Jobbins Terrace is a series of heritage-listed terrace houses now repurposed as residences and offices located at 103–111 Gloucester Street, in the inner city Sydney suburb of The Rocks in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1855 to 1857. It is also known as Longs Lane Terraces/Precinct (Jobbin's and Long's). The property is owned by Property NSW, an agency of the Government of New South Wales. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 10 May 2002.
History
In 1807, this site is shown by Meehan's survey to contain a defined building alignment with a lane on the southern boundary. Artists' representations of the area from as early as 1803 up until show close settlement. Maps made in 1823, 1825, 1831, and 1842 show that the present site of the Jobbins Building was occupied by a row of small buildings, set well back from the current alignment of Gloucester Street. The alignment of Long's Lane was already established by the time the earliest of these maps (by Hoddle, 1823) was made. The row of houses fronting Gloucester Street is described in the Council rate assessment book of 1845 as a group of five wooden buildings with shingle roofs, all single storey with two rooms each, in "bad repair." By the time of the next rate assessment, in 1848, one of the buildings had fallen down. The remainder of this group was demolished by 1850, when Wells' map shows a single structure at the corner of Gloucester Street and Long's Lane, on a large block of vacant land. The 1852 rate assessment indicated that the only improvement to the allotment was a timber stable with shingle roof.
From 1839, the subject land, described as Allotment 1, Section 74 of the City of Sydney, was owned by John Jobbins, a convict transported for seven years arriving on the Fanny I in 1816. In 1822, at the expiry of his seven-year sentence, he was listed in the Colonial Secretary's papers as receiving an assigned convict. The 1828 Census lists him as a butcher in Cambridge Street. From 1836 Jobbins settled in the Gundaroo district as a grazier, and built the Nanima homestead in 1839. Jobbins owned the land at Gloucester Street until his death at , Victoria, on 8 January 1855.
In December 1840 Jobbins leased the site, together with a neighbouring allotment across Caraher's Lane, to Edward Flood for a period of 20 years, at an annual rent of £50. It appears that the five timber dwellings in "bad repair" were therefore under the management of Flood, who was perhaps also responsible for erecting the stable on the site by 1850. Shortly after John Jobbins' death in 1855, the executors of his estate oversaw construction of the terrace as an investment. The building was complete by 1858, when Council rate assessment books describe a group of brick terraces with slate roofs, of two floors and seven rooms each. An 1865 MWSDB map shows the earliest form of the buildings: 105 to 111 Gloucester Street with rear wings, 103 to 109 Gloucester Street with rear WC's, and 111 with a rear outbuilding.
The houses have always been leased to tenants, with each tenant generally only staying a few years. Longer-term tenants of note include Anne Lewis, who ran a boarding house at No. 111 between 1861 and 1873; and Sydney Smith, a cab proprietor who occupied 111 Gloucester Street between 1882 and 1897 (making use of the gable-ended outbuilding at the rear of the building). From 1912 until at least the cessation of the Sands Directory in 1933, a grocer's shop occupied the ground floor of No. 111.
The property remained in the hands of the Jobbins family and was managed by a series of agents, whose names are recorded in the Council rate assessment books. In 1864, the property was conveyed to Edward Jobbins of Yass, brother of John Jobbins, in accordance with John Jobbins' will. In 1870, Edward Jobbins made a Deed of Gift of three of the houses in the terrace (Nos. 107–111) to his daughter Mary Ann (a spinster of Gundaroo), and the remaining two (Nos. 103–105) to his son Peter (farmer of Gundaroo). In this deed the houses are referred to as 'commonly called or known as Jobbins Buildings.' About 1874, Peter agreed to convey his two houses to Mary Ann, however, this conveyance was not registered until 1889. Mary Ann held the land until her death on 6 April 1899. In 1902, the NSW Government resumed the land.