LOCAL HISTORY
Edward Holland of Dumbleton Prior to World War II, Beverly Hills went by the name of Dumbleton. It derived this name from Dumbleton Farm, a large market garden established in the 1880s in the vicinity of present-day Beverly Hills Public School. How did it get its name?
Edward, born in 1851, possibly at Ashbourne, was one of seven children. He was likely named after his uncle Edward, Frederick’s brother, who was a farming innovator with a property at the village of Dumbleton, in Norfolk, which no doubt the whole family was familiar with.
Dumbleton Farm was the property of an English immigrant, Edward Holland, who came from an interesting family.
Frederick died in 1860, by which time 9-year old Edward was probably at boarding-school. We don’t know where Edward studied, and he does not appear to have followed his father into the Navy. It is not clear why he came to Australia. Perhaps he was the family black sheep, packed off to New South Wales, or perhaps he came here seeking his fortune.
Edward’s grandfather, Swinton Holland, was a partner in Baring Brothers, the bankers, and a land-owner in Knutsford, Cheshire. Knutsford was the thinly-disguised setting for Mrs Gaskell’s popular novel, Cranford, and Edward’s mother was a cousin of the author. Edward’s father, Frederick Holland, had been a Commander in the Royal Navy, then retired to an estate at Ashbourne, Derbyshire. Frederick was a friend of Charles Dickens, and was one of the founders of the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London.
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He was in Sydney by 1879, and married, though we do not know if he married in England. His wife Elizabeth (Lily) gave birth to several children in Sydney: Lilian (born Paddington 1879), Edward Junior (born Paddington 1880), and Ellen (born and died at Pennant Hills 1886-1887). The Holland family came to our area in the early 1880s,
