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ROSECRADDOCK

Location

2-8 KEVERELL ROAD AND 4-10 CRADDOCK AVENUE CAULFIELD NORTH, GLEN EIRA CITY

File Number

604901

Level

Registered

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ROSECRADDOCK SOHE 2008
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rosecraddock caulfield western
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H0589 rosecraddock extent

Statement of Significance

Rosecraddock was constructed in two main stages. The first part was rated in 1857 as the home of Mr GW Harris. It consisted at that stage of seven rooms, kitchen (detached), servants' rooms, stable and outbuildings. Three successive owners over the next few years enlarged the building. No architect or builder's names are known for this work. By the 1870s when Henry Joseph Langdon owned the property, the house had been enlarged to fourteen rooms. This last increment of three or four rooms and stables was supervised by the architect, Lloyd Tayler.

The appearance of the building must have changed significantly because of the replacement of the existing verandah with one fashionable for the time and typical of Tayler's work. It was at this stage that the billiard room was added. The last extensions were in the 1880s boom years. The garden which was probably laid out about this time by a neighbour, Henry Ford, is now overgrown but intact.

The property remains relatively unaltered from this time except for some redecoration of the interiors in the late twenties and the modification of the kitchen. The most interesting detail surviving from the nineteenth century is the intact decoration of the billiard room and dining room.

The house is considered significant as an example of a substantial villa constructed and subsequently altered for well-to-do middle class families. Its continuous occupation by the Langdon family from the 1870s to the 1980s greatly assists in understanding the building and its garden surrounds as a document of upper middle-class Melbourne during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This social group has been the dominant force in Melbourne's commerce and industry during that period. Henry Langdon founded a firm of merchants and importers in 1852. The business is carried on by the family even today and has strong links with the maritime and building industries.

Group