HO121 - Former Rose & Crown Hotel

The Sundowner Caravan Park office building (former Rose and Crown Hotel) at 2057 Western Highway is historically significant at a LOCAL level (AHC A4, B2). It is one of only two surviving intact nineteenth century hotels in the Shire. It has been the most substantial and enduring building in Rockbank, a hamlet that had not been identified or surveyed by the colonial government, and whose beginnings and sense of place were closely associated with the hotel. The hotel is also significant as evidence of the purge of Victoria's hotels by the Licence Reduction Board in 1911, a result of the influence of temperance crusaders, medical opinion and middle class electors. It is also significant for its association with the large extended Missen family, one of the most successful Rockbank farming families, who had, with many others, arrived in Melton from South Australia for the 1860s Selection Act sales.

The Sundowner Caravan Park office building (former Rose and Crown Hotel) at 2057 Western Highway has architectural interest. The building has surviving fabric of the Victorian era and also of significant change during the interwar period. The architectural qualities of interest are the single storey height, bluestone wall construction (but not the painted finish), gable roof forms, skillion form of the front verandah, corrugated profile roof cladding, masonry chimney (but not the painted finish), wide eaves on the gable roof forms, front timber framed double hung multi-paned windows, central timber framed door opening, gable ventilator and the timber strapping.

Overall, the Sundowner Caravan Park office building (former Rose and Crown Hotel) at 2057 Western Highway is of LOCAL significance.

Group

Commercial

Category

Hotel