Fernside (Former)

The property at 25 Queen St, Kew with brick residence is significant. The attic-storey villa was built in 1856 and first occupied by solicitor Frederick Bayne and his family. The villa has a gabled slate roof with front and side parapets. The rendered front facade has a Victorian Regency treatment.

How is it significant?

25 Queen Street is of local historic and architectural significance to the City of Boroondara.

Why is it significant?

The former 'Fernside' is historically significant for its capacity to represent an aspect of the pattern of settlement in the City of Boroondara. After the slow-moving first attempt at dividing one of the large Crown portions into small suburban lots at the Kew Estate, development of the area around Kew Junction in the mid-to-late 1850s was gradual and ad hoc. Some subdivisions produced larger lots on which the wealthy built mansions, such as the eight-acre lot for 'Roxeth'. There was also a scattering of lots of one or two acres which were taken up by owners with middling incomes. These houses, some weatherboard and others brick, typically had four to six rooms, and the lots on which they stood were big enough for orchards and gardens, stables and outhouses. Further development in the 1860s would involve filling in the interstices between these lots, and further subdivisions of the existing lots. (Criterion A)

While a number of large mansions survive, there are few of the modest middle-class dwellings left from the 1850s in Kew and in Boroondara more widely. Often, as one would expect in an increasingly prosperous suburb, those that survived were altered and extended later in the nineteenth century to make more substantial dwellings, overshadowing or eliminating the earlier fabric. The former 'Fernside' is unusual in that the integrity of the house has been maintained, with only small and sympathetic additions in the 1980s. The former 'Fernside' has lost the integrity of its original landscape, but that has happened to most of the other examples as well. (Criterion B)

The former 'Fernside' is architecturally significant as an intact Victorian Regency style villa from the 1850s. It exhibits typical features of the style such as a symmetrical form and placement of openings, a corniced parapet to the front, and a front verandah with an elegant convex hipped roof. (Criterion D)

Group

Residential buildings (private)

Category

Residence