Back to search results »

Back to search page »

PRICE'S BAKERY, SHOP AND RESIDENCE

Location McNicol Street, BRANXHOLME VIC 3302 - Property No 6950 File Number 556 Level Stage 2 study complete

[1/5] 23301 Price s bakery [2/5] 23301 Price s bakery [3/5] 23301 Price s Bakery [4/5] 23301 Price s Bakery [5/5] 23301 Price s Bakery

Statement of Significance

What is significant?
Price's Bakery complex is located in McNicol Street, Branxholme close to the railway station. The complex includes a residence and attached shop on the street boundary and the bakery, stables and coach house and other outbuildings at the rear. It was established in 1898 by Joseph Richard Price and his wife, Margaret. She subsequently ran the Kookaburra Café near the railway station and his parents, William and Caroline Price ran the Branxholme Coffee Palace opposite the bakery. The bakery business was passed on to a third generation and finally closed about 1980. The bakery is a masonry building with substantial ovens at one end and storage rooms at the other end. The cast iron baking equipment was supplied by Small and Shattle, "bakery engineers" of Melbourne. The building and its equipment survive intact although in poor condition. The residence is a conventional four room cottage with rear additions. The adjacent shop is also timber. At first relatively small, it was substantially enlarged in the Interwar period. It then operated as much as a general store and newsagency as a bakery. These buildings survive intact although the shop is now vacant. The coach house and stables, essential for the delivery of products from the bakery, also survive.

How is it significant?
Price's Bakery is of historical, architectural and technological significance to the State of Victoria, to the community of Branxholme and the Southern Grampians Shire.

Why is it significant?
Price's Bakery is of historic significance as the most representative and best surviving collection of such buildings that existed in the study area at the end of the nineteenth century. It is an excellent example of a family business over three generations with connections to further businesses. The bakery is also significant for reflecting the consolidation of the township of Branxholme after the arrival of the railway and as a result of the migration of people to the land in response to the Land Acts of the 1860s. The acts were instrumental in changing settlement patterns and land use throughout the state but their effects were most marked on the squatting runs of the Western District. Price's Bakery complex is of historical significance as an intact collection of purpose built structures which demonstrate an example of nineteenth century rural industry. The Price's Bakery oven is of technological significance as a rare example of an intact nineteenth century commercial wood fired baker's oven. The buildings of Price's Bakery are of architectural significance as a comprehensive collection of intact buildings demonstrating nineteenth and twentieth century construction techniques and patterns of use.