By members of the Heritage Subcommittee, August 2025, from Bulletin 6/2025

Subcommittee membership

The subcommittee meets from 7 pm to 9 pm on the first Monday of the month and any Glebe Society (TGS) member who shares a passion for the enhancement and preservation of Glebe and Forest Lodge’s proud history is welcome to join us.

Our 2025 members: Jude Paul (chair), Lydia Bushell, Wayne Carveth, Margaret Cody, Lyn Collingwood, Rodney Hammett, Robert Hannan, Allan Hogan, Caroline Lipovsky, Margaret Sankey and Ted McKeown. We mourn the loss of our key member and good friend Ian Stephenson.  

Our primary interests: investigating the impact of local and State heritage controls on Glebe and Forest Lodge; researching and documenting the history of our suburb; informing and supporting the community in the appreciation of our history and heritage. 

Three people addressed us during the year: Lyn Milton re TGS Archives; Sarah Fogg re making the Glebe Society website easier to navigate; and Fiona Campbell re City of Sydney Council (CoS) helping people with heritage properties. 

Development Applications (DAs)

Each week, Rodney checks the CoS website for DAs in Glebe and Forest Lodge and circulates a summary to the Heritage Subcommittee identifying any specific heritage issues that warrant further advice and potential action. In the past year there have been 107 DAs submitted for Glebe and Forest Lodge. Members are encouraged to write their own submissions to CoS if they have concerns about proposed developments. Rodney, Brian Fuller and Tim Hesketh are currently developing guidelines to help them do this. 

Recently CoS issued for comment its proposed amendments to Section 3.9 (Heritage) of the Sydney DCP (Development Control Plan) 2012. Rodney and Brian worked their way through these amendments to prepare a response which TGS submitted. Of major concern was the possibility of CoS agreeing to heritage impact statements not being required in some circumstances. TGS stressed that if this occurred a transparent process is essential and that the decision should be able to be challenged.

Community engagement

Enquiries from the public come to the subcommittee via email (to heritage@glebesociety.org.au or history@glebesociety.org.au) and via the Society’s website. Those making contact include family history researchers, students wanting help with their history project and people seeking information about properties they have purchased. Others share their own stories (e.g. a brothel in Allen Street) and pictures (e.g. John Lucas’ cottage which was demolished when the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children was built on his land, although unfortunately the photo is very grainy). There were several enquiries about Sir Henry Parkes’ third wife Julia whose story was told in the Bulletin 3/2016. 

In the main, Rodney and Lyn deal with the correspondence. A few of the items investigated:  

  • information re John Grahame who died in 1852 at Sherborne Lodge. Reply: Grahame was renting one of the ‘Gothic Cottages’ on the corner of Glebe Point and Bridge Roads.  He was buried in the churchyard of the original St Stephen’s, Camperdown.
  • the address of the Methodist rectory where a marriage took place in 1911. Reply: 81 Arundel Street, Forest Lodge. 
  • anything on The Poplars? Photo and information provided re the demolished mansion near today’s Bellevue on Leichhardt Street.
  • anything on James Henry Mills?  Photos and information provided re the missionary who worked in the Glebe–Pyrmont district for 35 years.
  • furniture being disposed of by descendants of the Blacket family. Disappointingly, the items proved to be much later than Edmund Blacket’s lifetime.
This photo was sent to us by the grandson of one of Faire Featherstone’s (centre) bridesmaids. Faire Featherstone (centre) was a society hostess who lived at Llangollen 12 Leichhardt Street.

Some queries led to hours of investigation:  

  • location of Birrview in Hereford Street? Provided were the current location of Birrview (number 44), the likely architect/builder (Reuss) and details of the Warburton family including George E Warburton who purchased the vacant lot in 1876.
  • looking for the history of 54 Bridge Road. The history of ownership and occupants was provided.
  • where was Owen Street in Glebe? ‘Owen’ turned out to be a mistaken transcription of ‘Avon’. Research followed on the lives of the families who lived at 1 and 3 Avon Street.
  • a request for information on Glebe’s history led to a fascinating story of memories of living at 18 Derwent Street in the 1970s.

