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Pastoria Estate

Location Kyneton/Baynton Road,, PIPERS CREEK VIC 3444 - Property No B3678 File Number B3678 Level Local

[1/1] B3678 Pastoria Estate

Statement of Significance

A house of quite exceptional architectural character due to alterations carried out c. 1892-4 to an earlier building of c. 1860 and later. The south front has a rough cast gable projected over a shingle-hung canted bay, reminiscent of the Queen Anne work of E W Godwin and other English architects in the 1970s,The weatherboard cladding and broad spreading proportions are more suggestive of an American character, and perhaps the work of A W Cobb and J C Stevens as published in 1889. The lattice treatment of the verandah gablet introduces a motif still favoured more than two decades later by local Arts & Crafts/Craftsman-influenced architects such as Rodney Alsop and W A M Blackett.
The house focusses on a magnificent galleried two-story hall, fully lined in red pine and the principal rooms are finely decorated with gold-toned papers in foliage and floral patterns traceable to the Kyneton decorator Oswald J Price. John Boyd Watson Junior had acquired the property in 1889 following the death of his father, the ex-Bendigo mining magnate. Though the architect is unknown the character, especially of the timber-lined hall suggests links with Bendigo houses of the decade and with the wealthy resort architecture of Mount Macedon.
Classified: 12/12/1985