Church of England Training Home for Girls

The Church of England Training Home for Girls opened on the 9th August 1909 as a Home for girls between the ages of 14 and 16. The Home, also known as the Tress-Manning Home, was built at Forsyth Street, Glebe, on a site between the Church Rescue Home for Women (Strathmore) and the Church of England Girls Home (Avona). The home was established with the intention of separating the older girls from the younger girls under the care of the Church of England Homes. The first girls in residence were moved there from Avona. Other girls, often described disparagingly in newspaper articles as “uncontrollable”, were sent to Tress-Manning through the Children’s Court.

An article published in the Sydney Morning Herald on the opening of the home described it as follows:

“The home is cheerful and bright looking. There is a pretty little chapel, in which the Communion table and reading desk have been carved by the pupils in the home. Upstairs there are two dormitories, in one of which four cubicles have been placed… It is intended that the cubicles shall be allotted to girls as rewards for good behaviour.” (‘Church Rescue Home’ published in The Daily Telegraph, 10 August 1909)

Girls at Tress-Manning were trained in housework with the intention of sending them to work in domestic service once leaving the Home. They were also taught handcrafts such as lace-making, sewing, chair-caning, and wood-carving, as well as singing. Items produced by the girls at both Tress-Manning and Avona, in particular the lace-work, was sold to support the home financially, however the primary source of income for all three homes on the Glebe site came from laundry work done by women living at the Church Rescue Home at Strathmore. This work appears to have been carried out consistently throughout the operation of the home.

On 24 August 1911 the Sydney Morning Herald reported in an article titled ‘Rescue Homes’ that there were 30 girls in residence at the Tress-Manning Home. The same article also reported that the Committee for the homes were unhappy that legally girls could leave Tress-Manning and return to their parents once they had reached the age of 16, and were petitioning the NSW Premier to raise the age to 18. Despite the stated belief of the matron that families, specifically siblings, should be kept together, she also believed that parents of girls at the home were “unworthy” of regaining custody of their child (as described in a Daily Telegraph article titled ‘Church Rescue Work’ on 16 September 1911). The committee’s petitions to the Premier were not immediately successful, and the age that children could legally leave ‘care’ remained 16 until 1923, when the Child Welfare Act raised it to 18.

In 1928 the Church of England Homes committee opened a new Girls’ Home at Carlingford. This new site allowed for an increase in the number of children admitted to the homes, as well as what was seen as a healthier environment in the country, compared to the city location of Glebe. From 1928 the girls were transferred from Avona, Strathmore, and Tress Manning to the new Girls’ Home. Tress-Manning closed in 1929, when the last of the girls were transferred to Carlingford.