By Lyn Collingwood, Bulletin 2/2024, April

In 1898-9, the widowed Christina Clark bought two lots in the Toxteth House Estate from George Boyce Allen, together with right-of-way access to their rear on the northern side of Arcadia Road. Like other Toxteth Park subdivisions, a caveat stipulated that any new structures were to be of stone or brick and for private, not commercial, use. By the turn of the century, two-storey semi-detached 12 and 14 Arcadia Road were completed. In 1904, Christina’s elder son bought land adjacent to his mother’s property. Here, he built 16 Arcadia Road, a more modest residence. The three houses remained in the Clark family’s possession for decades. 

Christina Clark and her shipwright husband Robert had migrated from Peterhead, Scotland, to Sydney by 1868 when their daughter Sarah was born (she died the following year). Mary and James were also born in the colony. The couple’s other children were Jane, Robert and Eliza Hutchinson and Margaret May. 

Robert Clark senior died aged 54 on 24 October 1891. His widow survived until 31 August 1921, dying at age 81 at Cambridge, Cavendish Street, Stanmore. Both were buried in Waverley Cemetery, the final resting place of other members of the family. 

After Christina’s death, joint ownership of 12 and 14 Arcadia Road passed to her sons. The titles were split in 1928. 

Christina Clark’s descendants

JANE CLARK. Born c. 1866 and known as Jenny, she married accountant John Albert Aubin in 1886. John Charlton was born the next year, followed by Clement Norman in 1889, twins Hilda Jane and Wilfred Oswald in 1891 (Wilfred died as a baby), and Vera Dorothy in 1901. The couple bought a small lot in Section 9 of the Lyndhurst College Estate but do not appear to have built there. They lived at Chatswood (John Aubin was a Willoughby Council alderman) before settling at Valencia, 3 Toxteth Road, Glebe, where Jane died on 25 February 1937.

In Melbourne in 1925, Jane’s daughter Vera divorced Charles Frederick Tall, her senior by 33 years. The annulment was quickly obtained on the grounds that Tall was an uncle by marriage; Vera reverted to her maiden name. 

ROBERT CLARK. Born c. 1867, Robert lived with his mother, sister Margaret and brother James in 14 Arcadia Road before his marriage to Catherine Hutchison at Wallsend in 1903. Three years later, the couple moved into newly-built number 16, where they raised their two sons (Robert Pratt and George Hutchison, born in 1904 and 1906, respectively) and where they lived before shifting to 17 Avenue Road, a house purchased by Catherine Clark in 1926. Robert senior, a timekeeper, died at age 67 at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital on 23 August 1934. His widow inherited 16 Arcadia Road. 

Robert Pratt and George Hutchison were State civil servants. The former joined the Police Department in 1921 as a junior clerk; in 1930, he was transferred to the Road Transport Office. George worked in the Registrar-General’s Department. 

In 1957, Catherine Clark transferred both 17 Avenue Road and 16 Arcadia Road to her elder son. In 1960, the latter property was sold to Walter Hudson Chislett,* and his wife Lillian Maud, ending the Clarks’ near six-decade connection. Robert Pratt Clark died in 1982, after which Robert Earl Stuart Clark became the new owner of 17 Avenue Road. 

ELIZA HUTCHINSON CLARK. In 1898, Eliza married locksmith Charles Frederick Tall in St Andrew’s Cathedral. Their daughter Dorothy Edna was born in Glebe three years later. A year after Eliza’s death at Manly in 1923, her 56-year-old widower wed her 23-year-old niece. The marriage was soon annulled. Tall died in 1941. 

MARY CLARK. Born in Sydney in 1870, Mary married shipwright Joseph Bilbe in 1897. They settled at Drummoyne. In 1928, Mary became the new owner of 12 Arcadia Road. Following her death on 16 March 1946, the property was transferred to the eldest of her four sons: Leslie Thomas Bilbe, Senior Inspector of Plant Diseases with the NSW Department of Agriculture. 

In 1956, 12 Arcadia Road’s connection with the Clark family ceased when Leslie Bilbe sold the property to tram conductor Alfredo Sulligoi and his wife Valeria. Until 2003 the couple were documented as occupants of the house, which, for most of its life, had been rented out. (Surveyor’s assistant Arthur Barrell Faunce and his descendants were there from 1910 until at least 1940.) 

The Sulligois had arrived in Australia from Italy in 1954 on the Toscana with their young son Livio. Educated at Fort Street Boys’ High and a BSc graduate of the University of Sydney, Livio joined the Glebe Society in 1979. 

MARGARET MAY CLARK. Known as Maggie, Margaret lived with her mother at 14 Arcadia Road before her marriage in 1908 to Alfred Sydney Sawyer. The wedding, at St Enoch’s Presbyterian Church, Newtown, was written up in the newspapers. Margaret Sawyer died at Marrickville in 1964.

JAMES CLARK. Christina’s youngest child was born in Sydney in 1872. His given occupation was ‘ruler’. James lived at 14 Arcadia Road with his mother, sister Maggie and brother Robert before his marriage in 1905 to Ellen Florence Taylor. When he inherited 12 and 14 Arcadia Road jointly with his brother in 1922, James was working as a hairdresser. For a period in the 1920s, 14 Arcadia Road was known as Ravenscraig and during the Depression it was sublet. In 1933, a tenant Mrs Elsie Gorman won first prize of £5,000 in a State lottery. 

Survived by his wife and three daughters, James died on 14 June 1934 at what was then numbered 351 Glebe Point Road. The given occupation of both Ellen and James was ‘residential proprietor’. James’ widow subsequently married David William James at Marrickville, and died aged 67 on 21 April 1947.

In 1935, 14 Arcadia Road was put up for auction and bought for £1,075 by Ellen Clark’s nieces-in-law Hilda and Vera Aubin, who continued to rent it out. Following the sisters’ deaths in 1977 and 1978, the house was sold to milk vendor Leon Claude Gadge in 1980, severing an eight-decade connection with the Clark family. (In 2014, the four-bedroom residence was bought for just under $2 million.)

* Walter Chislett was the son of ‘Old Chis’, curator of the University of Sydney Oval from 1879 until his death in 1933. 

Sources: National Archives of Australia; NSW cemetery records; NSW electoral rolls; NSW Land Titles Office; NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages; NSW State Records; Sands Directories; Trove website.