Back to search results » Back to search page »   Print 

Dartmoor Police Station

Location

19-23 WAPLING STREET, DARTMOOR, GLENELG SHIRE

Level

Recommended for Heritage Overlay

Statement of Significance

Taken from Heritage Victoria citation, Hermes No. 5815:

The Dartmoor Police Station complex was completed in 1892. The new residence, stable and lock-up replaced the first police station in Dartmoor, close to the existing station, which had opened in 1862 and operated intermittently during the 1860s and 1870s, and the new site was reserved in 1884. The architectural drawings for the new residence and the stable were signed by HJM (J H Marsden) and also JHB (J H Brabin) and HRB (H R Bastow) of the Public Works Department. The first constable in the new station, the mounted trooper Constable Moore, was responsible for an area covering 650 square miles (almost 1700 square kilometres). In 1930 tenders were let for the renovation of the residence, and an additional office was added to the side of the original one. A new residence adjacent to the old one was built in the late 1980s, and the 1930s office was demolished in 1990. Plans to remove the rest of the residence and the stable at that time did not go ahead. A new police station was built in front of the stable in 2006.

The Dartmoor Police Station complex comprises a police residence with an office, a two-stall stable and forage store, and a small lockup. The residence is a single storey double-fronted timber building with a corrugated iron roof, and a projecting gable and a verandah across the front. The former office is in a small room on one end of the front verandah. The residence had a parlour and dining room off one side of a central passage and two bedrooms opening off the other side, and at the rear a kitchen and a pantry opened off a small back verandah. Minor alterations have been made at the rear with the addition of a bathroom and an opening made between the kitchen and the adjacent room. The two-stall stable and forage store is a timber building with a corrugated iron gable roof and a brick cobble floor. It was later used as a garage. A roller door has been added to the entrance and the horse stall partitions and feed boxes have been removed. The portable lock-up is a timber lock-up typical of many that were distributed through remote country areas in the late nineteenth century.

The Dartmoor Police Station is architecturally significant at a local level as an intact police complex of the early 1890s, comprising a police residence with an attached office, a two-stall stable and forage store, and a portable lock-up. It is historically significant at a local level as a demonstration of police practices in the remote parts of Victoria in the late nineteenth century, when the police office was responsible for policing a large area and was dependent on his horses for transport.

Group

Law Enforcement

Category

Police station