History
The town is believed to be named after Beverley in Yorkshire, from where some of the earliest explorers of the Avon valley originated, including Colonial Surgeon Charles Simmons, an early landowner in the district. Land at Beverley was set aside for a townsite in 1831, just two years after the Swan River Colony's foundation, after a glowing report to Governor James Stirling by Ensign (later Lieutenant) Robert Dale, who made three trips to the York-Beverley area. The district was surveyed in 1843.
While settlers arrived from the 1860s onwards, and a town was established in 1868, it wasn't until the arrival of the Great Southern Railway in 1886 that the town started to grow, and with the completion of the railway in 1889 to Albany, Beverley became an important centre. In 1908, the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme was extended to supply the town with water, and by World War I, the town had four hotels, four banks, two bakeries, two tailors, three tearooms, a jeweller and two hairdressers, amongst other businesses, and in 1938, a new town hall opened.
However, since the 1950s, with improved transport, communications and farming methods, the population of the Shire of Beverley fell from 1,968 in 1954 to 1,433 in 1991, and several banks and other town services closed. The population has started to grow again due to the popularity of rural residential estates and the town's proximity to Perth.
Read more about this topic: Beverley, Western Australia
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