23Working in Mayfield
Air conditioning in Mayfield 2304
Mayfield was the Toorak of Newcastle before it was a steel suburb, so the Mayfields hold everything from hilltop mansions to Lysaght's workers' cottages, and each wants a different system.
Mayfield is about 6 km north-west of the Newcastle city centre, with the Hunter River along its northern edge. It is named after Ada May, daughter of landowner John Scholey, whose 1884 house sits on the suburb's highest point. Through the 1880s and 1890s the western side was known as the Toorak of Newcastle, with large houses up on the hill for the views and the breeze, and Crebert Street still has several of them, including Bella Vista, built for the manager of the BHP works. BHP opened its steelworks on the river flats beside Mayfield on 2 June 1915, and it ran for 84 years until 30 September 1999. In Mayfield East, Lysaght's started a village for skilled English sheet-steel workers in 1920, and many of those homes still stand in Avon, Vine, Bull and Usk Streets. Today the shops run along Maitland Road, and the Tourle Street bridge takes traffic from Mayfield West across the river to Kooragang.