The Gladesville area was home to Indigenous Australians before European settlement. Evidence of their presence can still be found in the area, for example rock carvings and grinding grooves that can be seen in Glades Bay Park, overlooking Glades Bay.

The area was first called Doody’s Bay when European settlement began with a land grant being made to convict artist, John Doody in 1795. Others to receive grants in the district were William House (1795), Ann Benson (1796) and Charles Raven (1799). By 1836, John Glade, an emancipist, was issued with the deeds to Doody’s grant, which he had purchased in 1817. Glade expanded his property with the purchase of a number of adjoining holdings. After John Glade’s death in 1848, his land was sold to a Sydney solicitor, Mr W. Billyard, who subsequently subdivided and sold the land in November 1855, naming it Gladesville.[4]

A major milestone in the development of the suburb was the establishment of the Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum in 1838,[5] on the banks of the Parramatta River. It was the first purpose-built mental asylum in New South Wales. Much of the architecture was designed by Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis and built between 1836 and 1838. In 1869 it became the Gladesville Hospital for the Insane, and in 1915 the Gladesville Mental Hospital. In 1993, it was amalgamated with Macquarie Hospital to form the Gladesville Macquarie Hospital. In 1997, inpatient services were consolidated at Macquarie Hospital at North Ryde. The Gladesville complex includes many buildings which are listed on the New South Wales State Heritage Register and the (now defunct) Register of the National Estate.  (Wikipedia)