Newlands History

Newland’s Treasures: Its Little Brick and Timber Houses

Several years ago, I moved from Brunswick to North Coburg to be closer to my daughter and my grandchildren.

Before the move, whenever I visited, I was intrigued by the charming brick houses I could see all around me, all rather similar but with subtle variations. I now have one of those houses and have done some renovations and planted a garden.

The houses still intrigue me and I enjoy looking at them as I walk around the area. I love to compare them: some face this way, some that; some have a chimney here, others there; most have a subtle pattern in brick on the chimney and another bit of fancy of brickwork on the gable end (look closely and you will see what I mean.) Most have the small glassed-in porch at the front door and, from what I have seen of houses that have not been renovated, a similar front door with a combined door knocker and key lock.

I have done some research about these houses. If you would like to know what I have found out, please keep reading. If you have some information that is missing from my account, please let me know as I know many Newlanders are interested to learn more about their special houses.
I was lucky enough to obtain an old plan of the block where my house is situated and the houses adjoining it. This has been invaluable in my research and I can now identify the various types of houses that were built at the time.

It is obviously an official Housing Commission plan and is dated 1945, and it identifies the houses according to an accompanying code. It took a while to work it out but it is now fairly clear. I assume the code applies to all the houses in the three areas where they are located: to the west of Elizabeth Street between Murray Road and where the new Coburg Hill development is located; a comparable area to the east of Elizabeth Street in West Preston, and a small area between Murray Road and Bell Street to the west of Elizabeth Street. (This is a rough grouping as there are some of these particular houses on the fringes of these areas and I cannot tell where they actually begin and end.)

Both timber and brick houses are located on my plan and listed in the code. The timber houses are free standing and there are not many of them as far as I can tell; in my area, they are mostly in Meaghan Avenue and Claremont Street (please let me know if I have missed any). They
are identified by a T. The brick houses (most of them red or clinker brick) are identified by a B; they fall into two categories: B4 and B6.

The B4 houses are the smaller of the two and have a timber extension labelled SO (sleep-out, I guess). The B6 houses have three internal bedrooms, the B4s two plus the sleep-out, otherwise they are similar. The timber houses are all labelled T6, so I assume they, like the B6s, are larger. There are only a few free-standing brick houses (B6s) in my vicinity (most are duplexes), and there are a couple of two-storey dwellings located on the corners. There are not many B6s when compared with the B4s, and they are often attached to a B4, forming a duplex. (Have you followed all this? I am sorry if it is a little confusing!).

The Moreland Council website has some brief but interesting and informative historical information. The three areas are identified as the Newlands Estate Precinct and are of state historical significance as ‘a section of one of the first large-scale housing estates developed on farm land in the then outer suburbs of Melbourne by the Housing Commission of Victoria between 1940 and 1953…[and] one of the first Housing Commission estates to incorporate a mixture of housing types and densities, including cottages [the cottages must be the free-standing houses on my plan], duplexes [they must be the adjoining B4s or a B6-B4 combination] and walk-up flats, along lines promoted by British and American Garden Suburb and New Town theorists’. (You can find this information on the Council website and in the interesting Podcast placed on the Newlands blog on 15/2017: http://feedity.com/sub/public/soundcloud/307610692.mp3


When my builder was working on the house, he continually complained about how well it had been built: ‘Damn hard to unbuild!’ he would grumble. I must say I was amazed to see a huge concrete joist under the old bathroom, just one of several supporting the internal walls and floor. And the double-brick external walls proved a nightmare to saw through to provide new windows and doors. (It was worthwhile, though, as one of the faults of these houses is that they can be rather dark and gloomy inside.) The rooms are rather small by today’s standards, and the hallways particularly so. This can be rectified with a little imagination and a builder who knows what he is doing; when I was looking for one of these houses to buy, I was impressed by the number of ways people had overcome these problems.

Although they are usually rather small, a particular saving grace of the houses is that they invariably have a lot of land around them. Behind many is the kind of backyard that kids can play in, or that can be turned into a garden with a large vegetable patch — the kind of garden few new houses have these days. I built a large deck at the back of my house to make the most of its lovely northern and eastern aspects and had no trouble getting it through Council. There would have been little trouble too getting permission to go up at the back (though I chose not to) because the generous blocks mean that the regulations about overlooking one’s neighbours are not usually a problem.

There is as heritage overlay on the three areas, which means that the front of the houses cannot be altered. Although the overlay can be frustrating, I am glad of it because it would be such a pity to spoil the unique and attractive look of the houses.

On the subject of the front of these houses, I did not know until recently that originally they did not have fences at all, that this was one of the features of garden-suburb planning. Of course, people soon built fences of their own and this is why there is such a variety, whereas the houses themselves are so uniform. Many houses have high fences that I do think look out of place and certainly spoil the streetscape and the general ambience of the area. A low fence or hedge sets these houses off to perfection, in my opinion.

It is interesting to hear the different ways local people refer to this area and its fascinating little houses: the ‘Old Newlands Estate’ is one, and its denizens ‘Newlanders’. I like that and have enjoyed being a Newlander and living in a B6 duplex on the Old Newlands Estate.

PS. As I said before, if you have anything to add, please do so as I would like to know more and I am sure other Newlanders would too. On my blog, I often write about the new garden I am making on my B6 plot. If you would like to read about its progress from bleak space covered in couch grass to my dream of a beautiful garden of trees and flowers, just google my name: Gillean Dunk or click on the link: gilleandunkcomau.wordpress.com