A HISTORY & CONTEXT
WHERE YOU ARE STANDING IS AN HISTORIC PLACE.
There is a history here from which the new arises. We don’t live in a vacuum and historic places are important. Understanding where we have come from fixes us in time and our sense of where we have come from and who we are. Yarraville is one of the most historic places in Melbourne and this little precinct was at its heart from the beginning.
A LITTLE OF YARRAVILLE’S HISTORY… AND WHY IT’S NOW A HERITAGE ZONE
Its only 6k from the city and situated on the Yarra river. Crown land West of the Yarra first offered for sale in 1844. The first settlers in the 1840s were quarrying bluestone for ships ballast. The “Yarraville” land subdivision was released in 1855. By the 1870s there were large riverside industries with workers living locally in cottages. The Yarraville station was opened in 1871, burnt down in 1892 and was rebuilt. Yarraville’s first police station with three constables opened opposite No 31 at 32-34 Simpson street in 1879 and “on one notable occasion, 100 youths besieged the station after one of their number was fined for insulting behaviour”. The first church was opened by Methodists in 1870. In 1872 William Williams (who was one of the first settlers in Yarraville) transformed the front two rooms of his house at 37 Simpson Street in the middle of what is now Fels Park into a shop serving 70 local households. Williams ran his shop for 31 years until he died in 1903 and it was then demolished.
IN 1903 YARRAVILLE WAS DESCRIBED AS BEING A WORKING-CLASS VILLAGE, CONTAINING:
• A railway station on the Williamstown line (fare to the City 5 and ½ pence)
• Six hotels
• One state school
• Six churches
• One bank
• One post office
• Three public halls
• “Good shops”
• The streets were illuminated by gaslight
When you walk around the precinct you can see that many of these buildings are still there and in daily use. Yarraville was a place where workers in Melbourne’s booming river side industries lived. Engineers, chemists, glassblowers, rope-weavers, furnacemen, founders, blacksmiths and stevedores. Yarraville had a village like feel and workers walked or peddled to work in nearby rope, bottle, sugar and chemical factories, an iron foundry and in stone quarries. The place had many hotels and was a busier port than Footscray.
Settlement concentrated about the railway station and the shopping centre, with Simpson street being an integral part. By 1914 it had fifty shops, several banks, cricket and football clubs, and a brass band. Yarraville opposed conscription in 1916-17. During the great flue epidemic of 1918 tents were erected in Fels park right next to No 31 by local businesses and 10 gallons of soup were distributed daily by the Influenza Help Committee.
The Sun Theatre opened in 1938 and is still in use. After WW2 Yarraville was transformed by immigrants. Unlike other areas nearby Yarraville has not been heavily redeveloped and is a unique surviving late Victorian and Edwardian precinct.
NUMBER 31 SIMPSON STREET
This was not the first dwelling built at No 31 Simpson street. The dwelling now being renovated and extended replaced the original house and it was built in the early 1950s, some 50 years after William Williams little shop next door was demolished.
Being a post war bungalow it was much more modest than the surrounding dwellings built from the 1870s onward, with a lower standard of workmanship and cheaper materials. By the 1950s the use of imported Douglas fir framing, Siberian pine and Redwood windows and Scandinavian pine flooring had given way to rough sawn green local hardwood framing and ash flooring. The galvanised roofing was no longer the high-quality material used in the 19th century and it deteriorated badly. Expectations in the 1950s were much simpler than today. This small dwelling had a living room, a dining room, small kitchen, one bathroom and toilet, two bedrooms and a lean too laundry with a very small rear garden. The only heating was a small open fire in the living room and there was no wall or ceiling insulation.
This house itself has been renovated and altered extensively over the last fifty years. For many years it had a tall radio antenna on its roof and was used as the home base for a road courier business.
YARRAVILLE IS CHANGING AGAIN
The renovation of No 31 Simpson street is symptomatic of changes happening to our urban fabric as Melbourne’s population heads past 5 million. Inner city properties that were built as modest homes for factory workers are now highly valued for their proximity to the city, amenities and special urban environments. With our far higher 21st century expectations of what a dwelling should be and contain there are inevitable pressures and strains as we work to contain the larger built forms required on the small plots of land.