Some queries still need answers, if anyone can help:

  • photos of demolished Garfield Flats 148 Bridge Road.
  • photos of the original house at 2 Mt Vernon Street. 
  • information about the Sydney Textile Museum, 172 St Johns Road. 
  • the location of Lolita’s cafe. CoS Archives has photos of its interior.

Contributions to the Bulletin

The monthly Mystery Photo continued as a challenge for readers to identify a location or event in Glebe or Forest Lodge. Lyn wrote Who lived/worked in your street? articles on the histories of Australian Feather Mills at 40A Glebe Street and the Gleebooks building at 49 Glebe Point Road; plus biographies of Soviet spy Wally Clayton, political activist Stephen Gould, manual workers James and Samuel Haslam, ice skater Pat Gregory, publican Doris Goddard, and school cleaner and unionist Margaret Colbourne. Caroline contributed a detailed history of 51 Hereford Street. 

Rodney wrote about the Gone and Forgotten houses that were demolished for the Anchorage Apartments; edited the memories of living at 18 Derwent Street in the 1970s; wrote about the Young, Kay, Wilkins and Chadwick families who owned and lived at 1 and 3 Avon Street; and provided a pub test based on his research on all of the pubs in Glebe and Forest Lodge.

Jude’s How I got to Glebe were ‘living histories’ of Lydia Bushell and Duncan Leys. 

Blue Plaques

The plaque commemorating journalist Dorothy Drain has been installed at 52 Toxteth Road and two more nominations have been successful: cartoonist Les Tanner and activist Bessie Guthrie.  

Bessie Guthrie was one of the women who declared squatters’ rights over abandoned houses at 73-75 Westmoreland Street and set up Elsie, Australia’s first refuge for women and children escaping domestic violence. Elsie, nominated by us for a Blue Plaque, has been recognised by a State Heritage Register plaque. Bessie’s Blue Plaque will be installed at 97 Derwent Street where she lived for most of her life. 

Heritage education  

Following meetings with representatives from TGS, the Millers Point Community Resident Action Group and the Paddington Society, proposals were put to CoS to support residents with heritage properties, thereby providing proactive and longer-term ways of protecting and promoting built heritage rather than only at the DA stage or later. Other councils have excellent websites to help residents who want to maintain their buildings while respecting their heritage values. Fiona Campbell and Ted McKeown are following up a 2021 Lord Mayoral commitment to ‘review the City’s website so that the City’s heritage information resources are more easily found and understood’.

Heritage maintenance

  • Bidura: The subcommittee is alert for any delay in completing the work which has finally begun on Edmund Blacket’s house. 
  • Forest Lodge School’s retaining wall: Ted has been addressing this problem for over a decade. In 2014 the heritage sandstone wall was stabilised with metal bracing, in contrast to the remediation of its counterpart on the corner of 229 Bridge Road (commissioned and paid for by CoS in 2012). At issue is whether the wall sits within or outside the school’s boundary. If the former, responsibility is assumed to lie with the Department of Education.
  • Railway viaduct at Wentworth Park: The deteriorating brickwork is another ongoing problem addressed by Ted. The responsible party is Transdev.
  • Bernard and Kate Smith photographic collection: Caroline has systematically worked through the photos to verify the captions.
  • The subcommittee is keeping an eye on what is happening with the buildings that housed iconic Glebe businesses Badde Manors and Different Drummer.

Heritage Strategy

The State Government issued a Draft NSW Heritage Strategy, comments on which could be submitted by 13 July. The Draft Strategy is both simplistic and complex which required considerable effort from Ted McKeown, Fiona Campbell, Brian Fuller and Rodney Hammett to prepare TGS’s submission by the due date. In summary TGS was generally supportive but drew the Government’s attention to:

  • demolition by owners should be actively discouraged in favour of adaptive reuse of heritage buildings and structures.
  • the NSW Government should develop clear guidelines for local Councils in identifying, managing and regulating local heritage, with particular reference to Heritage Conservation Areas.
  • inaction at various levels of government enables ‘demolition by neglect’ and therefore the NSW Heritage Strategy should not let this occur in the future. An example is the plight of the Glebe Island Bridge, listed on the State Heritage Register and owned by the Government itself.
  • the Draft Strategy does not include measurable goals. For the Strategy to be implemented successfully we believe the timeliness of actions should be measured and reported on.