The poor old 1888 #SpurlingHouse in Brighton has been in the news again; this is a photo I took last year, this is what happens if there’s a fire just after you buy it, you refuse to spend the $1.5 mill insurance on repairs and instead spend it on a bunch of experts who argue your case to demolish at #HeritageVictoria – twice – and you lose both times, letting the house decay over 5 years. I don’t know if HV tried an enforcement repair order after the last hearing in 2017, but I see they’ve got one in place now, though I don’t know how you enforce such a thing when an owner clearly won’t lift a finger. The aerial shots are thanks to @seenbytom. It’s a terribly important house, by US born NSW architect #JohnHorburyHunt, who brought the east coast #ShingleStyle to Aus, and I reckon this is one of the best (and smallest) of his of that style. It hard to know what to do in such a case, but I do lean towards not rewarding the owners for bad behaviour. Though I do recall a church in Toorak illegally dem in the late 80s ? which sat abandoned for at least 10 years, then the third owner got a permit to dem the rest.

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