City of Darebin Heritage Study Volume 1 Draft Thematic

DAREBIN HERITAGE STUDY STAGE 2Upper Northcote (Northcote)Northcote was first known as Upper Northcote, as distinct from Lower Northcote (Westgarth)where the government township was laid out. It is believed that Northcote was named afterBritish parliamentarian Sir Stafford Northcote, by Surveyor-General Andrew Clarke, who wasan early Northcote resident. The heights of Northcote attracted residents of high standing incolonial Victoria, such as Clarke, and wealthy businessmen, such as William Rucker as notedbelow.Settlers moving into the area tended to prefer the higher ground of Rucker’s Hill, or UpperNorthcote, where private subdivision were made in the 1850s the nucleus of Northcote tookshape in the 1850s. By the end of the decade there were 170 houses in the district, many ofthem small cottages and shops. Some of these can still be seen on the south slope of Rucker’sHill. Upper Northcote attracted a number of wealthy business and professional people besidesWilliam Rucker, whose mansion Sunnyside crowned the top of the hill. Nehemiah Wimble, asenior civil servant, built St Neots, and merchant Norman Guthridge built Turret House.Another merchant John Gull Johnson constructed the Italian Renaissance style Beaumont at 11Bastings Street in 1867. It was later the home of tannery owner Joshua Pitt for twenty yearsand is the only surviving mansion of the era (Lemon, 1983:43; Summerton, 1997:17; Butler1992).Figure 39St Neots(image date unknown)[DHE, ID 481]Upper Northcote also attracted up-and-coming professional men, such as carpenter EdwardTwentyman, who bought the four-room cottage at 46 Bastings Street in 1867. He enlarged thehouse, cladded it with brick and added a verandah. Twentyman joined David Askew to form aprominent Melbourne firm of architects. They designed a number of Darebin’s buildings,including the former Northcote Library and Northcote Theatre, and probably the enginehouse for the cable tram system (Butler, 1992).Irishtown/PrestonPreston did not have a planned village or township. For its first two decades, it was a scattereddistrict of small farmers, with a few larger grazing properties in the north as noted in Chapter4. In the 1860s, the area between Dundas Street and Murray Road was occupied as small farmsof up to 16 hectares and north of Murray Road the country was still closely wooded with redgum. North of Tyler Street Samuel Jeffrey, the Irishman for whom the district was named, wasthe first to buy land and commence farming. He also started a Methodist Church in his barnin 1852. Jeffrey was joined in the 1850s by James Tyler and some of the group of Particular68