What does ‘Glebe’ mean?

The answer goes back more than 230 years, to the earliest days of European settlement in Sydney – and to a much older history of the land itself.

A glebe was land given to a church to provide an income for its priest or minister. The priest might farm the land himself or lease it to someone else and use the income to support himself.

The 1790 grant

In 1790 Governor Arthur Phillip granted about 400 acres (1.6 square kilometres) to the Reverend Richard Johnson, the Anglican chaplain of the First Fleet. The land was intended as a glebe – land whose income would support the Church and its clergy.

When Governor Phillip made his grant, he was acting under the British colonial system, which claimed the land for the Crown. Phillip did not own the land himself, nor was it vacant or unused land. The grant was made without the consent of the ancestral owners of the land – the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation.

Johnson found the land difficult to cultivate and eventually established a farm at Canterbury instead. Nevertheless, the 400 acres remained known as ‘The Glebe’, and the name eventually became attached to the suburb that developed there.

A very old word

The word glebe is much older than the Sydney suburb. In medieval England, a glebe could take many forms. It might be a farm, a few fields, a house, a mill or several separate pieces of land. Sometimes the priest farmed the land; sometimes it was leased to others who paid rent.

The word itself ultimately comes from the Latin gleba, meaning a clod of earth, soil or land.

Today, the word survives in a number of Australian place names, including Glebe in Sydney and Hobart, as well as Glebe Park in Canberra and various streets around Australia.

What happened to the original Glebe?

The Church of England eventually subdivided the original 400-acre grant. In 1828 most of the land was sold at public auction. Three portions were retained by the Church: two were associated with St Philip’s Church at Church Hill, while the third became the estate known as Bishopthorpe, the residence of the bishop.

Over the nineteenth century these remaining Church lands were subdivided and developed. Houses were built and the area gradually became the densely settled inner-city suburb we know today.

The Glebe Estate that survived into the twentieth century was made up principally of the former St Philip’s and Bishopthorpe estates. By the early 1970s it contained about 723 dwellings and 27 businesses, many occupied by long-term, low-income tenants.

The Glebe and St John’s Church

St John’s Anglican Church is very close to the former Glebe Estate and became an important part of the religious and social life of Glebe. But it was not the church for which the original 1790 glebe was established.

The present St John’s Church was built much later, in 1868–70, to the design of the distinguished colonial architect Edmund Blacket.

There was nevertheless an important connection between St John’s and the campaign to save the Glebe Estate in the 1970s. When the Church of England was considering selling the Estate, the rector of St John’s was involved in efforts to persuade the Anglican Synod to support its preservation. The Glebe Society’s historical account records that material about the history of Glebe was distributed by the rector to the Synod meeting considering the proposed sale.

The Glebe Estate is saved

By the early 1970s, many of the houses on the Glebe Estate were in poor condition. The Church of England was considering selling the Estate, raising fears that the historic houses would be demolished and the long-established community displaced.

The Glebe Society, local residents and others campaigned for the Estate to be preserved. The idea eventually gained the support of the Federal Government and, particularly, Tom Uren, the Whitlam Government’s Minister for Urban and Regional Development.

In April 1974, the Commonwealth Government purchased the Glebe Estate from the Church of England for $17.5 million. The Estate was intended to become an important experiment in urban rehabilitation – restoring existing houses rather than demolishing them and displacing their residents.

The Glebe Project began in 1974. Its aim was to repair and modernise the houses while retaining the historic streetscapes and, importantly, the existing community. The work continued into the 1970s and 1980s, although the defeat of the Whitlam Government and subsequent changes in funding meant that the original timetable could not be achieved.

In 1985, the Glebe Estate was transferred from the Commonwealth to the NSW Department of Housing, which continued the rehabilitation program.

The survival of the Glebe Estate is now regarded as an important example of urban conservation: historic houses were rehabilitated rather than demolished, and a long-established community was able to remain in place.