The home of Thomas Payne, plasterer, selector and pioneer fruit grower, has high local and possibly regional significance as a c1874 or earlier farmhouse associated with the first years of the Seville fruit growing industry. The house remains substantially intact and provides evidence of construction techniques, building designs and layouts of the period. Payne was a prominent local resident who was one of the first local Councillors, a trustee of the local church and Rechabite hall and, in 1893, a director of an early but unsuccessful attempt to establish a local jam factory.

The 1870s house built by Thomas Payne remains. The house is in two distinct sections - the main house and a detached kitchen. The present owner understands that the "kitchen" may have been the first building, with the "main house" built around 20 years later. However, the development sequence may be more complex than this. Externally, and in terms of the building forms and materials used, the two buildings appear to have been built at a similar time.

The main house is rectangular in form with verandahs on all sides, small sections of which have been enclosed. The roof comprises two hipped sections, and the pitch suggests it may have originally been shingled. There are three chimneys that appear to relate to one of the hipped sections. The house is built on stone footings, with a timber frame and external render which has been ruled in an ashlar pattern to resemble stonework. Internally the house retains its room layout, fireplaces and molded arch in the central passageway. The windows are generally double-hung sash windows.

The main house has possibly been built in two stages, starting out as a hip-roofed cottage, and then later extended by the addition of another cottage form, creating a building with a central passageway and verandahs on all sides. One of the verandahs has two small rooms that open onto the verandah, an unusual feature sometimes seen in early houses in Tasmania and Victoria (for example Pontville in Templestowe and Sweeneys across the river in Eltham). An internal examination of the roof spaces would assist in understanding the sequence of development.

The "kitchen" is a two roomed building, similar in form and materials to the main house, but with only a single hipped roof section. It is also surrounded by a verandah on all four sides. This verandah abuts the verandah of the main house. Internally, one of the two rooms is now a kitchen. It appears to have served this function for many years (and perhaps since the building was constructed). It has an interesting terracotta tiled floor that appears quite old, and would be worth comparing to the original tiles that survive at Sebire's Mont De Lancey homestead. Internally, the walls are lined with bead-edged boards up to dado height. The kitchen has a large and small chimney, and there is a large water tank under the verandah immediately outside the kitchen.

Nearby is a small timber stables, and a number of mature trees including elms and a large oak.