Description
Engraved portrait of Robert Fowler joined his father Enoch Fowlers’s business as a pottery manufacturer. In 1848 the Fowler’s pottery was in Glebe, first in Queen Street and later in Bay Street. In the late 1850s, Enoch Fowler purchased five acres at Camperdown, the site fronting Paramatta Road and bounded by Australia Street. The pottery grew from 25 employees in 1865, to 104 by 1908. In 1865, when the business was at Parramatta Road in Camperdown, it specialised in mass-produced drainpipes, fired bricks, tiles, chimney pots and all types of pottery. Robert Fowler inherited the business from his father and became a wealthy man. He owned much of Camperdown and built a grand Italianate house named Cranbrook in 1881, opposite the Fowler Pottery in Australia Street. Fowler Street in Newtown was formed after 1880 and named after the family whose pottery works and chimneys dominated the Camperdown area. Fowler’s Pottery was demolished in 1919.
He died at Cranbrook, Camperdown, on 12 June 1906, survived by three sons and five daughters. He was buried in the Presbyterian section of Waverley Cemetery.
