Lambie Street

Lambie Street. . This marker consists of two plaques placed back to back., In the 1850s Cooma was developing in two areas, one around Lambie and Mulach Street, the other over the hill where Centennial Park and Sharp Street are now. Nevertheless for the first twenty years Lambie Street was the commercial centre of Cooma. , Lambie Street is registered by the National Trust as a heritage precinct. This is because many of Cooma’s oldest buildings are there and as modern development virtually passed it by, the houses are relatively intact. The early Victorian buildings range from modest cottages to two storey residences. Many are distinguished by the use of granite gneiss, a local granite, which can be worked into smooth rectangular blocks. Other buildings are constructed of over-sized bricks, peculiar to Cooma. James Hain, his son Joseph, and James Mawson were prominent Cooma builders in the second half of the 19th century and they were responsible for many of Lambie Street’s oldest houses. , The Lord Raglan Inn above was built in 1854 by James Hain, who obtained a publican’s licence (sic) in 1855, in the same year Samuel Shannon obtained a spirit merchant’s licence for a store in Lambie Street and in 1856 Dr Merryweather was practicing in Lambie Street. , Lambie Street was the location of the first hospital in town, the first court house, the first post office, the first school, and the first bank which opened in the Lord Raglan Inn in 1860 The Lord Raglan Inn is now the Raglan Gallery and Cultural Centre. It is at present open to the public from Wednesday to Sunday. , Second plaque, Lambie Street was named after John Lambie, the first Commissioner of Crown Lands for Monaro. He came to Cooma in 1842 and when Surveyor Townsend carried out his survey for the proposed new town in March 1849, he marked on his plan John Lambie’s house, an office and an old lock up in the area known as Mr. Lamie’s Paddock. Lambie’s house was a slab hut with a thatched roof located where the Hain Centre now stands. , The area at the junction of Lambie Street and Sharp Street became known as Royal Side or the Royal end of town after James Hain built the Royal Hotel in 1858. A few years later he built a stone general store across the road on Sharp Street. The Royal Hotel’s elaborate verandahs were added in 1900 and are the only street verandah’s (sic) in Cooma to survive the demolition orders of the 1950’s. The Hain family has continued to be a commercial presence on the Sharp Street side for the past 140 years.