Locke Street History Bytes — Issue 4
by Bill Manson
Coauthor of Up and Down Locke Street South.
THE STORY OF LOCKE SOUTH AND THE KIRKENDALL NEIGHBOURHOOD
This is the first of three articles briefly outlining the history
of the Kirkendall neighbourhood and its premier street, Locke South.
Early Kirkendall (1840-1870)
Today’s Kirkendall Neighbourhood is bounded by Main Street
West in the north, the Escarpment in the south, Queen Street South
in the east, and the Chedoke Valley in the west. Locke Street South
bisects our unique neighbourhood in a north-south direction, acting
much like a “backbone”.
Our neighbourhood takes its name from a prominent early Hamilton
businessman and landowner, Samuel Kirkendall, who ironically didn’t
own any land in this particular neighbourhood. His holdings lay
to the east of us around Bay Street South in the adjacent Durand
neighbourhood.
In 1840 the western limits of the fledgling Town of Hamilton ran
along Queen Street South. What is now our neighbourhood lay outside
the Town Limits and belonged to Barton Township. Five years later,
when Hamilton was incorporated as a city, the limits expanded westward
to Paradise Road, and the area we call the Kirkendall neighbourhood
became the southwest frontier of the new City. Between Queen Street
South and Paradise Road lay open fields studded with wood lots and
brush. The area was cut by a number of inconvenient swampy gullies
which acted like snaky tentacles reaching out from the Chedoke Valley,
then popularly known as “Beasley’s Hollow”. One
of these gullies reached as far east as Queen Street South along
the line of Robert (today’s Bold Street). It was at this gully
that the track which was to become Locke Street abruptly ended.
There were few rural roads intersecting Lock (Locke) south of King
Street in the 1840’s : George, Main, Wentworth (Maiden Lane/Jackson),
Canada, William (Hunter), and Robert (Bold). Most of these tracks
ended at Garth (Dundurn) in the west because of the “Hollow”.
The exception was King which tumbled helter-skelter down into the
“Hollow” only to struggle up the other side on its way
to the thriving mill towns of Dundas and Ancaster. Thus, our early
neighbourhood was quite isolated from the rest of the City.
By 1853, Hamilton was becoming a bustling “railway city”.
Locke North (for a short time called Railway Street) ran from King
Street to Burlington Bay, the Great Western Rail yards and the Port
of Hamilton. This section of Locke in the adjacent Strathcona neighbourhood
became “home” to several families who earned their livelihood
in the rail yards. Even then, the northern section of Locke was
relatively sparsely populated. People preferred to live closer to
Hamilton’s downtown, not out in the country where deplorable
roads and no public transportation existed.
Meanwhile, Locke South remained an unpopulated dirt track. In the
1850 City Directory there were only five households listed on Locke
South. These families lived in makeshift wooden homes which spread
down the hill between King and Main.
Between 1850 and 1870, despite the growth of the area around Queen
Street to the east and Locke to the north, Locke South and the rest
of the region comprising our neighbourhood were painfully slow to
grow. In1870 there were 10 households listed on Locke South. In
20 years, the population had actually doubled!
This is not to say that the neighbourhood stagnated. New housing
was inching its way across Queen street toward Locke along Jackson,
Hunter and Canada Streets. In 1848 the City proposed to build a
public school in each of the 4 City Wards. In 1853 the Hannah Street
School was erected near the northwest corner of Locke and Hannah
(Charlton) to provide for the educational needs of the few children
in this southwestern end of Saint George’s Ward. By this time,
the gully across Locke had been filled, a culvert installed, and
the street extended south to meet Concession (Aberdeen) at the base
of the Escarpment. For decades, the culvert created a large pool
on Bold east of Locke at Pearl. Local children used the pond as
a swimming hole until the water was finally diverted by sewers early
in the twentieth century.
Other developments in rural Kirkendall were recreational in nature.
For many years the area east of “Beasley’s Hollow “
bounded by today’s Locke, Aberdeen, Dundurn and Herkimer,
was the site of the Beasley Race Course. Originally, this racetrack
was accessible only from Garth Street because Lock dead-ended so
abruptly at Robert (Bold). The track was a popular spot in the summer
and featured both trotting and steeplechase racing. Cricket, too,
was a popular sport here in the 1850’s. The Hamilton Cricket
Club was established on Robert Street near Pearl, and a cricket
ground soon developed in the open fields to the south. These early
playing fields became today’s Hamilton Amateur Athletic Association
Grounds. In 1860 a racquet club was also established near the present
site of the Hamilton Tennis Club.
Nevertheless, in 1870, despite the rapid expansion of the City eastward,
our Kirkendall neighbourhood still remained “rural”
in nature. A pottery, a scattering of homes, and two stables were
the only buildings on Locke Street itself. One of the liveries occupied
a site on the east side of Locke between King and George Streets.
The other stood on the same side between Maiden Lane and Canada
Streets across from the pottery.
Kirkendall was a relative backwater, but this backwater was soon
to develop into a unique and vibrant neighbourhood as new houses
began edging their way westward from Queen, and the new HSR was
opening up the western frontiers of the City. Locke South and Kirkendall
were about to come into their own.
If you have any comments about this column, or interesting stories
about Locke South and the Kirkendall Neighbourhood, I would be most
willing to feature them in future columns. You can contact me at
upanddown@lockestreet.com.
Cheers for now.
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