Below is an excerpt from the Balwyn & Balwyn North Citations : May 2016 report in regard to 146-148 Winmalee Rd, Balwyn.
Statement of Significance
What is significant?
Erected in 1931, the house at 146-148 Winmalee Road, Balwyn, is a double-stored rendered brick house in the inter-war Mediterranean style, with a hipped pantiled roof and symmetrical façade with tripartite round-arched loggia, recessed first floor balcony and flanking bays of shuttered windows.
The significant fabric is identified as the exterior of the original house, excluding the 1990s rear additions. The remaining elements of Walling’s garden scheme are also deemed to be significant, including both hard landscaping (paths, retaining walls and wrought iron gates) and plantings (notably the boundary hedge and the lemon-scented gum tree at the rear).
How is it significant?
Humara Ghur at 146-148 Winmalee Road, Balwyn, satisfies the following criteria for inclusion on the heritage overlay schedule to the City of Boroondara Planning Scheme:
Criterion E: Importance in exhibiting particular aesthetic characteristics
Criterion H: Special association with the life or works of a person, or group of persons, of importance in our history.
Why is it significant?
Humara Ghur is significant as a large, notable and well-sited example of an inter-war house in the Mediterranean style that was popular in Melbourne the later 1920s and early ‘30s. The house exhibits most of the trademark characteristics of that style, including its pale-coloured rendered exterior, low- hipped roof with distinctive terracotta pantile, shuttered windows and a subtle touch of classical detailing in the tripartite loggia with round arches and Tuscan columns. The understated monumentality of the house is enhanced by its formalised landscaped setting that includes elements of a garden designed by Edna Walling. Sited at a slight angle to the street boundary, the house and its garden, which includes an eye-catching retaining wall of uncoursed stone and a massive cypress hedge, remain a striking element in the streetscape (Criterion E).
Humara Ghur is significant for its associations with celebrated Victorian garden designer Edna Walling, who prepared an ambitious landscaping scheme for the property in 1932 that was at least partly implemented, and of which key remnants are still apparent to this day. Although Walling is known to have received more than twenty private garden commissions in what is now the City of Boroondara, not all of these were implemented and some that were have since been destroyed. The Craymer garden is one of very few known to retain significant elements of Walling’s original scheme (Criterion H).
I am hopeful that the planned alterations and additions maintain the historic integrity of this signifigant house.
