FORMER RISING SUN HOTEL SITE

The site is first mapped as 41 of Section R on the 1857 Revised Town Plan of Main Street and shows the Rising Sun Hotel. The rising sun was known in the 1850s as the ‘Chinese Hotel’. The Hotel formally closed in 1872. When the building was destroyed by fire in 1904, it is noted to have contained several Chinese shops and the newly erected Bow Leong Society Hall. Although -1m to -2m are shown in the Ballarat DEM, excavations on the Canadian Chanel show up to 3m of artefact rich fill to the west of the site.  

The site is of local historical and archaeological singificance. 

The site is of historical significance as the location of an early hotel during the years of the Victorian gold rush. The later nineteenth century shows the development and likely expansion of the site into a site of Chinese commercial/ residential occupation. The site has a known association with the early Chinese community of Ballarat. 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 later 19th-century activities.