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Grandstand - Baarmutha Park

Location Balaclava Road,, BEECHWORTH VIC 3747 - Property No B4352 File Number B4352 Level Local

[1/1] B4352 Grandstand Baarmutha

Statement of Significance

Beechworth's Baarmutha Park Grandstand was built in 1897, for the Shire Council.
As with many a town, this grandstand is at a site long reserved for local sporting and celebratory events.
Vested in the council by the government, the site was leased to the Beechworth race committee in 1858, on condition that the committee would clear and fence the area and make it available for other sports. Here the All England Eleven cricket team challenged and defeated the Ovens Twenty-Two in 1852. By 1870s the Beechworth races had become the gala sporting and social event of Victoria's north-east.
In 1896 the Shire Council saw the need for a new grandstand and sought legal opinion as to means of raising a loan to build it. Following government provision of the money, contemporary reports of building of the grandstand observed its solid brick ground-floor, accommodating a spacious refreshment area, as well as change rooms; the upper deck of seating, sheltered by a curved roof of sheet iron, its supporting wooden pillars, laced with a decorative frieze of cast-iron and below this the cast iron panelling of the guard-rail. The grandstand was ready for the New Year's Day Sports, 1898.
Today the Baarmutha Park Grandstand is a rare example of surviving nineteenth century grandstand in Victoria. Ballarat grandstand, for example, is dated 1898, while the Benalla grandstand, similar in form, is smaller and constructed of timber.
As with the Powder Magazine or Post Office, the Baarmutha Park Grandstand, this steadfast watcher over many decades of Beechworth's social and sporting events is solidly built into the historic image of Beechworth.
Classified: 21/08/1986