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HO123 - Dalgook Farm Complex (Morton Homestead)

Other Name

Hume Drive, Taylors Hill

Location

Corner Calder park Drive and Hume Drive TAYLORS HILL, MELTON SHIRE

File Number

476

Level

Included in Heritage Overlay

[1/12]
Morton Homestead 2011
[2/12]
Morton Homestead 2011
[3/12]
Homestead - 2011
[4/12]
Morton Homestead 2011
[5/12]
Homestead - 2005
[6/12]
Homestead - November 2010
[7/12]
Homestead - April 2010
[8/12]
Map of Overnewton Estate
[9/12]
Dairy Buildings - May 2013
[10/12]
Dairy Buildings - May 2013
[11/12]
Dairy Buildings - May 2013
[12/12]
Dairy Buildings - 2011

Statement of Significance

Dalgook, Hume Drive, Taylor's Hill, is significant has an unusual and predominantly intact example of a Federation style dwelling in a rural setting. Built in 1906 for H&N Fitzgerald as part of the Overnewton Closer Settlement Estate, the symmetrically composed timber dwelling features an atypical roof composition of a central hipped roof with flanking gables and encircling broken back verandah, a contextually elaborated recessed entrance porch with original doorpiece.

Dalgook, Hume Drive, Taylor's Hill, is architecturally significant at a LOCAL level (AHC D.2). It demonstrates unusual and intact qualities of a Federation style. These qualities include the central steeply pitched hipped roof form punctuated by flanking gables and the skillion broken back encircling verandah, face brick chimneys with roughcast tops, square timber verandah posts with solid, panelled timber valance and curved solid timber brackets, timber verandah floor, and the central recessed entrance porch with contextually elaborate doorway featuring a panelled timber and glazed door, sidelights and highlights with Art Nouveau pattern leadlighting. Other intact or appropriate qualities include the symmetrical composition, single storey height, corrugated sheet metal roof cladding, paired full-length timber framed double hung windows, other timber framed double hung windows, and the roughcast gable infill with timber ventilators.

Dalgook, Hume Drive, Taylor's Hill, is historically significant at a LOCAL level (AHC A4). It is one of few remaining Melton Shire houses built as a result of the Closer Settlement Board's subdivision of prominent pastoralist William Taylor's Overnewton Estate into 79 small farms. The Overnewton Estate was one of the earliest, largest, and best-known of the estates created under the Closer Settlement Act 1904. It is expressive of one of the major themes of Australia's history - the contest between large pastoralists and small farmers for the land - and the abiding power of the yeomanry ideal well into the twentieth century. This is the most substantial of the houses built as part of the Overnewton and Exford Closer Settlement Estates in the Shire. The property was acquired by the Pecks in 1925, and its significance within the area is evident in the retention of the name Pecks Road for a nearby major road through a now suburban area.

The immediate rural setting, within a developing suburb, and its original farm context of a characteristic but now scarce Keilor Plains dry stone wall, with mature sugar gum and peppercorn trees, protecting a a circa one hectare home paddock, with ornamental garden and farm sheds, is intergral to the historical and aesthetic significance of the place. It is an extraordinarily intact example of a typical early twentieth century farmstead layout in the Shire.

Overall, Dalgook, Hume Drive, Taylor's Hill, is of LOCAL significance.

Group

Farming and Grazing