63-65 BRIDGE MALL (FORMER ALLOTMENT 18 AND 19 OF SECTION C MAIN STREET) SITE

The area was first mapped as allotments 18 and 19 of Section C Main Road Ballarat in the 1857 Revised Town Plan of Main Street. The site is within Ballarat’s first commercial precinct and between two of the first alluvial gold fields mined in the initial rush. The site is significant as an initial gold rush commercial residential associated with the initial gold rush and will provide archaeological information about the occupation of high turnover premises throughout the later nineteenth century.   

The site is of historical and archaeological significance. 

The site is of historical significance as the location of an early residence and commercial precinct during the years of the Victorian gold rush – one of the most significant rushes in world history. The site is of archaeological significance due to its potential to contain artefacts, deposits and features that relate to the establishment of commercial operations in the gold rush, and other later 19th-century activities.