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Norwood Courthouse 1937, SA

Norwood Courthouse (former) Norwood, Adelaide

The Courthouse sits on the traditional lands of the Kaurna people. 

Norwood Courthouse 1937 – former magistrate and police court

The Courthouse building was constructed in 1937 and is adjacent to the Norwood Police Station at 38 Osmond Terrace, Norwood, Adelaide.

However Norwood had a magistrate’s court from earlier times.  Typical local court matters brought by the police were charges of indecent behaviour in the locality, or for being found drunk in the streets of Norwood. On one occasion in 1912 the Norwood Magistrate’s order of a fine and costs for having used indecent language was the subject of an appeal to the Adelaide Local Court, at the Supreme Courthouse, on the grounds of an “irregularity”, reported The Register.

A new courthouse

In 1937 work began on a new courthouse and police quarters at Norwood,2 hailed as being the ‘most commanding court building outside the city’.

Facilities being provided were:

  • a waiting hall;
  • magistrate room;
  • charge room;
  • police offices and
  • police accommodation in the form of two bedrooms for constables.
Former Norwood Courthouse
“The most commanding building outside the City”

The Australian Heritage Places Inventory noted in its Statement of Significance that the Courthouse was one of the few police courthouse buildings constructed in the Adelaide metropolitan area between the two World Wars. Its style is described as Georgian Revival.

See some more historical former courthouses in South Australia here.  Articles on the history of Norwood can be found here.


 

 

1.  The Advertiser, 8 October 1907, p. 11.
2.  The Advertiser, 11 February 1937, p. 15.

B Stead
9 January 2014, updated August 2023
BHS Legal

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