Glennie’s work not forgotten
Tribute paid to pioneering Reverend
IT WAS 170 years ago today that Reverend Benjamin Glennie stood before a congregation of early pioneers at the Royal Bulls Head Inn at Drayton and held the Church of England’s first service on the Darling Downs.
Over the weekend, crowds turned out for an open day at The Royal Bulls Head Inn to recognise Reverend Glennie’s impact on the region’s development.
Described as a “tremendous worker”, Reverend Glennie was instrumental in establishing the congregations and churches of St Matthew’s Drayton, St Mark’s Warwick, and St Luke’s Toowoomba. He also began a collection towards founding St John’s in Dalby.
While religion was his main motivator, he also had great concern for education.
After the National School in Drayton closed in 1855 due to lack of a teacher, Reverend Glennie started a Schools Endowment Fund by collecting donations and selling vegetables and fruit from his own garden.
By 1882, four years before he retired, Reverend Glennie had amassed 627 pounds, which the diocese used to purchase “a magnificent site of 12 and a half acres in Herries St” – the future site of The Glennie School.
After his death in 1900, the fund became known as the Glennie Memorial School Fund.
Organised by the Toowoomba Branch of the National Trust of Australia, the day saw parishioners and Reverend Bill Watson and Archdeacon of the Downs Mark Carlyon, both dressed as Reverend Glennie, re-enact walking to the inn, as the original settlers would have done all those years ago.