Church Rescue Home

The Church Rescue Home was established in Darlinghurst in 1885. It opened as a home for women, though that included girls over the age of 14, who undertook laundry work. The Home moved several times before two buildings, ‘Strathmore’ and ‘Sunnyside’, were purchased in Glebe in 1899. In 1903 an adjacent building ‘Avona’ was purchased, and a girls’ home was opened. Many girls were sent to Avona from the children’s courts and were trained in domestic service, as well as reading and writing if they couldn’t already.

On 11^th August 1908, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that in the last year 161 women and girls had been admitted, with 54 for Avona and 107 for Strathmore. They also reported that the average number of people accommodated was 90 between the two homes, and children were sent to other institutions, hospital, as well as returned to their own homes after staying there.

In 1907 the site was expanded with a new home built alongside Strathmore and Avona as a training home for girls, it formally opened as Tress-Manning Home on 9^th August 1909. At the time of its opening The Star reported “Strathmore,” which is one of the three, buildings attached to the Rescue Home, shelters the women, who do laundry work, while “Tress-Manning” is for young girls, who make lace, cane chairs, do wood-carving, and make underclothing, and “Avona” is for the younger children.

In 1914, The Sydney Morning Herald, reported that 140 women and girls were living across the three homes and were divided by age. Avona was for girls aged 3 to 14, Tress-Manning for girls 14 to 16 years, and Strathmore for women. The laundry work undertaken as Strathmore was also stated as enabling the homes to be mainly self-supporting, with the assistance of public subscriptions. Donations and other fundraising efforts by the Committee such as fetes were key.

In December 1917, The Daily Telegraph reported that Tress-Manning was for “uncontrollable girls”, while “very little girls were seen happily at play” at Avona, and older girls were taught lacemaking and woodwork including re-caning chairs and carving items for the church such as chairs, the holy table and prayer desk.

A fourth building known as ‘Arden’ was purchased in 1918 on the same site and opened in August 1919 as another girl’s home for girls aged six to 18. This building was also used as an administrative block. A decision was made at this time to transfer girls from the children’s home in Carlingford to Glebe, allowing for the Home in Carlingford to become a home specifically for boys.

In 1921 the Church of England Girls’ Home at Glebe was granted 5 shillings per week for every orphan in its care by the NSW Government. The Home was impacted by the influenza pandemic with many children and staff unwell, and two children dying.

In February 1923, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that Strathmore had converted from being a rescue home for women and officially opened as an additional Home for Girls. This would increase the number of girls able to live in Church Rescue Home by 50. This meant that all homes on this site were now operating as girls’ homes.

On 10 December 1925, The Sydney Morning Herald reported that 150 girls lived at the homes in Glebe Point. As part of a Christmas appeal for gifts noted that children were “either orphans, destitute, or needy children…[and] numbers of them are children of men who made the great sacrifice in the Great War”.

By 1927, the Church of England Children’s Homes committee began to have conversations about closing the Homes in Glebe and transferring all the girls to the Carlingford site, so it could be collocated with the boy’s home. In August 1929, the Evening News reported that the final girls were being transferred to the Mary McGarvey Home for Girls at Carlingford. The Child Rescue Home and all four buildings were vacant from September 1929.