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Cheetham Saltworks

Location Aviation Road,, LAVERTON VIC 3028 - Property No B7085 File Number B7085 Level Regional

[1/1] B7085 Cheetham Saltworks

Statement of Significance

The Cheetham Saltworks is of social, scientific and aesthetic significance at the Regional level, as a major evaporative saltworks that demonstrates the process of salt production from sea water using evaporation pans and manual harvesting. Relics including timber sluice gates, timber walled crystallising pans (partly reconstructed), pumps and pump houses, earth channels and drains, remnants of narrow gauge tramways, workshops, and the refinery buildings, demonstrate all stages in the process which was pioneered in Victoria by Richard Cheetham, and reached its highest level of development in his Laverton and Geelong Works.
The Laverton Works is the best surviving example in Victoria of an evaporative saltworks that is able to demonstrate the manual harvesting methods as it was designed to operate.
The site is of historical significance for its association with Richard Cheetham and Andrew W. Cunningham, two important industrial entrepreneurs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth Century, and reflects their particular vision as well as the firm's expansion in the 1920's and 30's.
The aesthetic significance of the site lies in its subtle modified saltmarsh landscape which includes large still evaporation ponds, a labyrinthine network of channels and levee banks covered in mostly indigenous saltmarsh vegetation with some exotic planting such as pine rows.
Classified: 08/10/2001