Albert Aspinall

Albert Wood Aspinall (27 December 1839 – 15 December 1903) was an Australian stonemason and builder. He was an expert in constructing round towers and buildings.

Aspinall was born in Exley Bank Bottom, Southowram, West Riding of Yorkshire, England. He came to Australia in 1857 with his parents, John Aspinall and Sarah (née Ingham), and siblings, aboard the Mary Ann. He was their the third, but second surviving son. In 1864, Albert married Mary Jane Bennett with whom he had thirteen children, seven of whom lived into adulthood.

Aspinall moved frequently to wherever his building contracts took him. Much of his early work was done in the Sydney area. For about one year in 1865 he was building in the Maitland district. It is unknown whether any of the stone buildings still standing in the area were built by him.

Aspinall moved his family to Liverpool for about five years from 1876 while he constructed stone buildings in the vicinity. During this period Albert constructed the Police Station and Lockup at Penrith. For many years, the building was regarded as a historic building by the Nepean District Historical Society. Recent expansion in Penrith resulted in the demolition of the buildings but archival material remains.

In the mid-1880s, Aspinall was contracted to construct the brick-firing kilns of the St Peters brick works. Some kilns were located beside the quarry next to the Illawarra railway line (now filled and transformed into the Camdenville Oval). These kilns have been demolished. It is not known whether the historic brick kilns at the north-west corner of Sydney Park were also his construction.

Aspinall's longest project was the partial building of the Green Cape Lighthouse on Green Cape, at the northern tip of Disaster Bay, south of Eden. The Eden Killer Whale Museum and Historical Society has information concerning this project and the suicide of Aspinall. The precinct of the lighthouse is now a historic tourist site.

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