Essington Estate and Environs Precinct

Essington Estate & Environs Precinct, comprising 5-73 & 44-50 Harold Street; and 17-73 & 8-56 Mayston Street, Hawthorn East, is significant. Once the grounds of a Victorian mansion (at 67 Mayston Street, Hawthorn East), was subdivided in 1888 and the majority of dwellings were constructed between 1900 and 1914. Dwellings include substantial and more modest detached houses, as well as a large number of semi-detached pairs, particularly on Harold Street.

 

The following properties are Significant to the precinct: 29 Mayston Street, 34 Mayston Street, 37 Mayston Street (HO463), 51 Mayston Street (HO464) and 67 Mayston Street (HO465), Hawthorn East. 

 

The following properties are Non-contributory to the precinct: 14, 20, Units 1-4/21, 32, 35, 36, 38, 46, 50 & 61 Mayston Street; and 17, 23, 27, 27A, 45, 53 & 53A Harold Street.

 

The remaining properties are Contributory, as is the bluestone pitched laneways between the two streets, as are the original timber picket front fences (but not the gates) at 44 and 46 Harold Street.

Essington Estate & Environs Precinct is of local historical, architectural and aesthetic significance to the City of Boroondara.

The precinct demonstrates the transition of Hawthorn East from a place of substantial gentlemen’s estates to closer suburban development in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first phase is still clearly demonstrated by landowner Richard Mayston Willdridge’s family home ‘Essington’ of 1874 at what is now 67 Mayston Street, as well as two other Italianate villas of 1893 believed to have been built by Willdridge for family members, and bluestone pitched laneways typical of this period. In 1888, Essington Estate allotments began to be sold off, followed shortly by the 1890s depression. This meant that construction of houses on the new blocks was largely delayed until the first years of the 1900s. This gives the precinct a very strong Edwardian character, making it distinct among the late nineteenth-century development that followed the coming of the railway in 1882 that characterises most of Hawthorn East. (Criterion A)

 

The precinct provides a particularly strong representation of the domestic styles popular in the first two decades of the twentieth century. This includes the continuation of the Italianate style beyond the nineteenth century, though more up-to-date details such as red face brick and turned timber posts indicate the later date of these examples. It also contains a very large number of Edwardian (or Federation) Queen Anne houses, both the large asymmetric villas of brick or timber, as well as a large number of single-fronted detached and semi-detached dwellings on Harold Street (two of which retain their original picket front fences). The precinct also contains a small number of fine examples of nineteenth-century Italianate houses, with their higher level of ornamentation (two of which are Significant: 37 & 67 Mayston Street, Hawthorn East), as well as a handful of interwar dwellings, mainly blocks of flats which were so characteristic of Hawthorn during this period. (Criterion D)

The precinct contains many fine Queen Anne houses, large and small, many with distinctive details such as fretwork with a Japanese influence, pierced details or sunburst patterns within arches, corner porches treated like towers, and bas-relief ornament to a front gable. Two houses of particular note are the elegant timber villa at 29 Mayston Street, Hawthorn East with bow windows to the front façade and very deep verandah fretwork with elegant pierced details. It is joined by the very different 34 Mayston Street, Hawthorn East built of brown Hawthorn bricks with arched fretwork to its verandahs, combined with a reversed-arched balustrade to create a circular opening. Harold Street is distinguished by its very high level of aesthetic cohesion of its streetscapes of houses built within the 15 year period before the First World War. (Criterion E)