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WHITE HILLS HERITAGE PRECINCT

Location

467, 469-553 & 472-552 NAPIER STREET and 1-22 CAMBRIDGE CRESCENT and 1-15 PLUMRIDGE STREET and 1-12 LYONS STREET and 1-12 BOSQUET STREET and 1-19 HAMELIN STREET and 11-17, 25, 45 & 51-53 DUNDAS STREET and NAPOLEON CRESCENT and 24-38 (east side only) & 41-80 RAGLAN STREET WHITE HILLS, GREATER BENDIGO CITY

Level

Included in Heritage Overlay

Statement of Significance

What is significant?
White Hills comprising the original street layout from Surveyor Richard Larritt's scheme for a Hamlet as laid out in 1856. The Hamlet area includes Raglan, Napier and Dundas Streets and Napoleon and Cambridge Crescents. The Hamlet includes residential, commercial and institutional buildings from the Victorian, Edwardian, Inter-war and Post-war periods of development. Significant elements of the precinct include:


A list of all the significant and contributory places is included in the Precinct Tables Appendix F.

How is it significant?
White Hills Hamlet is of local historic, aesthetics and social significance to the City of Greater Bendigo. 

Why is it significant?
White Hills Hamlet is a distinctive suburb defined by the street layout as a 'suburban retreat' prepared as part of District Surveyor Richard Larritt's Valley of Bendigo town plan. White Hills Hamlet is significant as a suburb designed to attract settlement after the exhaustion of alluvial mining along the Bendigo Creek. White Hills Botanic Gardens (HO679), gazetted in 1857 is one of the earliest regional botanic garden reserves in Victoria. The design is believed to be based on that of St Vincent Place South Melbourne. (Criterion A)
Although slow to develop, White Hills Hamlet is significant as a distinct suburb of Bendigo, with residential, institutional and commercial buildings dating from the late 1870s. The suburb of White Hills is significant as a place where the distinctive Bendigo architecture of William Carl Vahland's pattern house designs were promoted by the Permanent Bendigo Land & Building Society in which Vahland was a shareholder. This made the 'Bendigo Boom' style architecture more widely accessible through the uses of a number of standard architecturally designed houses of which there are examples at 473, 455, 517 and 545 Napier Street White Hills. (Criterion A)

White Hills Hamlet still reflects its original planning in the current street layout set between the White Hills Botanic Gardens and Napoleon Crescent at its northern extent, and Cambridge Crescent at its southern extent. Within Napier Street are fine examples of late Victorian, Edwardian and Inter-war houses including nos. 455, 473, 467, 517 and 545,Langley Hall, St Luke's Anglican Church and White Hills Uniting Church. A butcher shop at 509 Napier Street is a representative shop of the Inter-war period. Napier Street between Lyons and Bosquet Streets retains the elements of a town centre, giving White Hills its character as a distinctive self-contained suburb. (Criterion E) 

Raglan Street provides a fine illustration of the development of White Hills comprising late Victorian, Edwardian, Inter-war and Post-war residences, tree lined streets and wide grass verges. Hamelin and Lyon Streets contain each contain a more rare mid Victorian building that is associated with the early period of development (8 Lyons Street and 19 Plumridge Street). 19 Cambridge Crescent and Tawarri house and garden at 68 Napoleon Crescent both represent fine examples of Post-war development. Whilst there are a number of non-contributory buildings in Dundas Street, this street is part of the original layout of White Hills. (Criterion E) 

Group

Residential buildings (private)

Category

Residential Precinct