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HO127 - House, 161 Bulmans Road, Melton West
161 Bulmans Road MELTON WEST, MELTON CITY

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Melton City

161 Bulmans Road, Melton West

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Statement of Significance
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Statement of Significance

Statement of Significance:

The house at 161 Bulmans Road, Melton, has significance as a moderately intact example of a Late Victorian style dwelling, and a now-rare and moderately intact remaining example of a small farmhouse created as the result of the subdivision of the Melton Park pastoral estate. Built in the late 1890s, the house appears to be in good condition when viewed from the road.

The house at 161 Bulmans Road is architecturally significant at a LOCAL level (AHC D.2). Although the front verandah has been altered, the house still demonstrates original design qualities of a Late Victorian style. These qualities include the hipped roof form, together with the location and possibly the form of the front verandah. Other intact or appropriate qualities include the single storey height, horizontal timber weatherboard wall cladding, unpainted corrugated sheet metal roof cladding, narrow eaves with paired timber brackets at the front, face brick chimney with a decorative corbelled top, a window hood on the north wall, and the symmetrically composed front facade with a central timber framed doorway and sidelights and highlights, and flanking timber framed double hung windows. The rear skillion addition has an undecorated brick chimney. The mature peppercorn tree (Schinus molle) at the rear of the house appears to be contemporary with the house, and is historically appropriate to it.

The house at 161 Bulmans Road is historically significant at a LOCAL level (AHC A4, B2) as a now rare and moderately intact remaining example of a small farmhouse created in the subdivision of the Melton Park (originally Green Hills) pastoral estate, which occurred as a result of popular pressure for the break-up of the large pastoral estates around the turn of the twentieth century, and which was a watershed in the history of Melton Shire. It is a very rare surviving example within Melton Shire of a small farmhouse created in the 1890s, the earliest phase of the break-up of the pastoral estates. It is also representative of a farm directly associated with the success of hay and chaff production in Melton from the late nineteenth century, and particularly in the early twentieth century at which time Melton chaff was nationally renowned. It is also associated with the Tolhurst family, at least three generations of whom have farmed in the Shire of Melton. The land on which the house is situated was at one time owned by George Bulman, after whom Bulmans Road is presumably named.

Overall, the house at 161 Bulmans Road is of LOCAL significance.

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