ACT Heritage Library Manuscript Collections

HMSS 0411 Recycled Canberra : Acton Football Club 

Scope and Content Notes 

Recycled Canberra was a community project managed by the ACT Regional Studies Network. The aim was to collect, consolidate and make available from 1996 information about reused buildings and objects in the Canberra region. It was expected that in addition to plentiful government records, clear local memories stretching back 80 years to the naming of Canberra should help discover what came into Canberra, where it is now, and what has been lost or taken away.

A 1996 working document, under the name Recycled and Reused Canberra: an informal historical guide to what has been reused, re-located and renamed in Canberra, from about 1913, is held in the Canberra Stories Group Records.

This is a registration form with accompanying photographs, completed by Ralphe Clothier of Narrabundah in 1995, as an indication of intent to acquire more information for registration purposes. The building was then the Queanbeyan/Acton Football Club rooms in Franklin Street, Manuka, which were constructed from material from the demolition of Glebe House ca 1954. The club rooms were built to provide a permanent home in lieu of earlier clubrooms on York Park directly opposite the Hotel Wellington. The information came from Reg Watson, the building contractor, and the Club Committee.

The collection consists of the registration form, two colour prints of the front of the building, showing the name of the premises as Watson House, with “Acton Football Club” mounted on a brick wall to the right of the entrance, and an unnamed and undated photocopy of what is almost certainly a photograph of the demolition of Glebe House, the former Rectory for St John the Baptist Anglican church, Reid.