Presented by: Ron Danvers LFRAIA
Colonel William Light’s history has been the subject of several admirable publications, but none have satisfactorily addressed the method he used in designing, surveying, and laying out the plan of the City of Adelaide on the topography of the site chosen on December 31, 1836. Although evidence supports there being a preemptive Model Plan produced in London before that date, the connection has generally been missed on how such a plan, following the pattern of many colonial antecedents, could have been simply cut up to fit the topography of the chosen site. In postulating the form a Model Plan might have taken by reverse engineering the final plan, it becomes obvious that this was the method used by Light to lay out the plan of the Capital. It was not done in a week from January 3, 1837 as Stretton suggested, but by February 7 the basic cutting up had been formulated and sketched by Light from Green Hill.
Presented by National Trust of South Australia, History Trust of South Australia, & Ayers House Function Centre