Lilydale Cemetery
120 Victoria Road,, LILYDALE VIC 3140 - Property No B5985
-
Add to tour
You must log in to do that.
-
Share
-
Shortlist place
You must log in to do that.
- Download report
Statement of Significance
What is significant? Lilydale Cemetery is a large, elevated, rectangular cemetery designed in a simple grid system and located on the edge of the township. It contains a notable collection of memorials and funerary art demonstrating a range of styles and the different periods of burial. The two most historically and architecturally important memorials are of the Mitchell family. Dame Nellie Melba's monument is a pedestal designed in a typically restrained style by leading British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. David Mitchell's tomb is of a grander scale. It is a marble Doric temple with four columns with an entablature. The designer is unknown. The plantings and landscape value are also of interest.
How is it significant? The Lilydale Cemetery is significant for architectural, historic and landscape reasons at a state level.
Why is it significant? The Lilydale Cemetery is architecturally and historically significant as an early rural cemetery (1861), which contains the graves of many pioneer families and well-known district people, most notably Dame Nellie Melba, who achieved international renown, and Melba's father David Mitchell, a prominent building contractor, and including the artists Ernest Buckmaster and William Blamire Young. The Melba monument was designed by leading architect Sir Edwin Lutyens, considered the leading English 'Edwardian' architect. It is one of the few examples of Lutyens' work in Australia. The monument of David Mitchell is a stone Doric temple with four columns and entablature.
The Lilydale Cemetery has significant plantings and landscape value. The use of dark evergreen coniferous species with narrow crowns is symbolic with death and nineteenth cemetery landscapes. The Bhutan Cypress, Italian Cypress, Funeral Cypress and Bunya Bunya Pine have grown into fine mature trees and the hill top location displaying the vertical crowns is of great landscape value. The retention of several remnant Blackwoods, also evergreen and dark green foliage, complements the cemetery landscape, and shows the original flora of the site. The shrubbery plantings are typical cemetery species. The English Box hedge and the two clipped Rosemary bushes at the Melba Memorial are a significant component of the 1933 Lutyens designed memorial.
Classified: 27/06/2005
-
-
Lilydale Cemetery - Physical Description 1
Lilydale Cemetery is a large cemetery located on the edge of the township, on a high site with views to the Dandenong Ranges. The cemetery is rectangular in shape, and has been developed using a grid pattern. There are distinct denominational sections. Paths throughout the cemetery vary, with gravel and concrete predominating. There is a notable collection of memorials and funerary art demonstrating a range of styles and the different periods of burial. Dame Nellie Melba's monument is a pedestal designed in a typically restrained style by leading British architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. David Mitchell's tomb is of a grander scale. It is a marble Doric temple with four columns with an entablature. The designer is unknown. The two monuments are surrounded by mature vegetation, consisting of cypress hedges, roses and trees.
The cemetery landscape is dominated by a variety of conifers. In Sections RC1, P1 and P2 are several remnant Blackwoods (Acacia melanoxylon). Later plantings from the 1970s include several Australian native species and a few exotics.
The major planting is an avenue of mixed Bhutan Cypress (Cupressus torulosa) and Italian Cypress (Cupressus sempervirens) planted along the central north-south road, a group of 3 Funeral Cypress (Chamaecyparis funebris), planted within the grave of Isaac Rourke 1866, Anne 1885, and Dennis 1887, and 3 Italian Cypress and a Pencil Cypress and Bhutan Cypress in CE2, a towering and outstanding Bunya Bunya Pine (Araucaria bidwillii), planted within the grave of Patrick Smith 1874, on the west side (RC2), and a single Bhutan Cypress in the north east corner (N E Lawn). Until recently c2004 there was a very large Monterey Cypress (Cupressus macrocarpa) in Section B1. In 1980 there was a Monterey Cypress hedge along the north boundary (now mixed Australian natives, mostly Eucalyptus leucoxylon and E. sideroxylon and a few wattles). [A cypress hedge may have originally surrounded the cemetery].
Other plants of historical value include:
Platycladus orientalis x2 CE1
Cupressus sempervirens x2 & Cupressus sempervirens 'Stricta'CE1
Cupressus sempervirens 'Stricta'& Cupressus torulosa CE2
Viburnum tinus CE2
Buxus sempervirens hedge, & Rosmarinus officinalis x2 clipped ball, Melba Memorial P2
Camellia japonica B1 (north of Bunya Bunya Pine)
Most of the recent cemetery planting contributes little heritage value to the cemetery. A pair of Cupressus sempervirens 'Swane's Golden' frame the Robert Trowthe gates 1955-77, and scattered throughout and along roadways, and along the boundary, are several species of Eucalyptus, Corymbia, Hakea, Melaleuca, Acacia, Callistemon, and exotic plants including , Fraxinus, Salix, Betula, Liquidamber, Juniperus, Thuja, and ColeonemaLilydale Cemetery - Intactness
The cemetery is in generally good condition and is well maintained throughout. There have been only minor modifications. A number of gaps suggest that the more dilapidated memorials may have been removed in the past. A few monuments require more active maintenance, as do some paths. Some of the trees have declined because of their age. There was a proposal to build a mausoleum in the cemetery but the Shire of Yarra Ranges refused a permit.
-
-
-
-
-
Cooring Yering HouseYarra Ranges Shire
-
Lilydale CemeteryYarra Ranges Shire
-
Winery Building (former)Yarra Ranges Shire
-
-