Windback Wednesday - Leabrook

The first three houses of the suburb we recognise today as Leabrook were located along Second Creek, which flows almost diagonally through the suburb. The creek was the dividing line between what was known as Upper Kensington (northern area) and Knightsbridge (southern area).

The Knightsbridge area was once a dairy farm known as ‘Thornington’, operated by John Hunt and family from the 1840s. The Hunts’ small cottage was by Second Creek, where it crosses the Statenborough Street of today.

‘The Wattles’ was an early house built in Upper Kensington by Charles Perry and was in the north-west quarter of the site. Later in the 1850s the accountant to the South Australian Company, Alfred Watts, purchased the house and renamed it ‘Leabrook’ – from which the suburb later gained its name.

In 1881 Thomas Cooper established a brewery on Statenborough Street in Upper Kensington. He put down two wells for good quality brewing water. The Coopers brewery was the first in the colony to make bottled beer. It operated in Leabrook until 2001.

The Kaurna people, the Traditional Owners of the Adelaide Plains, were the first to live in this area and have cared for this land for thousands of years.

Photo: Coopers Bottling Hall in the 1930s. Burnside Local History Collection