Unloved!

Are you Unloved?

The Age newspaper recently ran a story about the Aireys Inlet Hotel, which the owners decided to close up a couple of months ago. Local businessman Mr Wood and other residents decided it could not stand empty:

''I just kept driving past looking at this empty shell, so I had a word to a few different people and we said that either we do something or we just have to accept whatever happens there. It's an iconic pub and an iconic site and it seemed worth us trying to put together a syndicate to buy it.'' We congratulate these entrepreneurial Aireys Inlet community members on their initiative. Read more: http://tinyurl.com/3msok2w

The National Trust has classified 176 hotels and pubs (21 in Melbourne CBD & inner suburbs. Approximately 70 of these are still in use as a hotel and 100 are not in use as hotels/pubs. Of the 100, 30 have been demolished and 70 have alternative uses.

Are we are seeing a trend of deterioration amongst our watering holes? Pubs form an important part of our socio-cultural history and identity, making their abandonment even more profound. In early 2012, we will be curating an exhibition of historc pubs around Victoria that have been registered by the National Trust since 1956 – but subsequently have been demolished, re-used unsympathetically or are simply unloved and looking for a loving owner.

In Williamstown the former Britannia Hotel and Oriental Hotel, both abandoned and neglected, could be threatened by the Woollen Mills redevelopment.

 

Britannia Hotel Williamstown

Diggers Rest Pub

Macedon House, Gisborne

 

The Rose Hotel Napier Street, Fitzroy is up for sale. As repoerted in The Age, the current owners hope it will not be converted into apartments.

   

The former Ritz Motel, on the corner of Corio and Bellerine Streets, Geelong, was constructed by 1853. It was given a simple Renaissance Revival appearance following renovations in the late 1880s. The Geelong Advertiser said:

"SHE was once beautiful but age and neglect have turned Geelong's grand old dame into a derelict old hag." Read more at Geelong Advertiser

   

The MCG Hotel has historical significance at a local level as the oldest hotel in East Melbourne and for its association with football and cricketing bodies since the principal phase of its construction in about 1863. The property has been the site of a licensed premise since 1853, and a popular social venue for pre and post- MCG match spectator gatherings for more than a century. Plans by Hilton on the Park owner Thakral Holdings is to demolish it except for the facade, and replace it with a residential tower. Report in the Herald Sun

   

Are you unloved?

 
  • Are you in the hand of a loving owner?
  • Are you in sympathetic use?
  • Do you look cared for?
  • Do you have a conservation management plan?
  • Have you been in use in the last 3 years?
  • Do you have a restoration permit?

If you have answered an emphatic NO! to these questions, you are probably an unloved building or place.

The National Trust is looking for any heritage places but particulalry hotels and pubs that are neglected, abandoned, forlorn or orphaned, to form a snapshot of unloved heritage places across the state. These places have been loved before and can be loved again.

If you have an unloved building in your community, please send us an image and description and we will consider including it in our quest to bring love to our jilted and estranged heritage pubs and places.

Or are you Loved?!

Follow Rachel Buckley's blog of her adventures following her purchase in August 2011 of a very historic 1860s hotel in Dunolly...

The good news...

Stonnington City Council has given heritage protection to half-a-dozen well known pubs in the Prharan and Windsor area, including The Hotel Max in Commercial Road, Prahran. Read more at Stonnington's website.