FORMER EUREKA HOTEL SITE

The area is first mapped in detail in the 1857 Revised Town Plan of Eureka Street. The site was likely firs1854, occupied by Bentley’s Eureka Hotel, the first Hotel to be licensed on the gold fields and burnt in October, prior to the Eureka event. The Hotel was rebuilt by 1857 by Henry Cherry who occupied the site until 1866. The Eureka Hotel had three other publicans throughout its time. It closed in the Ballarat license reductions in 1893, due to its poor condition. The site is likely to have 1.0m-2.5m of fill across the site and is currently occupied by five 20th century houses.

The site is of historical and archaeological significance. 

The site is of historical significance as the location of the earliest hotel licensed on the gold fields as well as its association with an event preceding the Eureka event. The site was likely occupied as a hotel from 1853 until 1893. The 1854 burning of Bentley’s Hotel is likely to have preserved some remains of the early hotel, in addition to deposits associated with that period of use. The site is of archaeological significance due to its potential to contain artefacts, deposits and features associated with the commercial precinct of the early gold rush, and other later 19th-century commercial activities including a hotel.