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Madresfield Hop Kilns

Location Mitchell River Road,, BAIRNSDALE VIC 3875 - Property No B3382 File Number B3382 Level Demolished/Removed

[1/1] B3382 Madresfield Hop Kilns

Statement of Significance

A large rectangular building dating from c1882 and built for J A Taylor, a Bairnsdale hop proprietor. The building, which is located a few hundred metres from the Mitchell River, consists of a long two tiered cooling-storage-packing shed and three kilns. The exterior walls of the whole are made from an unusual construction material (clay-gravel mixture) but are in poor condition. The drying apparatus (consisting of brick furnaces, wooden scaffolding of the drying funnels, bricks which once lined the funnels, and drying racks) is in a reasonable state of preservation and affords a good sample of hop drying techniques in an important Victorian industry in the later part of the nineteenth century. The wooden floor, which divides the cooling-storage-packing shed, is weak in parts; the shingle roofs of the kilns have been replaced with galvanised iron; the interior walls carry stamps and inscriptions that help us to date the building. Despite various alterations and structural weaknesses in the building, the bulk of the hop kilns at Mossiface, these are the only buildings that remain of the great hop growing industry that flourished in the area in the 1882.
Destroyed by fire early 1995
Classified: 04/12/1980