By George

George St in 2024. Photo: Trent van der Jagt

After campaigning for the retention of heritage fabric in this heritage suburb — specifically a pub and an impressively large chimney — this instalment of the Terrace Detective sees your trusty local historian back on the case of whether some terraces have names. After a request from the editor, we have selected George St as the survey site for the first column of 2024.

George St is a small street that runs from the north side of Oxford St through to Underwood St and, as a small street, shouldn’t be as susceptible to the risk of an entire street renumbering as we examined in previous editions of the Terrace Detective. But — spoiler alert — we might get something even better.

In our previous columns we touched on why some terraces had or have names. During the early days of Paddington’s development, it was often unclear how many houses were going to be built on a street. House names were therefore invaluable in working out who lived where before the street numbers were finally allocated. They can help personalise houses that were often built in groups.

George St in 1979. Photo courtesy: Woollahra Council

We will once again call on the local historian's toolkit — the Sands Postal Directory (available online via the City of Sydney archives) as well as the National Library of Australia’s Trove website to see if we can learn more about George St in its earliest days.

As per established Terrace Detective lore, it is preferable to do a visual inspection before hitting the online resources — just to get the bearings and familiarise yourself with distinct terrace groups.

On the east side we have four distinct terrace groups (of four, five, eight and six terraces) that are neatly in order from numbers 1 to 45. On the west side we have the impressively large group of 10 terraces from 2 through to 20 (presently under a single development application) then a gap to 24. It seems as if the numberers assumed another terrace would be built in what appears to be a driveway (terraces on both sides under renovation).

Twenty-four George St is part of a group of five, then we have what looks like three single terraces with the last, at 38, a modern build that can only be about 10 years old as I remember kicking the bricks at an open house when it was a single story cottage — good buying whoever owns that one.

I’m now ready to hit the Sands, and readers, it is coming up blank on George St. I start in 1890, then move to 1895 and then 1901 and all offer nothing. Perhaps George St was a late subdivision of an estate on Oxford St?

There is a big house listed (Sea-View Villa) visible from the footpath on the western side but it had become a college by the 1880s (a girls’ school in 'Paddington Heights'), so I had suspected it must have been subdivided by then. By 1905, I’m beginning to think of something we haven’t come across in our columns to date. Is this a street renaming?

Modern day George St. Photo: Trent van der Jagt

How are we supposed to work this out? Well, if you ever search the Sands Directory you will notice it includes cross-street references so you can work out where you are on a street. I page down to Oxford St, find the north side and slowly make my way east past William St, past Elizabeth St, past Leicester St ... wait Leicester? We have it. I put a variety of search terms into Trove using 'Leicester/George/Paddington/Council/renaming', and start getting some hits in 1916 — when Paddington council agreed to change the name.

It turns out Leicester St is one of Paddington’s oldest streets. One of the 11 streets officially gazetted by the NSW Government in 1865. In fact, when gazetted, Oxford St had not been renamed, and so officially, Leicester St ran from Old South Head Rd to Underwood St.

But by 1916 its time was up. The Daily Telegraph reported in January 1916 that alderman McNamara — in a fit of patriotic zeal — had proposed to rename Leicester St as Anzac St. Remember, the Gallipoli landings had only occurred in April 1915. McNamara's rationale was to avoid the confusion with the nearby Leinster St, where mail was apparently regularly misdirected.

The rest of the council couldn’t be convinced of the enduring merits of Anzac and instead settled on George in honour of the late alderman George who had served on Paddington council and whose son had perished at Gallipoli.

34 George St in 1982. Photo courtesy Woollahra Council

There were some complaints after the change was approved that Paddington council, in seeking to reduce confusion between Leicester and Leinster, had now added the 40th instance of a George St into Sydney.

Perhaps present residents would like to petition Woollahra Council to revert to Leicester, or even Anzac.

With that street naming issue solved I can dive back into the Sands Directory. There are numbers and no house names in 1901, so we move a decade earlier to 1890. This gives up some names on the east side. The Tivoli Terrace from 1 through 7 (four houses) just before Tivoli St and the Shirley Terrace from 19 through 33.

The numbering on the west side looks complete so I will move into the 1880s. The 1889 listing confirms the numbering of both the Tivoli Terrace (1 through 4) and the 1887 listing gives us Shirley Terrace (1 through 8) but doesn’t give me anything on the west side.

In 1887 we get our first hit on the west side, with the butcher Thomas E. Jarrett residing at Glenthorne (number 26). Although it turns out that wasn’t the first name of this house, originally the group of five terraces (now numbers 24 to 32) were known as the Jarrett Terrace in the 1880 Sands.

I didn’t have any luck in Sands with the big group of 10 terraces on the east side (from number 2 to 20) so I headed to Trove. My first discovery here was the etymology of the Tivoli terrace group. Tivoli, a 'handsome cottage residence with grounds, half an acre extent, at the junction of the South Head Rd and Leicester St' was advertised for sale in a June 1869 edition of The Sydney Morning Herald. My guess is that this handsome cottage was sacrificed by an 1880s property developer who threw up the Tivoli terraces and the pair that face Oxford St.

Trove also gives up the large terrace group via the family notices in the Herald. An 1882 birth notice and a 1885 birth notice both list residences at Camden Terrace in Leicester St. Cross referencing those names to Sands confirms that both Vincent Coghlan, clerk, and James Jones, tailor, lived on the western side of Leicester in this group.

The Camden terraces made appearances in other advertising including to-let and rooms for board as well as the business card section of the classifieds where such classics as 'Madame Olivette, Phrenologist, Medium of the Future' practiced from 20 Leicester in 1887 and Dr Burdett, 'surgeon of Himalaya' advertised his pills that removed all sickness and complaints, from 10 Leicester in 1882.

By that time Dr Burdett was marketing his own brand of pills — but he had earlier spent time in prison from complications relating to his sale of Widow Welsh’s pills. These were apparently well known abortion pills that were openly sold despite questionable legal status. He was convicted in 1873 and spent eight years in penal servitude.

So we’ve named four out of the six terrace groups and Trove has one more to give up. There are scattered references to Glanmire terraces in 1883 (a birth announcement at 3 Glanmire Tce), in 1886 (a furniture auction at 1 Glanmire Tce) and in 1888 (a robbery at 3 Glanmire Tce). Sadly, none of the references have enough details to corroborate with the Sands.

With some trepidation I decide to search the Paddington Municipal Rate Books held by Woollahra Council. These handwritten records are available online in PDF form though they are reasonably difficult to decipher. The 1886-87 rate book provides some good clues. The first is that Edward Fairfax (yes, one of those Fairfaxes) owned both groups of terraces either side of Tivoli St. It turns out he had purchased the Tivoli cottage and funded the subdivision and development.

Could this mean that both the group of four and the group of five terraces were collectively the Tivoli Terrace? Further down the east side of Leicester the group of six terraces had only been half built by 1886 — but I’ve only seen references to 1 and 3 Glanmire Tce.

Switching to street view I think we have cracked the case. The terraces on either side of Tivoli St are identical in construction. Looking back at the 1888 Sands it shows the numbering of Tivoli Terrace straddles the street (and shows 7 and 8 Tivoli) which means the Glanmire Terrace has to be what is now 35 to 45 George St.

Readers, we have every terrace group identified. That can only mean one thing. Case closed.

There’s more history on George (Leicester) St. I had planned to cover a famous/infamous Paddington landlord in this column but we will save her for another day.