Woodend, originally known as Woodend Pocket, is immediately north-west of central Ipswich. It is bounded by an inverted U of the Bremer River.

Woodend Pocket was the site of an early Ipswich coal mine, the Radstock (1854) at the western end of today's Hayne Street. More importantly, Woodend is the site of several heritage precincts, the earliest dating from the 1840s when the Catholic Church obtained a two acre land grant. Later purchases and donations enlarged the site to 20 acres. Buildings were added to, replaced and enlarged until the full complement comprised:

  • St Mary's Church, a twin-steepled Gothic revival building of cathedral scale (1900)
  • A Presbytery (1876), designed by Andrea Strombuco
  • A Sisters of Mercy Convent (1884)
  • Christian Brothers' residence (1891), recognised as one of Ipswich's most elegant buildings
  • Parish hall (1901)
  • Infant school
  • St Mary's boys' primary school (1889)
  • St Mary's girls' college (1946)
  • St Edmunds boys' college (1965)

A short distance to the south-west is Queensland's oldest secondary college, Ipswich (boys') Grammar (1863) with its original Gothic style building still intact. Both the Catholic precinct and the Grammar school are on the Queensland heritage register.

Waghorn Street and Woodend Road, on the eastern and western sides of the Grammar school, are heritage housing precincts. Each is elevated, and Waghorn Street has higher quality dwellings with views to Queens Park and Denmark Hill, east and south of central Ipswich. Woodend Street has an extensive precinct of timber houses, unusually intact and continuous for 1000 m northwards from Hawthorne Street. Later, houses were built down from Woodend Road ridge. A series of workers' cottages is in Hume and Bowen Streets toward the north end of the Pocket, overlooking the eastern slope down to the Bremer River.

The Catholic school was the sole supplier of primary education until Blair State School opened in neighbouring Sadliers Crossing in 1917.

Floods 2011

With the Bremer River and another watercourse defining four fifths of its boundary, Woodend was set for flooding in January 2011. Fortunately most built-up areas were above the flood level, and parklands bore the brunt of the flood.

Woodend's census populations have been:

census datepopulation
20061378
20111535
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