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Former Shire Office - Group Classifiaction - Mortlake Historic Area

Location Shaw Street,, MORTLAKE VIC 3272 - Property No B4286 File Number B4286 Level Local

[1/1] B4286 Frmr Shire Office

Statement of Significance

Group Statement of Significance: A distinguished group of three small civic buildings, now abandoned, consisting of Court House, Shire Offices and Post Office, built between 1864 and 1880.
Construction is of basalt ashlar with the dominant, centrally placed, Court House in the formal plumb bond and the flanking buildings in random work. Roofs are gabled and slated with plain timber barges and trim. Verandahs are of corrugated sheeting with timber posts and framing except for the Shire Offices which, unusually for such a building, has cast iron verandah posts (of a modern Gothic design used elsewhere in the works of Davidson and Henderson) with a decorative cast iron valence.
Set together on the edge of rising ground, the group once dominated the township but is now itself overshadowed by street trees and recent building. Other than for the adaptation of the Post Office to serve as a house the buildings which make up the group are intact.
Historic Area Statement of Significance: The significance of the Shaw Street, Mortlake precinct derives from its group of nineteenth century bluestone buildings which were erected predominantly for civic or commerical use. They reflect an important phase of Mortlake's urban development in the two decades of the 1860s and 1870s. This was a period when the region's rural economy was consolidating and stabilising after the expansion of the squatting and gold eras.
Also of significance is the fact that the integrity of the precinct reflects the availability of public land as a result of a layout found in only three towns in Victoria and representative of a town plan widely used in South Australia, with its separation of town centre and suburbs by an area of public parkland.
Group Classified: 05/05/1983.