Gawler Underground - Imprint Flowers

Imprint Flowers

1 Tod Street Gawler

 

The building located at 1 Tod Street, now Imprint Flowers, started as Taylor and Ponder Carpenters and Builders in 1855.[1] Ponder left the company, and a new partnership started with Alexander Forgie. Taylor and Forgie were carpenters and builders, and sometime in the 1870s, extended their business to include undertaking. In 1902, Alexander Forgie died, dissolving the partnership of Taylor and Forgie, however, Alexander’s sons, Alexander junior and James Forgie, took over the business.

  In 1908, The Bunyip newspaper reported that a fire gutted the ground-floor offices of Taylor and Forgie, but it did not penetrate through to the boarding house above.[2]

  There is a belief that this site was used as a morgue – and there may be a little truth in that - occasionally bodies were stored here, but the reality was, in the Victorian era, when people died their bodies were prepared for funerals in their own homes. This was generally due to there being no refrigeration storage, so people were buried within a few days of death. This changed once embalming became the norm, and this is more likely the period, in the early 1900s, that bodies were stored here temporarily.

Taylor and Forgie moved to Cowan Street, Gawler, in 1968. Since then, the shop has been a coffee house, a secondhand store, a baby shop, Bake and Brew, Fairy Secrets, and a flower shop.

Go Underground and visit the basements via this link

Researched and written by Allen Tiller

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[1] 1942 'TAYLOR & FORGIE', Bunyip, 24 July, p. 2.

[2] 1908 'A FIRE.', Bunyip, 1 May, p. 2.