Roystead
51 Mont Albert Road CANTERBURY, Boroondara City
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Statement of Significance
Roystead, 51 Mont Albert Road, Canterbury, is of local historical and architectural significance. It is a relatively intact example of a substantial two-storey Italianate house with a notable two-storey arcaded verandah. Roystead is inventive in having modulated north side verandahs to centralize its composition and accentuate its front door. In this, various resources are used, from a breakfront cornice to a less common fanlight treatment over the north side door. The building is also of historical significance for its association since the 1930s with Camberwell Grammar School.
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Roystead - Physical Description 1
Roystead (after which a nearby outer circle railway halt was named) is a two-storey stuccoed Italianate house designed by the practice of Twentyman & Askew and constructed in 1885, with early additions by the same architects of c.1890. Now on the consolidated Camberwell Grammar School site, the house does not address Mont Albert Road.
The principal north elevation is dominated by a two-storey arcaded verandah with arches carried on slender columns in the manner of Joseph Reed's Ripponlea, 1868, or Charles Webb's Hotel Windsor, of 1883-4. The arch arrangement is unusual, being of round arches on the ground floor and segmental arches on the first floor, rather than the reverse. These arcades, though part of a return verandah system, centre on the entrance bay. This forms a symmetrical episode in an otherwise asymmetrical design. At the western end of the north elevation is a two-storey wing, projecting forward to the north, with arched windows at ground floor level and rectangular windows to the first floor. Graeme Butler has suggested that this wing may date from a separate construction phase,[i] and it is possible that this may have been the c. 1890 addition. The east end of the arcaded verandah returns in single-storey (originally open terrace) form around onto the east elevation. This element appears to be an (early twentieth century?) addition, and is not shown on the MMBW Detail Plan of c. 1905. It has since been built on at first floor level and partly enclosed at ground level. The terrace is terminated on the eastern elevation by an original canted bay facing east. This has fairly elaborate window settings, in arches with double-stepped reveals.[ii] The roof was originally slate and that is still in place, ridged with galvanized iron.
The main approach to the house is still via the central garden front steps with their balustrades sweeping round to support and dramatize a pair of pedestal lights. The front door is emphasized by a protruding bay from roof level down: marked first by a breakfront in the bracketed cornice, then by panels flanking the central verandah arch on the first floor, and finally by the imposing door and its fanlight, which has additional flanking panels. The ground floor windows are simple arched sashes with no flanking aedicules. The upper windows are oblong sashes. The ground floor verandah breaks out through its net of columns and transforms into two rounded terraces, with later tiled surfacing.
The east and north sides of the building are relatively intact to their original or early forms (other than for the addition, date unknown, of the eastern arcaded verandah with terrace above). During the twentieth century sections of the arcaded verandahs were enclosed to form additional rooms,[iii] including one still in place on the east side. A verandah is shown on the western side of the building on the c.1905 MMBW Detail Plan; this has been demolished. A series of single-storey extensions have been made on the west and south elevations. These include a single-storey lean-to on the west elevation (c. 1950s?). Next to that is a single-storey outbuilding of uncertain origins with hipped slate roof and, again, galvanized iron ridges, with windows and doors from different periods. It frames the south elevation, where it is linked to the house by a further addition incorporating a substation. This links up with the original or early rear wing. The south-east corner of the house is punctuated by a reinforced concrete bridge, railed in iron, which leads across to the adjacent first floor Chapel.
Incorporated into the broader Camberwell Grammar School campus, Roystead now retains very little of its original setting. Notwithstanding the fact that it always faced away from Mont Albert Road, the house was separated from the street by later buildings. All Roystead's original outbuildings have been demolished and the original approach drive has been obliterated. NOTE: Since this original report was written in late 2005, the Chapel and its accompanying buildings to the immediate south side have been entirely demolished, leaving the rear view of Roystead quite open, across a bare demolition site from Mont Albert Road. This work entails some alterations to Roystead's south side.
[i] G Butler, City of Camberwell Conservation Study 1991, v.4, p. 188.
[ii] A favourite device of John Soane and Francis Greenway's, but here more related to sixteenth century Italian usage, as in Michele Sanmicheli's original use of the motif in his Verona gateways and palaces.
[iii] Some of these are visible in a c. 1968 photograph by John Collins, State Library of Victoria, image no. jc003175.
Heritage Study and Grading
Boroondara - Review of B Graded Buildings in Kew, Camberwell and Hawthorn
Author: Lovell Chen Architects & Heritage Consultants
Year: 2006
Grading: BBoroondara - Camberwell Conservation Study
Author: Graeme Butler
Year: 1991
Grading:
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