Stanley George Millard (photo supplied by his grandson, Ben Shelley)

A right-wing member of the ALP, Stanley George Millard (who went by his middle name, George) was a Leichhardt Municipal Councillor from 1974 until his death in 1983. Since 1986 the Millard Reserve on the intersection of St Johns and Wentworth Park Roads has borne his name. In the same tradition, other Glebe landmarks commemorate Labor aldermen and their relatives: the Ernest Pedersen Steps (earlier known as ‘Monkey Hill’), Foley Rest Park, J V McMahon Reserve, Hilda Booler Kindergarten and the May Pitt and Jean Cawley playgrounds. Plus Walsh and Colbourne Avenues and the William Carlton Gardens.

Born on 12 August 1925 in Surrey England, Stanley George Millard was one of four sons of Mabel née Stilwell and William John Millard, a seaman in the Royal Navy. In 1939, a year after the death of his father, his mother married Charles Arthur Medland, a retired Chief Petty Officer in the Royal Navy. Mabel Medland died in 1946 in Surrey.

George too enlisted in the Royal Navy. On 19 February 1946, at St Aiden’s Anglican Church Annandale, he married 20-year-old Iris Wright, and made Sydney his home. Iris, a Royal Australian Navy recruit, was a stewardess at HMAS Rushcutter. Two months after her marriage she was discharged.

By 1949 the couple were living with Iris’ parents at 157 Johnston St Annandale. (Ernest and Eliza Alice Wright had arrived in Sydney in 1921 as assisted immigrants from Lancashire.) By 1958 George  and Iris had moved from Macquarie Fields to 50 Talfourd St Glebe, and George had changed his occupation from shoe repairer to ‘assistant’. In 1977 the couple were still at 50 Talfourd St but by 1980 George was an ordinance inspector at 1 Lombard St. He was a member of the Municipal Employees’ Union and took an active interest in employee and industrial relations.

Stanley George Millard belonged to the Glebe North Branch of the ALP (called the Toxteth Branch until 1941 and disbanded after the Peter Baldwin bashing in 1980) as did Ivor Cawley. In 1974, 1977 and 1980 both men were elected for the Glebe Ward to Leichhardt Council. They were on the Tree Preservation Committee trying to stop the chopping down of poplars along Glebe Point Rd, and Millard advocated the resumption of Federal Rd and adjoining properties for a park. In 1980 they supported the Glebe Society’s rejection of a DA for the demolition of 43-7 Hereford St and replacement with 37 townhouses. As candidates for re-election that year, they counted among their achievements the establishment of a high school on the old Hudson timber site, and the acquisition by Council of open space including the Woolley St Reserve (formerly a carriers’ depot). Stanley George Millard ‘late of Glebe’ died on 23 August 1983; his widow died in September 2013.

The first known European occupier of what became the Millard Reserve was carrier James Sumner Drew after his Church Hill lease expired in 1889 and he auctioned off draught horses, drays and carts. When Drew moved to Guildford and employment with the Fresh Food and Ice Company, the Glebe block accommodated the stables of carrier and contractor Joseph Field who lived in View House Darghan St, and carrier Thomas Joseph Long who lived with his wife Elsie Minnie at 18 Bellevue St. Most of the Wentworth Park Rd stretch from St Johns Rd to Bridge Rd was occupied by stables, quarrying and the premises of the Sydney Lead Works and the NSW Magic Soap Company.

In 1983 the Glenmore Meat Co., founded in 1967, moved its operations from Paddington to Glebe, a bigger site which could accommodate its catering and carcass sections. Its retail outlet, offering fresh produce at competitive prices, was popular with Glebe locals and the adjacent Millard Reserve a pleasant area for its employees in their white hygiene hairnets to take their meal breaks. Millard Reserve was also a convenient meeting place for protesters against greyhound racing across the road. A feature of the pocket park is the meat company’s exterior brick wall with its iconic bull’s head image.

The Glenmore Meat Co. sign (image: Jude Paul)

POSTSCRIPT. Glenmore Meats has ceased business. In 2017 Fred Newton, one of the firm’s original principals, put up the site for auction. It was sold for $23.58 million to a local Chinese developer, AVP Developments Pty Ltd. In August 2018, DA 2017/1752 was approved: ‘Demolition of the existing building on site and construction of 15 x two storey plus attic level attached dwelling terraces, each with a rear courtyard and access to parking garage’. The approval is valid until August 2023.

Sources: Glebe Society Bulletin 8/1974, 7/1977, 1/1978, 4/1979, 8/1980, 9/1980; Hogan, Michael Local Labor: A History of the Labor Party in Glebe 1891-2003; NSW electoral rolls, NSW telephone directories, Sands Directories, Trove and other websites. Thankyou also to George’s family members, Susan Webb and Ben Shelley for providing important details.