Before a regular butcher’s premises had been established in the town, Mount Barker pioneer Duncan Macfarlane supplied mutton from his sheep run.  His four-roomed stone and brick house, in the area of what is now Kia Ora Street, was the first constructed in Mount Barker, and one of the rooms was built as a meat store.  Butcher James Greenfield lived in the house after McFarlane left for Tatiara in 1845, and carried on the butchering business working from a slab hut.

In the early 1850s Greenfield decided to transfer to Gawler Street, but met with public resistance because of of the “nuisance created by slaughtering in the heart of the town.” His application was eventually granted in 1855 on the provision that he keep the premises clean and “clear of all sheep offal, dung etc.” He was then able to erect the first butcher’s shop near this location.

Greenfield plied his trade in Gawler Street for ten years, also serving at times as the Mount Barker’s poundkeeper, impounding wandering stock.  His career then took a frankly surprising turn.  Selling the shop, he decamped to Victor Harbor, where he bought the elegant Crown Hotel and installed himself as manager.  In his advertising he promised “assiduity and civility,” and drew attention to the town’s “pure and bracing air”:

Visitors from Adelaide, Commercial Travellers, &c., are assured that every possible attention will be paid to their comfort.  The attention of those interested in Concerts, Lectures, Soirees, &c., is called to the fact of this House containing the Largest Room South of Adelaide. The use of a First-class Piano can also be had.

Early in his tenure he ruffled feathers by “bathing at prohibited hours” and swimming too close to the jetty and foreshore houses, which “annoyed females,” but he seems to have made a success of the Crown, which he ran for seven years.  The “Hotel Crown Victor Harbor” still operates today.

On Greenfield’s departure from Mount Barker in 1866 he sold his butcher’s shop to William Rundle (1819-1884).  William belonged to the prominent Rundle family who had been amongst the first European arrivals in the Mount Barker district.  He had worked as a miner in Cornwall before emigrating, aged 28, aboard the British Sovereign with his wife and three young children in 1847.  After reuniting with Rundle relatives who were already settled in Mount Barker, he worked in the Callington mines.  Like many others, he tried his luck in the Victorian gold rush, spending six months away in 1852.  On his return he built up a butchering business, trading from this address for some seventeen years. Unfortunately in his retirement he suffered from ill health, and fell into depression when his wife Jane died, after 44 years of marriage.  Less than two weeks after her funeral he drowned, aged 65, in a well at the rear of his property, to the shock and dismay of his family and neighbours.  An inquest returned a verdict of “suicide while suffering from temporary insanity.”

The next occupant of the site arrived in 1874. Alfred Compton Daw (1850-1924) moved up to Mount Barker from the St Mary’s area of Adelaide, where Daws Road was named after his family.  Daw enthusiastically embraced the social, commercial and political life of Mount Barker while running his profitable butchering business.  In 1878 he married Clara McKenzie (1861-1955), daughter of well-known Mount Barker identities Roderick and Mary McKenzie, with whom he had six daughters and four sons.

In 1884 A.C. Daw decided to demolish the old butcher’s shop and build something grander.  As the work progressed The Courier reported,

The appearance of Gawler Street will be considerably improved when the shop now being built for Mr. Daw is completed. . . . The shop is two stories in height, the rooms on both floors being unusually lofty. The excellent quality and the pleasing colour of the stone used in the front elevation are such as to give the building a very handsome appearance, and it is indeed a credit to the architect, the proprietor, and the township.  The total cost is expected to exceed £1,000. 

The building, which proudly bears Daw’s name, was designed by noted local architect F.W. Dancker, and has no equal in Gawler Street.  Its extensive cellars were used for storage and meat preparation, and it was used as a butcher’s shop for over a century, until 1990.

Daw retired in 1921 and died three years later, aged 74.  The legacy of the site was continued by the Symonds family, who began their butcher’s business here in the late 1920s and maintained it for sixty years.