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PASCHENDALE SOLDIERS MEMORIAL HALL

Other Name PASCHENDALE HALL Location 87 PASCHENDALE-TAHARA ROAD, PASCHENDALE, GLENELG SHIRE Level Recommended for Heritage Overlay

[1/2] 52872 Paschendale Hall 129 [2/2] 52872 Glenelg and others 069

Statement of Significance

What is Significant?
The Paschendale Hall is located on the Paschendale Road, at Paschendale in an elevated position 20.0kms east-south-east of Casterton overlooking the Wannon Valley. It was built as a community hall rather than as a memorial. Ian Bond MLA, the local MP opened the building in 1928. Its style is loosely Arts and Crafts and its plan is symmetrical. No architect or builder has yet been associated with its construction. The hall is timber framed, clad externally with weatherboards and asbestos cement sheets with a corrugated iron roof. Internally the walls are plaster and battens with a timber dado. Importantly the original Shellite lighting system survives. The building retains a very high degree of integrity, the best in the Glenelg Shire, and remains in good condition.

How is it Significant?
The Paschendale Hall is of architectural, historical and social significance to the State of Victoria.

Why is it Significant?
The Paschendale Hall is of historical significance as an excellent example of the typical response by returned soldiers from the First World War to their need to remember those who had fought and died, and to be practical and forward thinking in their new lives. It demonstrates the united action of a new community and reflects that community's social and cultural development over subsequent generations. The hall is of social significance as a isolated rural example of a memorial hall in a tiny community of returned soldiers, and as their meeting place, and their families meeting place for over eighty years. The Paschendale Hall is of architectural significance for its vernacular architecture, use of local materials, and for certain more unusual additions, such as the 'sunken' kitchens and other such innovative design features.