The Darug and Kurringgai
Hornsby stands on the traditional country of the Darug and Kurringgai people. More than 200 known Aboriginal sites lie within Hornsby Shire, the local government area whose administrative centre is the suburb.
The name and the first land grants
The name Hornsby comes from Samuel Henry Horne, a convict who became a constable. Horne took part in the apprehension of the bushrangers Dalton and MacNamara on 22 June 1830, and in return was granted land that he named Hornsby Place. The town of Hornsby later developed on the site of that grant.
Thomas Higgins was the first European settler here, and he was granted land in Old Mans Valley. The Higgins family later established a private cemetery in Old Man's Valley, and family members were buried there between 1879 and 1931. It survives to this day and is heritage-listed.
The railway and the post office
A station bearing the name Hornsby Junction opened north of the town on 17 September 1886. It was the meeting point of the Northern line and the North Shore line, neither of which was finished at that point. Hornsby station stood one stop further south on the Northern line, and commuters who stepped off at the wrong station expecting to change trains caused enough confusion that the older Hornsby station became Normanhurst on 17 November 1898, named for Norman Selfe, a local activist and engineer. The Hornsby Junction station took the name Hornsby.
Hornsby's first post office opened on 1 August 1864. On 1 May 1900 it became South Hornsby, and the office beside the railway station, open since 1887, was given the name Hornsby that same day. The office near the station remains open. The South Hornsby office took the name Normanhurst in 1905.
The Roberts family and the prestige estates
Growth in housing was left to private developers, who bought land on both sides of the railway station. The developers saw that housing for working class families tended to cluster near railway stations, and they aimed instead at middle class buyers, offering quality homes in areas with views, further out. Annie Roberts was an early buyer of land in the area, and her husband was Oscar Garibaldi Roberts. Oscar Garibaldi Roberts was among the first councilors of Hornsby Shire. The Roberts family acquired a property in Rosemead Road and built Mount Errington, an Arts and Crafts mansion that is now heritage-listed.
Later the Roberts family acquired twelve blocks of land. These were divided into twenty-three blocks under the name Roberts Mount Errington Sub-division. The estate grew, and several houses in the Federation style were built there. Birklands, a heritage-listed house in Dural Street, was built in 1902 for Louis Spier Roberts and his wife Elizabeth. It remained in the Roberts family until 1938.
Shops, landmarks and Ginger Meggs
Hornsby Shire Council was established in 1906. The Westfield Hornsby shopping mall opened in 1961, and Hornsby counts among the first suburbs in Sydney to have had a shopping centre of that modern style. A rival centre, Northgate, opened in 1979 and Westfield later bought it. In late 1999 the two sites were combined, with the older centre pulled down and Northgate refurbished. The rebuilt Westfield Hornsby opened in November 2001.
Heritage items in the suburb include Edgeworth David's House and Grounds, Mount Wilga House, the Old Man's Valley Cemetery and Hornsby Quarry, along with the court house, the council chambers and the war memorial on the Pacific Highway. Brinawa in William Street and Kuranda in Rosemead Road are on the heritage list as well.
Ginger Meggs, a cartoon by an artist who grew up in Hornsby, has been linked with the suburb for a long time and has run in Australian newspapers since 1921. The area's newspaper is the Hornsby and Upper North Shore Advocate, part of the Cumberland Newspaper Group.