09/09/2026
HISTORIC SNAPSHOT: Happy 195th birthday Gardners Inn.
Gardners Inn occupies one of Blackheath’s most historically important sites: the location of the Scotch Thistle Inn, opened by Andrew Gardiner on 11 July 1831. Here: w3w.co/outsource.blackmail.hollowed
The hotel now known as Gardners Inn Hotel began life as the Scotch Thistle Inn, established during the very early settlement of Blackheath. In 1829, Andrew Gardiner, also recorded with the spelling Gardner, was a prosperous Scottish farmer and former convict then living at Sodwalls, west of Lithgow.
Governor Ralph Darling approved Gardiner’s selection of 20 acres on 1 December 1829, specifically reserving the land “for the purpose of erecting an Inn thereon.” Gardiner took possession in May 1830, and, after delays in finding suitable builders, opened the Scotch Thistle on 11 July 1831.
It was not merely another roadside pub. At the time, it was among the earliest substantial buildings in what would become Blackheath village, serving travellers crossing the Mountains on the developing western road. The original was described as a solid, single-storey inn of hewn sandstone with a shingled roof. It was already sufficiently established to appear in a directory the following year.
Across nearly two centuries, the inn has reflected the changing character of Blackheath itself, from a remote stopping point on the western road to a railway-era mountain resort and, later, a modern village centre.
The name Hydora was especially significant in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Gardiner’s original 20-acre grant later shaped the surrounding Hydora Estate subdivision, and the footprint of that early grant can still be read in the relationship between the Great Western Highway, Govetts Leap Road and the hotel site.
The inn’s most famous guest was Charles Darwin. During his 1836 journey across the Blue Mountains, following the HMS Beagle’s visit to Sydney, Darwin travelled through Blackheath and spent the night at the inn on 17 January.
Darwin referred in his journal to reaching an inn at Blackheath and found it comfortable, comparing it to the small inns of North Wales. Historical accounts identify this as the Scotch Thistle Inn—the only inn at Blackheath at the time—and therefore the direct predecessor on the Gardners Inn site.
This connection places the hotel within a remarkable moment in scientific and colonial history. Darwin was only 26, still years away from publishing On the Origin of Species, yet already observing landscapes, geology and natural environments with the close attention that defined his later work.
The building visitors see today is not the original 1831 Scotch Thistle structure. In 1938, the early inn was demolished and the present building constructed, at or very near the historic site. That rebuilding is why Gardners Inn can claim continuity as a historic inn while also having a twentieth-century physical fabric.
Elements of the earlier building were retained or reused. Accounts note that sandstone blocks from the original inn were incorporated into the highway-side fence, and local historical material records the preservation of parts of the old building, including the original staircase.
Photo: restored and colourised. Original photo is in the comments.
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