The grand houses of nineteenth century Victoria have been given only superficial consideration in the literature on Australian architectural history, and it has been assumed that the colonial houses in Victoria simply copied British models. However houses are always designed to accommodate the values, beliefs and customs of the society for which they are built, and their spaces must be arranged to accommodate a variety of both utilitarian and social functions. It might therefore be expected that the different physical, economic and social conditions in Victoria would result in variations from the British models which more closely reflected their colonial context. / This thesis seeks to document, analyse and explain the planning of the grand houses of nineteenth century Victoria. It demonstrates that the form and planning of these grand houses in Victoria did indeed resemble the British models in many ways. This is because both the settlers in Victoria and colonial society were predominantly British, and the settlers could only aspire to respectability, and establish a position in the newly developing social hierarchies, by conformity with British norms. The possession of an appropriate house played an important role in this, and the houses therefore were always based on British models. There was conformity with British practice in the specialization and segregation of functions and spaces in the houses, and in the invariable use of closed corridor planning. However although these British planning conventions were observed, the houses differed in significant ways from those in Britain. This was largely because the colonial upper classes differed significantly from the old upper classes in Britain. A higher proportion of the upper classes in Victoria were new rich, and their houses reflect not only the greater informality of colonial society but also the tendency of the new rich towards ostentation. Their houses were built for maximum effect, even when this at times was in conflict with accepted British attitudes towards ostentation and privacy. This resulted in differences from British norms in the arrangement of the spaces in the houses, which more closely reflected the colonial context. The grand houses in Victoria were not therefore purely British, but were always a colonial hybrid.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/245559 |
| Creators | Jordan, Kerry Lea |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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