Tyneside
31 Dickens Street MOONEE PONDS, MOONEE VALLEY CITY
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![Moonee Ponds, Dickens St, 31 Moonee Ponds, Dickens St, 31](https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/vhd-images/places/000/214/785.jpg)
![Moonee Ponds, Dickens St, 31 Moonee Ponds, Dickens St, 31](https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/vhd-images/places/000/214/785.jpg)
![Moonee Ponds, Dickens St, 31 Moonee Ponds, Dickens St, 31](https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/vhd-images/places/000/214/786.jpg)
Statement of Significance
What is Significant?
31 Dickens Street, Moonee Ponds, a late Victorian era Italianate villa built c.1900 is significant. Two mature Fan Palms (Trachycarpus fortunei) in the side garden are also significant.
Significant fabric includes the:
single-storey asymmetric built form with a projecting bay;
main hipped roof form and slate roofing;
unpainted face brickwork;
original chimneys and eaves detailing;
original pattern of fenestration and elements of window and door joinery;
curtilages of the allotment.
The discreetly rear extension is not significant.
How is it significant?
31 Dickens Street, Moonee Ponds, is of local architectural significance to the City of Moonee Valley.
Why is it significant?
31 Dickens Street, Moonee Ponds, is significant as an example of a Victorian-era Italianate villa with some Queen Anne style features. The Italianate style is well represented in the Heritage Overlay in Moonee Valley with detached houses forming the largest typological grouping. Individually significant examples comparable with 31 Dickens Street include 3 Aberfeldie Street, Essendon, 1892-1897 (HO143), 23 Brown Avenue, Ascot Vale c.1891 (HO392), 28 Nicholson Street, Essendon, 1891 (HO265), each of which demonstrate the same single-storey and asymmetrical form as 31 Dickens Street with variations of detail.
31 Dickens Street is a fine and intact example of an Italianate villa of restrained detailing with a Queen Anne style influence. The building retains its original building and roof forms and other features including a slate roof, eaves detailing, bichrome brickwork, window and door joinery and the cast iron front verandah. The Queen Anne style design influence extends to the form and detailing of the chimneys and the use of red brick as the main wall colour and the simplified contrasting cream brick patterning. The building retains its original building form, slate roof, face brick walls, front verandah and fenestration to the principal and side elevations. 31 Dickens Street is of high integrity with very few changes visible to original or early elements of the place. (Criterion D)
31 Dickens Street is aesthetically significant for the two mature Fan Palms (Trachycarpus fortunei)in the side garden. (Criterion E)
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Tyneside - Physical Description 1
31 Dickens Street, Moonee Ponds, a small, single-storey, late-Victorian villa in restrained Italianate style constructed of red and cream brick with a slate roof, sits in a street of cohesive late Victorian and Queen Anne residences. Sited with small setbacks on relatively tight allotments, these modest villa dwellings have rear laneway access, a relic of the original earth-closet sanitation system in use prior to sewerage around the turn of the twentieth century. The gentle cross-fall (west to east across the site of 31 Dickens Street) forms part of the Moonee Ponds Creek valley, which in the nineteenth century deemed a picturesque feature of this vicinity.
The residence at 31 Dickens Street is characteristic of a late Victorian, Italianate villa but with some Queen Anne style influences. The house comprises a simple, single-storey form comprising principal rooms opening off a central hallway and having a front verandah stopping against an asymmetrically placed bay window to the principal eastern front room. The bull-nosed, corrugated iron, front verandah has a cast-iron frieze with pendants to the central portion and brackets to the columns. A modern single-storey rear addition of contrasting design (vertical timber boards and flat roof) is sited on the footprint of a former suite of brick and timber rear service rooms (presumably kitchen, laundry, and closet) - the extension sits behind and subsidiary to the original front rooms of the residence and is barely visible from the street frontage.
The hipped roof over the main rooms and projecting bay is clad in slate with simple metal ridge cappings; a central roof valley faces the rear of the site. The front pair of original red brick chimneys have a Queen Anne expression with stop-chamfered brick arises and central divisions (which break the bulk of these double chimneys) and are capped with generous cement-rendered cornices. The generally simple bracketed eaves detail is supported on paired console brackets. The walls are predominantly of red brick, relieved by large but simply detailed cream brick quoins (having stop chamfers to the window reveals) and segmental arch-headed window openings with dressed basalt windowsills. The bi-chrome brickwork is confined to the principal south or street facade contrasting with simple side elevations. The brick detailing to the bay is an unusually simple treatment of a detail more normally replete in comparable Italianate villas with decorative rendered mouldings. Windows throughout are of double-hung sashes while the panelled front door is set within a doorcase consisting of fanlight, sidelights and panelling.
The frontage is defined by a picket fence of uncertain date and unusual design with rounded top pickets of alternating heights and posts having elongated turned caps. Two mature Fan Palms (Trachycarpus fortunei) are found in each side garden, which are most likely early plantings, and a mature Oak (Quercus sp. species to be confirmed) is located at the rear of the property.
31 Dickens Street, Moonee Ponds, is of highintegrity with veryfewchanges visible to original or early elements of the place. The building retains its original building form, slated roof, face brick walls, front verandah, and fenestration to the principal and side elevations.
The integrity of the building is enhanced by the highlevel of intactness of these main elements, which include the original chimneys, slate roof, eaves detailing, unpainted face brickwork, window and door joinery, and the structure and decoration to the front verandah.
The integrity of the building is slightlydiminished by a new extension at the rear but this is hardly visible from the street frontage, discreetly modern in style, and abuts the original building in such a way as to retain the bulk of the original roof form.
The integrity of the place is enhanced by its retention of its original allotment size, contributing to an understanding of the overall pattern of development in this vicinity.
Heritage Study and Grading
Moonee Valley - Moonee Valley 2017 Heritage Study
Author: Context
Year: 2019
Grading:
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FORMER MOONEE PONDS COURT HOUSEVictorian Heritage Register H1051
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PREFABRICATED RESIDENCEVictorian Heritage Register H1207
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GLENDALOUGHVictorian Heritage Register H1202
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"1890"Yarra City
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"AMF Officers" ShedMoorabool Shire
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"AQUA PROFONDA" SIGN, FITZROY POOLVictorian Heritage Register H1687
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'Mororo' 13 Oxford Street, MalvernStonnington City
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1 Arnold StreetYarra City
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1 Austin StreetYarra City
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