Stawell Main Street Precinct

The Stawell Main Street Heritage Precinct is significant, comprising 4 Byrne Street (part), 45-187 & 46-180 Main Street, 9-33 & 12-34 Scallan Street, 2 & 4 Scotland Place, 1 & 3 Victoria Place, and 26-32 Wimmera Street, Stawell.

The precinct contains the Victorian, Federation and interwar commercial buildings, with predominantly brick wall construction (face brick or rendered); hipped and gabled roof forms clad in galvanised corrugated iron and with a roof pitch between 20 and 35 degrees; monitor roofs; timber framed double hung rear and first floor windows; prominent brick or rendered brick parapets (decorated by balustrades or other Victorian details of Classical derivation); projecting stringcourses; decorative window and door surrounds, decorative pilasters with stylized capitals, wall rustication or quoinwork, brick chimneys; and some parapet, verandah hoarding and side wall signage. These buildings also have significant rear portions, featuring brick chimneys, porches and verandahs, parapets, timber framed doors and often a domestic scale. In some cases Contributory buildings have a very altered front façade, but retain a largely intact rear section, visible from adjacent streets. 

Civic and church buildings have picturesque gabled or hipped roof forms clad in slate tiles or galvanised corrugated iron, brick or stone wall construction, and side buttresses. Most are accompanied by a manse. 

The Victorian and interwar houses in the precinct have hipped and gabled roof galvanised corrugated iron forms (with a roof pitch between 25 and 35 degrees), brick or horizontal timber weatherboard wall cladding, timber framed double hung windows and timber framed doors, narrow eaves and front or side verandahs.

The heritage status of each property in the precinct is set out in the attached table. Descriptions and histories of all Significant places and most Contributory places are found in precinct ‘child records’ in the Victorian Heritage Database. 

The Stawell Main Street Precinct is of historical, representative, aesthetic and social significance to the Northern Grampians Shire. 

The Stawell Main Street Heritage Precinct is of representative significance (architecturally) for its retention of typical of examples of masonry commercial buildings and timber dwellings, largely from the nineteenth century as well as the early twentieth century. They demonstrate the design qualities associated with the commercial, cultural and residential development between the 1860s and the 1930s, and are substantial in size and/or construction in comparison with most early townships in the Shire. (Criterion D)

The Stawell Main Street Precinct is aesthetically significant. It demonstrates unique visual qualities that reflect the historical and cultural development of the township and surrounding areas, and contribute to the setting of the township. These qualities include the landmark clocktower of the Town Hall building and the landmark steeple of St. Matthew’s Church, together with the memorials and garden plantings and the uninterrupted views of the rear of the commercial buildings and to the Grampians to the south-west. The precinct is particularly distinguished by its suite of fine churches and associated dwellings on Scallan Street, and by the grandeur of key Victorian-era buildings, such as the Town Hall, Post Office, Mechanics’ Institute, and banks. (Criterion E)

The Stawell Main Street Precinct is historically significant. It is associated with the early development of the Reefs area of Stawell (originally known as Pleasant Creek) from the 1850s but more particularly from the 1860s until c.1920 as a result of gold discoveries. The precinct has associations with the survey of the Reefs area in 1866, which was carried out by Fred Smith of the Department of Lands and Survey. Once dominated by surrounding mine poppet heads, mullock heaps, steam engines and miner’s cottages, the central core of the precinct, Main Street – with its irregular layout – continues to reflect the importance of gold mining as the road was laid out around the gold mines. Although the early civic and government centre of the Stawell township was originally situated at Pleasant Creek from 1858, the Main Street area soon became a critical commercial focus which by the 1860s featured a number of cultural and commercial buildings. Further commercial buildings were constructed in the ensuing years of the Victorian, Federation and interwar eras. Some of the rear sections of the commercial buildings in Main Street have domestic quarters that may be a lasting legacy of mining accommodation to the gold mines that were once visually connected to these buildings. The name given the town honoured Sir William Foster Stawell, principal law officer of the District of Port Phillip and later Chief Justice of Victoria. (Criterion A)

The Stawell Main Street Precinct is socially significant due to the presence of civic buildings, churches and the war memorial, many of which have been loci of community activity since the nineteenth century. (Criterion G)