The Bridgewater Inn 5.22

In March 1841, a young man with a sense of humour built a hotel near the southern corner of what is now Arbury Park. His name was Benjamin Dean and he named his inn The Rural Deanery.

In terms of the people who patronized it, any resemblance to a deanery was somewhat more remote. It had been originally established to cater for the passing bullock teamsters who battled their teams traversing the Old Mount Barker Road at the refreshing waters of Cocks Creek (later Cox's Creek) but it soon became the mecca for a clientele who consisted of a "mixed bag" of the toughest and most dissolute of early colonists.

The "Tiersman", as the Lofty Ranges used to be preferred to, provided the hiding place for ex convicts, runaway sailors and neér do wells of every kind, many of them dedicated to cattle rustling and extortion. Dean dispensed rum to these characters "in outsized pannikins" and they stayed to carouse till all hours.

Until a few years ago, a depression in the ground adjacent to the Deanery Bridge, which marked the site of the Inn could still be detected. Today, no sign of the depression remains and nothing at all remains of the little village of Cox's Creek that grew around the Inn.

When in 1853 the new coach road through Stirling and Aldgate (the present Mount Barker Rd) was completed, Dean's successor, a Mr.Addison moved his business there, lock, stock and barrel. Most of the village followed and within 5 years the hotel on the new site became "The Bridgewater Inn" believed to have been so named after Addison's hometown in Somerset.

In 1859, John Dunn set about building the Bridgewater Mill. He had the land around the new Inn laid as a township, taking its name in turn from the Inn. That was the end of the old village of Cox's Creek.

So, for over 100 years "The Bridgewater Inn" has traded on its present site, very much as it is today.