Gretna, Tasmania



A tiny village on the Lyell Highway above the River Derwent, Gretna was formerly known as Stony Hut Plains, though the Gretna post office was known as Macquarie Plains for many years. The River Derwent forms the south-western and part of the southern boundaries of the locality. The A10 route (Lyell Highway) passes through from south to north-west, and two minor numbered routes branch from it.



The name Gretna was adopted in the early 20th century. The origin of this name comes from a local farm called ‘Gretna Green’ and also an Inn established in the 1860’s which bore the same name. Another Inn, the Woolpack Inn, was the scene of a gunfight between the bushranger Martin Cash and members of the local constabulary. Gretna’s only church stood a few hundred metres from the inn and Cash and his gang hid in the bush near the church until nightfall prior to raiding the Inn. For many years St Mary’s was known as The Woolpack Church.



Gretna is home to one of Tasmania's most memorable monuments, a memorial to the Hamilton district's 22 fallen soldiers of The Great War (1914-18). Perched on a hill on the side of the Derwent, Gretna's memorial was built by Mrs A Walker of Clarendon to remember her nephews - Guy Davenport and Arthur Davenport - who were killed in the war. The memorial sits prominently at the southern entrance to the village. It also contains a plaque which was added for the 75th anniversary of Armistice Day.



Glenelg House, designed by Henry Hunter and finished in 1878, is a fine two storey Victorian Italianate Villa built for the Downie family. Glenelg has been in the Downie family for six generations. Andrew Downie, a solicitor, was an immigrant from Stirling in Scotland in the early 1820s. He was granted the 1000 acre property Glenelg by Governor William Sorell in 1824. The original Glenelg grant still lies on the property, with sandstone corner posts at 3 of the corners and remains within the Downie family. In 1838 Andrew’s brother, William also emigrated to Van Diemen’s land and began working with his brother. Andrew had no children and returned to Scotland later in life, and William’s family continued to run Glenelg over the following years.



Clarendon House, near Norton Mandeville, was granted in 1819 to William Borrodaile and he built the house and outbuildings from 1821. The two storey freestone Georgian house was built by William Borrodaile Wilson in 1821. Clarendon's outbuildings comprise stone stables, barn and hop kiln (with unusual brick chimney) grouped in the Scottish manner about a walled farmyard, used for the penning of animals in winter. The buildings are all basically intact and have a fine setting in the landscape, high above the Derwent River.



The Church of St Mary the Virgin (1848) is a prominent landmark in a stark hillside setting. It was one of the earliest ecclesiastical buildings in Australia to be influenced by English design trends, in which buildings were closely modelled on medieval antecedents. The church was popularly known as the Woolpack church, the name being derived from the former Woolpack Inn, located nearby. The churchyard, which contains the graves of many pioneering families has important associations for the history of the local community, and is held in high esteem.

The Hobart Courier published a fairly lengthy but rather technical and ‘dry’ account of the church’s consecration in june 1848. It is not known whether Courier's mention of "unhappy mistakes" in its report is a reference to design or structural issues, but by the time of the Great War, the end wall of the church was in danger of collapse and had to be supported with wooden props. Both end of the church are now supported with bracing which lends the building an unusual appearance.