thumb|West Ryde pumping station, Victoria Road (1890)
thumb|Pumping station manager's home, Victoria Road
West Ryde is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. West Ryde is located 16 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Ryde and is part of the Northern Sydney region.
Ryde, North Ryde and East Ryde are separate suburbs. The suburbs of Denistone, Denistone West, Meadowbank and Melrose Park share the 2114 postcode with West Ryde.
History
West Ryde is an extension of Ryde, which was named after the 'Ryde Store', a business run by G.M. Pope. He adopted the name from his birthplace of Ryde on the Isle of Wight, UK.
West Ryde is one of 16 suburbs that form the City of Ryde. The City of Ryde is approximately from the centre of Sydney and occupies most of the land between the Parramatta and Lane Cove rivers. It is bisected from west to east by one of Sydney's busiest roads, Victoria Road. It is crossed north to south by another main road, Lane Cove Road, and is skirted on the north-west by the M2 Hills Motorway and Epping Road. At the time of the arrival of Europeans at Sydney Cove in January 1788, the Wallumedegal or Wallumede were the traditional owners of the area and they called it Wallumetta. This clan formed part of a large Dharug language group.
Early landholders
Throughout much of the nineteenth century, most of the land in West Ryde, Eastwood and Denistone was consolidated in a handful of large estates owned by a few of the colonial elites, notably the Blaxland and the Darvall families. Much of the land in this suburb lying to the west of the main northern railway line was originally granted to Dr William Balmain in the mid to late 1790s. Balmain was one of the assistant surgeons on the First Fleet, having sailed on the Alexander. He worked as a magistrate in the colony and, due to the shortage of money at that time, was paid with the labour of convicts to work on his land. However, it is not known how much clearing and cultivation was done during those years. In 1801 Balmain and his family returned to England, where he died in 1803. His heirs were Jane and John Henderson, his children by a convict woman, Margaret Dawson (Henderson was his mother's maiden name). While they were in England, the land was rented by the explorer Gregory Blaxland, who owned nearby Brush Farm. In 1818 the Balmain lands were sold to an ex-convict John Bennett. His nephew William was his heir. Soon after he inherited the land, William married Susan Brown. Initially the couple lived in John's old house which was near the intersection of Bellevue and Bigland avenues, but in 1836 they mortgaged part of their land to build a new house in what is now Meadowbank Park, Meadowbank. Major Edward Darvall and his family arrived in the colony in January 1840. He was a retired English army officer with strong family connections to the British East India Company. His wife Emily came from a long line of wealthy London merchants. In May 1840, the Darvalls leased Deniston Farm and of land from a Dr Forster, for a period of 12 years. However, the property was again advertised to let in The Sydney Morning Herald on 8 March 1849. In 1855 William and Susan Bennett sold all their land north of Victoria Road to Major Darvall. The Darvall property stretched from Shaftsbury Road to Ryedale Road and from Rowe Street to Victoria Road, a total of . They built a two-storey house, Ryedale House, during the late 1850s, now the site of St Columb's Anglican Church. The house was constructed of sandstone blocks. Ryedale House was moved to Paterson (near Maitland), NSW. It is believed the Ryedale Estate was so named because of its closeness to Ryde and because Major Darvall came from the Yorkshire dales. The nearest the house were planted with orchards, mainly citrus trees. The Darvalls lived in this house for nearly 70 years – Edward until his death in 1869, his widow Jane until 1899, their son Anthony until 1910 and Anthony's widow Kate until 1922. The railway hotel was built on the corner of Victoria and Ryedale Roads in 1892 and a handful of shops established themselves nearby in the following decade. West Ryde's shopping centre was transformed in the 1950s, on the initiative of Bill Graf, a developer with an eye on the rapidly developing residential area just to the west. It was here that the Dundas Valley Estate was emerging as the largest Housing Commission project in Sydney. In a period of three years, more than 40 new shops were built, as well as six banks, two restaurants, a service station and a new post office.
- Victoria Road: Ryde Pumping Station
Commercial areas
West Ryde is home to a commercial area close to West Ryde railway station and the Sydney Water Station, which pumps water to most of northern Sydney.
West Ryde Marketplace is a medium-sized shopping centre featuring a Woolworths supermarket, specialty shops and West Ryde Public Library. Since the new centre opened in 2005, it diverted many people from the ageing Top Ryde Shopping Square, which subsequently closed and has now been redeveloped. Further building development included a Coles supermarket.
Transport
West Ryde railway station is on the Main Northern line. A bus interchange sits adjacent the station with services of 500N, 500X, 501, 523 524 and 543.
At the , 32.2% of employed people travelled to work by car (either as a driver or as a passenger) and 9.2% by public transport.