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Former Felton House

Location

12 BROAD GULLY ROAD DIAMOND CREEK, NILLUMBIK SHIRE

Level

Included in Heritage Overlay

Statement of Significance

What is significant?
The property located at 12 Broad Gully Road, Diamond Creek. The original form, materials and features of the Victorian residence and the connected former outbuilding contributes to the significance of the place.
How is it significant?
12 Broad Gully Road, Diamond Creek is of local historic and aesthetic significance to the Shire of Nillumbik.
Why is it significant?
The property at 12 Broad Gully Road, Diamond Creek is of local historical significance as it contains one of a small number of surviving examples of Victorian residences and outbuildings demonstrating the establishment of Diamond Creek as a result of the gold rush in the area. Thomas Huntly junior was an active gold miner in the area from the 1890s. This site is a good example of the wider phenomenon in the Nillumbik area of how gold miners and those of low income more generally made use of the provisions in the Mines and Land Acts for cheap rent of small-holdings on Crown Land and gradually improved their properties over years and through generations. (Criterion A) The property is also of historical significance for its use as the Felton House Private Nursing Home during 1914 and 1915 by the Huntly sisters Isabella and Elizabeth, and by its use by Dr Ted Cordner as Diamond Creek’s second hospital around 1920 and possibly up to the end of the 1920s when Dr Cordner built a new home and surgery in the town. (Criterion A) The property at 12 Broad Gully Road, Diamond Creek is aesthetically significant for the residence and former outbuilding dating from c. 1870s. Although altered, the buildings retain important original features demonstrating the Victorian period of residential architecture. Features of note on the residence include the front door with sidelights and highlight windows, the tall brick chimneys with corbelling, the hipped roof form with timber corbelling under the eaves and the scalloped weatherboards and timber finial on the west gable end of the former outbuilding. (Criterion E)