Mount Eagle Estate
Outlook Drive and Summit Drive and Burley Griffin Place and Lower Heidelberg Road and The Eyrie and Maltravers Road EAGLEMONT, BANYULE CITY
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Statement of Significance
The Mount Eagle Estate was the first and most successful of Walter Burley Griffin's estates in Victoria. It was designed to maximise the potential of the sloping site, providing each allotment with a high standard of visual and functional amenity. The irregularly curved streets and the internal parklands were innovative in Victoria at the time.
The street configuration and its terrain, juxtaposed with surrounding grid-iron subdivisions, makes the estate readily identifiable as a visual entity, enhanced by later mature private gardens and street planting. The planting and buildings date mainly from the period 1930-70.
Pre-dating the subdivision, Mount Eagle was the focal point in the founding of the Heidelberg School of Impressionist Art; the site of the 'Eaglemont School' being within the estate. Of local historical and landscape significance are the remnant 19th century trees which have been reinforced by subsequent exotic planting, predominantly evergreen.
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Mount Eagle Estate - Physical Description 1
The Mount Eagle Estate comprises of a variety of housing styles, both one and two-storey, predominantly built after World War One. Walter Burley Griffin's layout comprised wide winding streets with pockets of hidden central parkland, accessible to local residents. There are two large parks and one small park in the Estate. The rear of many of the properties open out onto these parks. The houses are of diverse construction dates.
The following buildings from the Mount Eagle Estate have individual datasheets in the Banyule Heritage Places Study, Building Citations, Vol 2, Parts 1 & 2 (1997).
. 12 Outlook Drive (1937-38)
. Innisfail, 25-27 Outlook Drive (1927-28)
. Skipper House, 45 Outlook Drive (1928)
. 49 Outlook Drive (1947)
Mount Eagle Estate - Physical Description 2
Landscape
The landscape of the Mount Eagle Estate is independent of the estate's layout. Much of its mature planting, both in private gardens and street planting, pre-dates the subdivision.
Outlook and Glen Drives
An example of pre-estate planting is at the corner of Outlook and Glen Drives where two Bunya Bunya Pines (Araucaria bidwilli) in the gardens of 11 and 15 Outlook Drive are part of a larger group consisting of Bhutan Cypress (Cupressus torulosa) at 11 Outlook Drive, various conifers at 2 Glen Drive. All have been planted, with the exception of the Bunya Bunyas and a Maritime Pine (Pinus pinaster) at 15 Outlook Drive, which predate the associated houses (c.1930).
Municipal planting in the median reinforces this exotic character. The archetypal Agapanthus (Agapanthus orientalis) surround a central Lilly Pilly tree (Acmena smithii) within a median plot. Other Lilly Pillys, in nearby gardens, rockeries at the frontages and rockery plants contribute to a garden-street character which pervades Mount Eagle.
Further west along Glen Drive, a wild thicket of Elms leads into a 29.2 metre wide continuation of the road reserve, which may have been intended to serve an extension to the estate. At 4 Glen Drive, garden trees including the popular 1920-40s trees, Italian Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens) and Chinese Weeping Cypress (Chamaecyparis funebris), complementing the light green foliage of the Poplar (Populus sp.). Opposite, at 5 Glen Drive, pre-subdivision Hoop Pine (Araucaria cunninhamii) grows next to a Bhutan Cypress row on the north boundary, which is duplicated by an Italian Cypress row on the opposite side boundary; a device suggested by Edna Walling and other landscape gardeners to obtain privacy and provide a dark backdrop for smaller, lighter green shrubs. This planting design is used many times in Heidelberg in private and public landscapes.
Summit Drive
The best examples of Cypress rows are found at 2 Summit Drive where Bhutan Cypresses form an 'L' backdrop to shrubs such as the common variegated Privet (Ligustrum lucidum 'Variegata'). The central median is typical of those found throughout the Heidelberg area, with a stone retaining wall dividing the road into two levels and featuring a white timber barrier. The plantings have been altered in recent years.
Heritage Study and Grading
Banyule - Banyule Heritage Study
Author: Allum Lovell & Associates
Year: 1999
Grading: State
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