Architecture, Building and Planning - Theses

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/11343/280

Filters

1983 1
1
Reset filters

Settings
Statistics
Citations
Subject: Victoria × Subject: George Henderson × Type: Masters Research thesis × Start date: 1980 × End date: 1989 ×

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Item
    Thumbnail Image
    Two Scots in Victoria: the architecture of Davidson and Henderson
    Willingham, Allan ( 1983)
    Research for this dissertation began in February 1970 with a part-time post graduate, study to identify and document the architectural heritage of the Western District of Victoria. The initial program of study, which was centred on my birthplace, Camperdown, and the surrounding municipality of the Shire of Hampden, concentrated on an investigation of the many pastoral homesteads located in this rich grazing region of Victoria. Although the task proved to be both expansive and expensive, it was quickly established that throughout the nineteenth century, Scottish immigrants to the Port Phillip Colony of New South Wales exerted a strong, distinctly Caledonian influence on the patterns of settlement and cultural development of the lands known as 'Australia Felix'. In many instances, it was apparent that Scottish architectural traditions had been directly transplanted into an Australian context with a landscape altogether reminiscent of the Lowlands and Border Country of Scotland. In mid 1972, my research program was reduced in extent and redirected towards an investigation into the nature of this Scottish presence, and the influence of Scottish architects in the development of identifiable architectural traditions in Western Victoria. An index of the building and architectural data contained in the files of the Geelong Advertiser from 1840-1888 was prepared and a chronological account of the development of homestead architecture in the Western District was subsequently framed. Although several architectural firms were associated, with varying degrees of success, with the pastoral industry of the region, one firm, that of the architects Alexander Davidson and George Henderson, dominated the building industry at the height of the wool boom in the 1870's. A chance follow up to a footnote in Margaret Loch Kiddle's authoratitive, social history of the Western District Men of Yesterday (1961), during a visit to Scotland in 1972 led to the discovery of George Henderson's papers in Edinburgh. This extensive collection of letters, drawings and photographs, which was kindly made available to me by Mrs. E.S. Phillipps, the daughter of George Henderson, relates to the careers of the architects Davidson and Henderson in Australia and also to the earlier practice of their mentor, the noted Edinburgh architect John Henderson. Included in the collection are 115 letters, written by George Henderson to his mother in the period 1867-1877, whilst working in Australia. These monthly epistles provide a unique and extremely frank, personal and detailed account of an architectural practice in Western Victoria in the nineteenth century and form the basis of this dissertation, which is essentially a study of the architecture of Davidson and Henderson.