Hall, Australian Capital Territory

Hall is a small village in the north of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Australia. At the, the village had a population of 271 people. It is surrounded by open country and has a rural appearance. It has a village character though it is practically a suburb on the edge of Canberra. The village itself features historic buildings that existed before the establishment of Canberra.HistoryGeorge Palmer established his Palmerville Estate in 1826 in Ginninginderry with a homestead located on the banks of Ginninderra Creek adjacent to the presentday suburb of Giralang. The estate encompassed much of what is now Belconnen and southern Gungahlin. It adjoined the Charnwood Estate to the west and Yarralumla Estate to the east. The combined area of the Ginninderra and Charnwood Estates was nearly 20,150 acres (8155 ha).By 1861 a store, post office, cottages and homestead had been set up on a property owned by William Davis, about 3 km south of Hall at Ginninderra. This settlement was known by residents as Ginninderra village. In 1881 the NSW Government surveyed the area for an official village and chose a site on Halls Creek.The new village called Ginninderra was officially proclaimed in 1882, but after protests from local residents was renamed Hall, in honour the first landholder in the area, Henry Hall. The village was planned on a rectangular grid. The first sale of land occurred in 1886.In 1911 the Australian Capital Territory was gazetted and Hall was within the boundary of the land allocated, near the New South Wales border. It was also one of the sites considered for a capital city in the Yass district. Hall did not grow as it suffered with few amenities and it was not provided with town water until 1967. In 1954 the main street of Hall (which had been part of the state highway system since 1935) was named the Barton Highway.