12 March 2025

Looks like maybe a 1910s cutesy cottage but it’s actually a c1856 prefabricated timber house in Lambeth Place St Kilda called Oberon. It’s kind of Swiss style, with that very projecting roof, and complicated window hoods, and having those triangular windows is very very unusual. It had looked pretty dilapidated when it was sold in 2017, and when I happened to go look for it yesterday I was surprised to find it’s in the midst of restoration, with an extension out back by @seangodsellarchitects (which I don’t mind).

Not much is actually known about it – some Melb Uni students did some measured drawings in 2022, when it was already stripped out, and they suggested it might have come in a shipment from Genoa, and noted the original external boards were European Spruce. They also found an 1848 Loudon Pattern Book design that was similar, and discovered that the front door had been moved outwards, and it’s now been moved back in again. They drew up what the plan might have been like, with a pretty squeezy stair, don’t know whether that’s being reproduced /kept but I doubt it. They also drew up the framing, which is ‘balloon’, that is multiple verticals, and the floors in a grid, I guess it came as lots of little bits.

Before photos are from the #cityofportphillip heritage study, and interiors from the sale ad. The student work came up just by googling ‘Oberon St Kilda prefabricated’.

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