Council minutes

The Local History Centre holds the following Council minutes:

• Woollahra Council from 1860 to 1980
• Vaucluse Council from to 3 April 1900 to 1948 - the records are not complete as the minutes from 1895 to March 1900 are missing
• Paddington Council from 1860 to 1948 - the records are not complete as the minutes from 21 July 1914 to 6 April 1919 and 1934 to 1937 are held by the City of Sydney Archives

The minutes are available at the Local History Centre in print and microfiche format.

Council minutes index

The Council minutes index is an ongoing project to create a subject based access point to entries in the minute books of 3 former local government administrations which are now part of the present day Woollahra Council. When completed it will include index records for:

• Paddington 1860 - 1948
• Vaucluse 1895 - 1948
• Woollahra from 1860 to the present day.

Search the historical Council minutes index 1860 - 1875

Council rate books

The rate records compiled by Council were created to so that the appropriate amount of payment could be levied on a property and be sent to the person responsible for paying the rates. For Woollahra and Paddington Council the rates were mostly calculated on an annual basis but Vaucluse Council rate books were done every three years.

Generally the rate books are arranged by street address within a ward, however Paddington rate books in the 1930s are an exception. The type of information in the rate books includes owner, description of building, improved and unimproved capital value.

Building application registers

The building registers were created by Council and contain information about:

• date of application submitted to Council
• owner
• architect or builder
• estimated cost of works
• type of work
• when it was approved by Council.

They are arranged by numeric order in year of receipt.

The collection holds 19 volumes of the Woollahra Council Building Registers from 1912 to 1988 and 4 volumes of the Vaucluse Council Building Registers from 1910 to 1948.

Please note: Building applications were not a requirement until 1909.