HOUSE AT 29 Edwin Road
29 Edwin Road TEMPLESTOWE, Manningham City
Statement of Significance
THE BARN 29 Edwin Rd. Templestowe.
REVISED CITATION Willys Keeble, September 2015
STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE
Revised Statement of Significance, Willys Keeble, 2015
What is significant?
The Barn, a mud-brick, timber and building, and the former dairy outbuilding at 29 Edwin Road, Templestowe were constructed about 1948 by highly notable anthropologist Dr. Donald Thomson on his 70 acre dairy farm. The two-storey building had two low skillions, one a mud-brick milking shed and the other built with mudstone quarried on site. The dairy is of Warrandyte sandstone with a slate roof. The stonemason was Tony Zearo. The Barn has a steep slate roof with dormer windows and decorative bargeboards. The eastern timber gable end has an extraordinary Gothic opening formed by a wishbone-shaped Red Gum branch. The Barn, partially incomplete and without window and door joinery, was finished and adapted internally to become a house in 1986 by Thomson's widow Dorita. The milking shed was removed from the north side of the barn but its concrete floor, west wall and the stone walled milking yard and cow race remain. The dairy outbuilding is now a studio-bedroom. The noted architect Kevin Borland and his partner Bernard Brown prepared plans for the building permit. Their design for the independently supported roof structure and clerestory glazing over the mudstone skillion on the south was adopted, but the majority of the design work was carried out by Dorita Thomson and her daughters.
How is it significant?
The Barn, former dairy complex and its entire site at 29 Edwin Road, Templestowe has local historic and aesthetic significance to Manningham City.
Why is it significant?
The former dairy buildings at 29 Edwin Road, Templestowe have historic significance for their association with Dr. Donald Thomson who designed and built them for his dairy farm, a business which provided financial support for his extensive travels and research in the field of anthropology. They are rare surviving evidence of farming activities in a now extensively developed suburban area. They evoke the post-war period of building materials shortage which necessitated the use of locally available materials and owner-building. (Hercon criteria A.4, B.2, H.1)
The Barn, former dairy outbuilding and milking yard at 29 Edwin Road, Templestowe have aesthetic significance as an unusual and most picturesque design, constructed using mud-brick, slate and recycled timbers in a manner characteristic of the buildings at Montsalvat, Eltham. The stonework is of exceptional quality. (Hercon criterion E.1)
(Original Statement of Significance, Context Pty. Ltd., 2005)
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