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Werribee Park Mansion

Location K Road, WERRIBEE VIC 3030 - Property No B1475 File Number B1475 Level State

[1/1] B1475 Werribee Park Mansion

Statement of Significance

One of Australia's grandest and most architecturally sophisticated mansions, notable especially for fine freestone exterior; its largely surviving and partly restored interiors and furnishings; its extensive garden, lake and grotto; its gatehouse and the partially surviving avenue of trees along the line of the driveway to the town of Werribee; the surviving former homestead, ha-ha, and outbuildings; the woolshed and other more distant structures; the old ford and the general relationship of the river to the property and the successive homestead sites.

The mansion, built in 1874-7, is an unusually symmetrical pyramidal composition in a Roman Renaissance Revival style with some scholarly Palladian details and exquisite ornamental carving, and is the only major freestone house in Victoria. The architect is claimed to have been London- born James Henry Fox, quantity and measuring surveyor to the Victorian Government and architect also of 'Chatsworth House' in Hopkins Hill. . Deleterious additions made in the twentieth century, particularly the large wing to the west, are excluded from the Classification. The open setting of the property is of significance and the views from the old homestead to the south-east and south-west are critical to it.