Archdeacon R. B. S. HammondPrint Page

The R. B. S. Hammond Memorial commemorates Archdeacon R. B. S. Hammond (1870 - 1946) and the sixtieth anniversary of the pioneer homes at Hammondville. 

Hammond's most imaginative and remarkable response to the Depression was the Pioneer Home Scheme At a time when the vast majority of workers lived in rented accommodation, widespread unemployment quickly snowballed into a crisis in housing. The government's limited support for the workless did not extend to rent assistance and, in 1932 alone, New South Wales courts issued more than 5,800 Orders of Ejectment against people chronically behind on rent. By mid-1933, 33,000 homeless Australians lived in makeshift camps across the country.

Hammond did not wait for government to act: with money raised by cashing his own life insurance policy, he purchased a tract of uncleared land five kilometres past Liverpool (know known as Hammondville) and established his own settlement for unemployed workers and their evicted families. He arranged for the construction of several basic wooden cottages, each with an acre of land, and offered them to unemployed couples with three or more children. He expected the scheme's participants to cultivate their gardens and to make modest but regular payments towards the purchase of their land and cottage.

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