Whitby House

The Whitby house is a Victorian Colonial house, located at 28 Whitby Street, , an inner northern suburb of Melbourne, in Victoria, Australia.

The house was added to the Victorian Heritage Register on 28 March 1984; and was also added to non-statutory lists by the Victorian branch of the National Trust on 7 May 1981 and the now defunct Register of the National Estate on 30 June 1992.

History Edward Whitby was a merchant who operated his business from Flinders Lane in Melbourne. In 1849, Whitby purchased approximately in Brunswick, and in the early 1850s, constructed "Whitbyfield", that comprised a house, coach house and stables.

Whitby died on 28 June 1876 and his estate passed to his wife, who sold the house and other buildings, set on , to Alfred Theodore Somers, a publican, in . He rented out the property only living there in 1888-89. The property was sold to Graham Ferry in 1903, the owner of the Brunswick Terracotta Works. Ferry added a single-storey music room in .

From 1923, portions of the property were sub-divided and all portions sold. After Ferry's death in 1924, sub-division of an allotment on the eastern side of the property resulted in the demolition of half of the coach house and stable building and sub-division of a number of allotments to the north created Ferry Street. Ralph Loch Garett, a local builder, bought the portion containing the house and remaining part of the stables in 1925. The house was later converted in flats.

Description The original eight-roomed house, of one and two storeys, with adjacent coach house and stables, has stucco walls, a step-pitched slate roof, prominent gable, gables dormers, fretted barge and gutter boards, oriel window on the south facade, and paired octagonal chimneys above a slate roof.

Designed by John Gill in a Victorian Rustic Gothic style, the house and associated structures were comparable to a number of other large houses of the period.

In detailing it reflects an English Tudor influence with fretted barge and gutter boards and paired octagonal chimneys. The gable ends originally had heavily decorated half-timbering and squat timber finials (since removed). The 1900s music room addition was in the style of the original house and introduced a half-timber effect to gables and fanciful carved brackets. It is of special interest for the carved Chimera fixed to the bottom of the brackets.

In the 1920s the original verandah was partly enclosed and the remainder demolished and various unsympathetic alterations and additions were made. The interior was further altered to convert the house to a series of separate flats.

Whitby House is one of the earliest surviving buildings in Brunswick and is associated with the earliest settlement on the northern fringe of the city of Melbourne. It is a rare survivor of the Victorian Rustic Gothic houses constructed in Melbourne in the 1850s and is representative of a small but influential stream in early Victorian architecture. The building has suffered alterations to its detail internally and externally, and it retains its basic architectural form and concept.

Auction listing, 1870 Listed for auction on 11 April 1870, "Whitbyfield" was described by the listing agent as follows:

Whitby House

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