By Caroline Lipovsky, Bulletin 10/2025, December
In 1883, Adolphus and Phoebe Rogalsky had a house erected at 21 Hereford Street (currently 51 Hereford Street), which Adolphus named Lask after his birthplace — see Bulletin 2/2025 article about the early history of 51 Hereford St.
A map of the Glebe dated 1887 shows the location of Lask (second house from left) between Hereford Street and Hereford Lane (currently Wigram Lane), together with an outside toilet and servant quarters. The land north of the property is vacant.
In 1905, Adolphus and Phoebe moved to 50 Bayswater Road, Darlinghurst, where Adolphus passed away shortly after.
In 1908, Phoebe, her two sons David Mitchell and Julian Cecil, and Ernest Meyer Mitchell (Phoebe’s cousin), bought the land at the rear of the property. A Glebe municipality map dated 1910 (below) shows a tennis court in that area.
More tennis courts were eventually built at the rear of the properties to the east. They became known as the Hereford Tennis Club. This is where future champion Lew Hoad (1934–1994), who lived at 43 Wigram Road, hit his first tennis balls. The area shaded pink in the 1939 Glebe municipality map is the location of the four courts, while the area shaded green is the Hoad family house.
In 1959, the Rogalskys sold their property to James John Curtin, a labourer.
In the early 1960s, James Curtin submitted a few projects to Council for the then unused tennis court area, but didn’t proceed.
In 1963, the site of the former tennis court at the rear of Lask started being used as a bottle yard by 64-year old Arthur Percy Holden, a resident of 94 City Road, Chippendale, who paid £1 in weekly rent to James Curtin. Arthur had been a lift driver for over 20 years but now collected bottles around the Glebe area and sold them to a Mr Moon each Thursday.
Today, a bottle-o means a bottle shop that sells liquor, but originally it meant a man such as Arthur Percy Holden who collected and traded used bottles.
Complaints were received at Glebe Town Hall from surrounding residents regarding the use and nuisance arising from the unauthorised use of the land, as it was zoned residential. A Council inspection of the land on the 7 April 1965 disclosed that ‘bottles, scrap iron, derelict motor bodies and old rags were stored on the land’. Another inspection dated 31 August of the same year revealed ‘two stacks of empty fruit cases […] one stack of timber bottle cases filled with bottles […] and a very small amount of scrap iron’.
Legal proceedings were instituted against Arthur Percy Holden for using the land for storage without Council approval. Two sessions were held at the Central C
ourt of Petty Sessions, Liverpool Street, in December 1965 and February 1966 and the matter went before Court in March. Prosecution, however, was felt to be unwarranted, since the unauthorised use had ceased, the land had been cleared, and Mr Holden was ‘an old state pensioner in a poor state of health’. Indeed, Counsel stated that ‘from the apparent scope of activity of the defendant this may seem like using a steamroller to crush an ant’.
Arthur died in 1978 aged 79.
Sources
City of Sydney Archives and History Resources. Historical Atlas. Accessed from https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/pages/historicalatlas
City of Sydney Archives and History Resources. Wigram Lane rear 51 Hereford St Glebe. Unauthorised use of land as a bottle yard, 1965. Accessed from https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/1016045
Hoad, Jenny and Pollard, Jack (2002). My life with Lew. Harper Collins Australia: Sydney.
Acknowledgements
My gratitude to Rodney Hammett for his input.
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