August 2026

This rather Colonial looking mansion painted a fetching green (not) is Marlton, the house that gives its name to Marlton Crescent in St Kilda, which runs off Wellington Street, and is where St Michael’s school started.

It was built in 1864 (possibly an expansion of an 1855 house), designed by Lloyd Taylor in the simple style that many big St Kilda houses adopted in the 1850s-60s, with restrained classical details and a single storey timber verandah (this one might be a reproduction). There’s also a nice arched portico entrance.

It was on a very big block as per the plan from 1873, and there’s a sketch of the scrubby park like grounds from 1889 by Elizabeth Parsons, though that was 6 years after the front ‘paddock’ had been subdivided with a loop road for villa allotments as per the 1883 plan (many are matching and in lovely polychrome brick, I’ve included a few). The one old photo of the house is from after the subdivision.

In 1895 it became the Anglican St Michael’s Girls Grammar, and they added a large bit to the house on the left disrupting the symmetry. The school has gradually grown hugely to take over a lot of Redan Street and another mansion on Chapel Street, Rodenbosch, also built in the 1860s. They could try painting the original house a nicer colour – oh found pic 4 from 2006 when it was a better cream colour.

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