The Field of Mars and Marsfield

Marsfield is a suburb in Northern Sydney surrounded by Epping and North Epping, Eastwood, Denistone East, North Ride, Macquarie Park, West Pymble, and South Turramurra, with Macquarie University cutting into it. The suburb is currently a part of the City of Ryde, but looking back through history reveals it has gone by several different names and had many different borders, it is currently defined as a shrunken and shifted version of what it once was.

In the Colonial period, the first form of Marsfield was as the ‘Field of Mars’, an array of land grants given to eight ex-marines by Governor Arthur Phillip in 1792 on land belonging to the the Wallamattagal clan of the Dharug Nation. It is assumed that Governor Phillip provided the name, Field of Mars, on account of the military backgrounds of the recipients (City of Ryde Management Plan 2009).

Though we have no hard sources for this, the connection is not unreasonable considering the name similarity to the Campus Martius – the field of Mars – in Rome, military grounds named for the god of war, Mars. The original Field of Mars stretched all the way from Dundas to the Lane Cove River (City of Ryde Management Plan 2009).

The Parish and the Commons

The Field of Mars went on to become the Parish of Field of Mars, a unit of local government, one that still exists today as one of the 57 parishes of the County of Cumberland. The Parish of Field of Mars, pictured above, reached all the way down to the Paramatta river and included the Field of Mars Commons, 5,050 acres (2044 hectares) of land north of the Field of Mars and along the southern side of the Lane Cove River that had been set aside by Governor King in 1804 to serve as public grazing land for the local community. The Field of Mars Commons was established in response to complaints that many farmers did not have large enough land grants to properly graze their stock and was conceived of as a traditional English common" in 1804, along with five other commons, in order to resolve the issue (City of Ryde Management Plan 2009).

Over time the common came to be less reputable with illegal operations occurring there such as unauthorised logging and squatting, and eventually a proposal to split and sell the commons won out by 1874. This decision together with an increasing population meant that the Field of Mars needed to be better connected to the city, requiring bridges to cross the Parramatta River. Plans were made for the Iron Cove and Gladesville bridges, and were to be funded by the sale of the commons, though in reality the building of the bridges began in 1878, seven years before the sale of the commons began in 1885, which continued to 1900 (Phippen 2008).

The subdivision of the Commons organised the district into neat allotments with streets laid out around them, each lot ranging from one and four acres (0.4 to 1.6 hectares). Several plots of land were reserved as community recreation areas, including the Field of Mars Cemetery and the Field of Mars Reserve surrounding it which still exist today, though are outside the bounds of modern day Marsfield (Phippen 2008). The new roads through the Field of Mars were given thematic names to tie in with the martial connections of "Field of Mars", and thus are named for battles from various historic wars, including the Hundred Years' War among others. An example is Balaclava Road, that goes through modern day Marsfield, is named for the Battle of Balaclava, which was part of the Siege of Sebastopol from which Epping Road's previous name of Sebastopol Road comes from, and which in turn references the Crimean War.

Transport Through the Field of Mars

Eventually as the name "Field of Mars" melded into "Marsfield" and the area it denoted shrunk, Marsfield became a part of the municipality of Ryde when it was formed in 1870, but in 1894 formed part of its own municipality due to issues with how council services had been provided. The council chambers were located at the corner of Herring and Abuklea roads, around where the Macquarie Chapel Presbytarian Church sits today. Many people bought in to the area due to expectations of a tramway being built to further connect it with the city via the Gladesville Bridge to the Field of Mars, this never eventuated though with the tramway only ever reaching Hattons Flat in Ryde. This was not the only failed transport infrastructure plans surround the Field of Mars, the 1920s saw a government proposal of a train link running from Eastwood to St Leonards through East Ryde that never came to fruition, with the completed Epping Road serving its purpose instead . Eventually as the name "Field of Mars" melded into "Marsfield" and the area it denoted shrunk, Marsfield became a part of the municipality of Ryde when it was formed in 1870, but in 1894 formed part of its own municipality due to issues with how council services had been provided. The council chambers were located at the corner of Herring and Abuklea roads, around where the Macquarie Chapel Presbytarian Church sits today. Many people bought in to the area due to expectations of a tramway being built to further connect it with the city via the Gladesville Bridge to the Field of Mars, this never eventuated though with the tramway only ever reaching Hattons Flat in Ryde. This was not the only failed transport infrastructure plans surround the Field of Mars, the 1920s saw a government proposal of a train link running from Eastwood to St Leonards through East Ryde that never came to fruition, with the completed Epping Road serving its purpose instead (Phippen 2008).

Much of Marsfield and North Ryde was originally part of a Green Belt zoning, though due to opposition to the zoning and the need to deal with the unanticipated population boom, 1,700 acres (688 hectares) were released for rezoning in 1959. By 1963 the decision to build Macquarie University at the boundaries of North Ryde and Marsfield was made, and in 1964 the state government announced further rezoning of the green belt for residential and industrial purposes, this time 939 acres (380 hectares) around the new Macquarie University (Phippen 2008).

With the establishment of the university the government eventually released their Action for Transport 2010 plan in 1998 with a proposed train link that would go through Marsfield and actually followed through (Action for Transport 2005). The Epping to Chatswood Railway Link introduced the Macquarie University Station, which while quite located within modern Marsfield, is on the outskirts and still provides the much longed for connection to the city. The train station first opened in 2009, but almost ten years was converted to a rapid transit line and re-opened as a part of the Metro North West Line in 2019 and remains that way today.

Bibliography

Media Release - Action for Transport 2010. (2005, May 17).https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20050517032609/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/49629/20050503-0000/www.transport.nsw.gov.au/news/media/1998/transport-2010.html

City of Ryde Council, Management Plan 2009-2013 - Working Towards A Sustainable City (Ryde: City of Ryde, 2009), https://www.ryde.nsw.gov.au/files/assets/public/publications/fyd/mp/management-plan-2009-2013.pdf

Phippen, Angela, ‘Marsfield: The Dictionary of Sydney’, Dictionaryofsydney.Org, 2008, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/marsfield