degrees. #A2ZACT pic.twitter.com/MF0gxrDz5o

— Brent Ford (@BrentFord26) January 23, 2021

The original Charnwood Homestead takes its name from Charnwood Forest in England. Looking at this video I don’t see too much similarity. It seems this was the family area of Henry Hall.

There is some signage in the area where the Charnwood property was, but it seems the buildings were demolished during the 1970s. I covered some of this area in a walk through Dunlop Grasslands. The homestead site was within the suburb of Fraser, but the property expanded basically from Mt Rogers to Wallaroo. It was eventually snapped up by Mr Crace, who will be hearing about in the coming suburbs.

Charnwood has one of the oldest skateparks in Canberra, constructed in 1978. Here’s something of me there a little more recently. Apparently when built, some of the local people threatened to sit on the excavators so that they would have to stop work. The youngsters fought back and eventually the park was built.

Here’s some action from the “Charny Karny” from back in 2015.

You can see this video made by a local radio station about some of the charms of the area, in a battle of Charnwood vs Kambah. The Feel The Power blog visit made consideration to some of the stereotypes. Recent stats showed it to be a very caring suburb. Elements of Charnwood were included in an exhibition called This is Suburbia.

As mentioned in the tweet, the Regal takeaway is renowned for its chicken and chips. The streets of Charnwood were designed under the Radburn model, encouraging open backyards along pathways, but most people have built a fence to block that off. You can still travel through most of the suburb with only a limited amount of crossing roads.

The streets are named after various explorers and pioneers, with Lhotsky Street being one of the main ones, though his personal story seems to have come to a tragic end.

Tags: A2ZACT, Canberra, running