Sir William Wallace Hotel

Sir William Wallace Hotel
General information
Address	31 Cameron Street, Birchgrove, NSW 2041
Coordinates	33°51′12″S 151°10′55″E / 33.853435°S 151.181902°ECoordinates: 33°51′12″S 151°10′55″E / 33.853435°S 151.181902°E
Opening	1879

The Sir William Wallace Hotel is an historic pub in the suburb of Birchgrove on the Balmain Peninsula in the Inner West of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia.

Sir William Wallace Hotel, circa 1930

The pub is one of a number of buildings which formed an integral part of the shipbuilding and industrial history of the local area.

History

The pub is named after Sir William Wallace, the famous 13th century knight and Scottish patriot, although the reasons for choosing the name are not known. The close proximity to Mort's Dock and later Balmain Colliery ensured early patronage. The pub is now frequented by locals to whom it is affectionately known as the "Willie Wallace" or "Willie Wallie".

A mural depicting pub life, complete with regular patrons, was painted on an internal wall in 1995. The mural contains an image of actor Mel Gibson who provided perhaps the best known account of the life of William Wallace in the 1995 film Braveheart. A signed poster from the film also hangs on the wall in the main bar.

Architecture

The pub is a heritage-listed building of local significance built in the Victorian Filligree style. It is a two-storeyed corner hotel with a panelled lace upper verandah, timber posts to street and iron lace balustrades. It is a rare example of a hotel still in its original state.^[1]

Use as a filming location

• The pub was used as the location for the 1975 Australian film Caddie, starring Helen Morse and Jack Thompson.^[2]
• The hotel was featured in the opening scenes of the 1994 film The Sum of Us.
• In 2000, it was feature in a scene of the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen direct-to-video film Our Lips are Sealed
• In 2001, the hotel was used as a location for an episode of the UK series The Bill.^[3]

See also

• List of public houses in Australia

References

1. New South Wales Government Heritage Register; Sir William Wallace Pub; Accessed October 2006;
2. Caddie (Motion Picture DVD); On Location - Producer's Commentary; Roadshow Entertainment, 1976.
3. Rodda, R; Panic over Bill's big bang farewell; The Daily Telegraph; 4 April 2001.

• Davidson, B; Hamey, K; Nicholls, D; Called To The Bar - 150 Years of pubs in Balmain & Rozelle, The Balmain Association, 1991, ISBN 0-9599502-6-5.
• Nicholls, D; Baglin, D; Clarke, G; Around Balmain, The Balmain Association, 1986, ISBN 0-9599502-5-7.