The riparian area along the Hawkesbury River had been a source of food for the local Aboriginal people for over 50,000 years (it is known to the Dharug as Dyarrabin' or 'Deerubbin') and, with relatively frequent floods that spread enriched alluvium throughout the surrounding land, the region was known to be an abundant and reliable resource.

[9][1] Although the Square was encircled by surveyed streets, the townsfolk from the populated part of the town to the north-east had by 1840 their own preferred informal pathway curving through the public space to the Anglican church and beyond to the Richmond road.

[10][1] The square is on sloping ground and stumps from the early tree-felling remained a nuisance well into Queen Victoria's reign, although they did not prevent occasional use as a cricket-pitch from Macquarie's time onwards.

He was an ambitious local magistrate, but his father had been a transportee, who as an emancipist had established an inn in Windsor close to the Square, on the corner of Tebbutt and George Streets.

In August the Council debated the issue again and, by the casting vote of the new mayor (no friend of John McQuade), decided to abide by the name Windsor Park.

This was promptly vandalised and in March 1878, when William Walker, the local solicitor and politician, was mayor, the Council voted to restore the name Windsor Park.

[19][1] Under successive local Councils, the park evolved as a public amenity, with a variety of sporting facilities, tree plantings, memorial areas and an attractive lake.

[1] Captain James Cook was remembered in 1970 by the replacement of the old swampy pond near George Street by a hard-edged ornamental lake designed by landscape architect Peter Spooner, with a small island, accessible by a pedestrian bridge.

This guaranteed the permanence of the "pon hole", the much-loved 19th century feature of the park which resisted all attempts by Councillors over the years to fill it in or securely enclose it.

The playing area is delimited by a white picket fence installed early in the twenty-first century as the result of an initiative of the local Rotary Club.

The central feature is Frederic Chepeaux's bronze statue of Governor Macquarie, standing at a stone plinth, facing St Matthew's Anglican Church and looking at plans of his Hawkesbury towns.

The raised entry to the statue from Moses Street is flanked by eight pillars made of red brick and a triangular area in which a mosaic will be set late in 2010.

This hard-edged free-form pond, normally adorned with water-lilies, is a modern development of the natural feature of a swampy area fed by a spring and a seasonal waterway.

[1] Immediately to the east of the pond, accessed from George Street, is the Country Women's Association meeting hall, an inter-war brick cottage within a small rectangular enclosure.

[1] To the north and north-east of the tennis courts is Windsor Bowling Club, with its clubhouse and two greens on a rectangular block of land, but this was excised from the park in 1972.

It is entered through an opening between two high brick walls bearing granite plaques which commemorate those who fought in the two world wars, in Vietnam and in Korea.

A local female nurse who also served in South Africa is separately commemorated by a marble plaque placed on the perimeter of the small circular area around the obelisk.

Other younger tree plantings include kurrajong (Brachychiton populneum), crepe myrtles, Chinese elms (Ulmus parvifolia), silky oak (Grevillea robusta), sweet gum (Liquidambar styraciflua), paperbark (Melaleuca sp.

[1] The principal areas of later tree-plantings are along a driveway which runs diagonally across the Park, south-east from Hawkesbury Valley Way, above the pond, and then turns south to George St between the CWA hall and the tennis courts.

Many, but by no means all, of these more recent plantings commemorate individual "pioneers", a programme initiated during the 1994 celebrations of two hundred years of European settlement along the Upper Hawkesbury.

The principal changes in the built environment are: McQuade Park is of State heritage significance because it is an outstanding and rare feature of Governor Macquarie's concept of a planned country town in 1810.

[1] The early adjustment in the shape and dimensions of the park is significant because it offers uncommonly legible evidence of the accommodations which colonial governments made with landowners to respect existing rights.

The Boer War Memorial is, however, an exception because of its rarity and because of the aesthetic merit of O'Kelly's carvings of mounted troopers from the South African engagement.

The expanse of open green space in the centre of Governor Macquarie's most significant Hawkesbury town has survived and been expanded over two centuries and is still today an essential historic asset for public recreation, both sporting and passive.

The Boer War memorial is notable at the state level because of its rarity and its quality of presentation, especially shown in the two stone relief carvings of mounted troopers.

The plan of Windsor drawn up in 1812 by the ex-convict surveyor, James Meehan, himself a figure of state significance, was signed, twice over, by Macquarie, who had personally selected the location of the Anglican church and the adjacent reserve.

McQuade Park has aesthetic/technical State significance because of the high aesthetic values of the Boer War memorial with its O'Kelly carvings and its surrounding formal garden.

The park's extent and open nature are critical to, and form the green heart of modern Windsor and a crucial setting for St.Matthews Church, cemetery and Manse along with other key buildings facing it.

McQuade Park has locally significant aesthetic value because its form and elements illustrate most of the uses to which an early town square might be put over a long period, including sports, passive recreation, public celebration and the commemoration of external wars.

McQuade Park has State significant representative value because it illustrates most of the uses to which an early town square might be put over a long period, including sport of various kinds, passive recreation, public celebration and the commemoration of those who served in external wars.