The Australian Women's Register

Glynde Nesta Griffiths – always known as Nesta – was the daughter of London-born merchant Frederick Close Griffiths and his wife Annette Agnes. Nesta and her sister Gwendolen were raised at Point Piper, near Sydney. Neither married, and they lived together at Bellevue Hill from 1929 until their deaths, just five months apart, in 1968.

The Griffiths sisters (known ‘affectionately and disrespectfully as the Griffs’ according to Helen Rutledge) were members of the Royal Sydney Golf Club. Passionate about family history and heritage, they supported the National Trust and Nesta was a member of the Royal Australian Historical Society. Her books on southern and northern homes in New South Wales were sometimes self-published and not well edited, but their value lies in the author’s personal acquaintance with her subjects.

The sisters, who had received little inheritance, came to live quite comfortably thanks to a number of Gwendolen’s shrewd investments on the stock market. Both made significant contributions to Sir Lorimer Dods’ Children’s Medical Research Foundation during their lifetimes. In her will, Gwendolen provided for Dods’ grandchildren, while Nesta bequeathed her residual estate – valued at $300,000 – to the Foundation itself.