AVOCA PRIMARY SCHOOL

Avoca Primary School, a single storey, asymmetrical brick and slate roofed school erected in 1878 to the designs of architect Henry Robert Bastow. 

Avoca Primary School is of architectural significance to the State of Victoria. It satisfies the following criterion for inclusion in the Victorian Heritage Register:
Criterion D
Importance in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a class of cultural places and objects

 

The Avoca Primary School is architecturally significant as the earliest substantially intact example of the Horsham-Avoca school model designed by architect Henry Robert Bastow. The design incorporates verandahs and a highly innovative tent-like roof, showing a sensitivity to the Australian climate. About twenty-five schools of this type were built in Victoria, varying in size from one room to schools accommodating about 500 pupils. Though Horsham Primary School was built earlier, substantial alterations to that building mean that Avoca Primary School is now the earliest building to clearly reflect the design of the Horsham-Avoca model. 

The school’s fine and distinctive architectural qualities are also evident in such elements as the highly developed use of red and cream banded brickwork; the high pitched, tent-like slate roof; the encircling verandahs which become extensions of the main roof but at a lower pitch; the central fleche and slender chimneys; the intersecting hip and gable roofs, incorporating jerkin-head roofs; and the decorative gable ventilators and timber brackets.