Clontarn (former South Star Mine managers house)

The former South Star Mine Manager's residence, located at 122 Albert Street Sebastopol, built in two distinct stages in the nineteenth century. 

The first stage of the single storey house, dating to c1880s, has an M-hip rood and weatherboard cladding. The most distinguishing features that survive from the original house are two tall, finely detailed chimneys. They have stop-chamfered shafts and are bracketed by a band of cream bricks at the base and to the cornice.

The later, front section, dating to c1890s, is L-shaped in plan, comprising a hipped roof and projecting gabled bay. The facade is clad in ashlar-look boards, with weatherboards to the sides. The bargeboard to the gable has delicate pierced semicircles at its base, and a turned finial at the apex. The window to this section is a double-hung sash with wide sidelights, resting on curved brackets and set beneath a decorative entablature with dentils and scrollwork. The recessed part of the facade has a bullnose verandah, supported on cast-iron fluted Corinthian columns.

The former South Star Mine Manager's residence is of historic and architectural significance to the City of Ballarat. 

The former South Star Mine Manager's residence is of historic significance as a rare surviving example of a mine manager's residence in Sebastopol. The only other intact example known to survive is at 362 Albert Street. The building is situated opposite the former South Star No. 1 Gold Mine site and its surviving timber office at 113 Albert Street, providing an important historical context. (Criterion A)

The former South Star Mine Manager's residence is of architectural significance as an unusually intact example of a Victorian dwelling constructed in two stages illustrating the rising fortunes of the South Star Mine and its employees. While houses are most often extended to the rear, here a much grander facade was created in the 1890s, eclipsing the simple 1880s section a the rear. Of particular architectural interest are the finely detailed bichrome brick chimneys on the earlier section and the similar red brick chimney on the later section. The extensive decorative detailing of the later (front) section of the building appears to be entirely intact, including the decorative timber detailing on the bargeboards, the timber finial, Corinthian cast-iron verandah columns, the somewhat unusually arrangements of the verandah, and the timber surrounds all the windows. (Criterion E)