Prince’s Square is a beautiful park surrounded by elegant buildings providing respite from the busy city streets.
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The 1823 map of Launceston shows this block as a burial ground.
But in 1825 the clay was dug up and made into bricks by convicts for St John’s Church, the first in Launceston, built across the road.
Known as St John’s Square, Church Square or Church Green, the clay pits became a convenient place to dump rubbish and a playground for youngsters.
In March 1843 a gang of convicts levelled it.
Two months later the citizens celebrated Queen Victoria’s birthday in the square with a military review.
In March 1845 Mr Rea chose this site for his fourth attempt to ascend in a balloon, but he failed once again when the torn calico material ended up in a tree outside Dr Pugh’s house.
The square was the main community meeting point on August 10, 1853 when the largest crowd of people ever assembled there celebrated both the jubilee of the colony’s foundation and the cessation of convict transportation to Van Diemen’s Land.
The magnificent French fountain in the middle of the square marks the 1857 opening of the reticulated water scheme from St Patrick’s River to Launceston.
A few myths surround the fountain, but the brief facts are that it was ordered from a catalogue of the 1855 Paris Exhibition; the water works date of MDCCCLVII (1857) and the names of the mayor and aldermen are cast into the main supporting column of the fountain, proving it was made for our city.
Workmen started erecting the fountain in May 1859.
The newly-landscaped square opened on November 9, 1859 during a public holiday proclaimed at short notice to celebrate the 18th birthday of Queen Victoria’s eldest son, Albert Edward, the Prince of Wales.
The Launceston Examiner suggested that in ‘perpetual honour of the event, the site should be known as Prince's Square.’
Although the name Prince’s Square was in common usage from 1860, it is an often-repeated myth that it received that title in 1868 when Queen Victoria’s second son Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, planted two oak trees in the square.
However, it was actually five years earlier, in March 1863, that Rev. James Lindsay of Chalmers Church suggested the council proclaim Prince’s Square as the official name to commemorate the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra of Denmark.
The aldermen agreed, and on May 20, 1863 Mayor William Hart planted two oak trees, declaring that from this day it shall be called ‘Prince's Square’.
