Princes Square Launceston
Princes Square was initially known as St John's Square. Although set aside for a park in 1826, it wasn't developed as a park until the late 1850s. It was renamed in 1868 when Prince Alfred planted two commemorative oak trees there. Originally the site was a clay-pit worked by convicts making bricks for the construction of St Johns Church and later the site of military drills, rowdy political meetings and celebrations for the cessation of transportation.
Now it is a historic park that includes mature trees and an internationally significant fountain which was produced in the 1850s by the Val d-Osne Foundry in France, and a statue of Dr William Russ Pugh, the first to use general anaesthetic in the Southern Hemisphere for a surgical operation. Launceston is therefore noted as the first place in the Southern Hemisphere in which general anaesthetic was used.
Where: bordered by St John, Elizabeth, Charles and Frederick Streets.
Topography: flat to gently sloping with a network of sealed paths.
