This historically significant miner’s cottage has been brought into the 21st century very tastefully. While retaining many original features, the home has been re-roofed, partially re-stumped and re-wired and freshly painted inside and out. With new floor coverings, 2 reverse cycle units, ceiling fans, modern kitchen with dishwasher, 2 bathrooms, 2 toilets, built-in-robes in bedrooms, it’s sited on a very manageable block of about 470m2 close to St.John of God Hospital and only about 5 minutes drive to the city centre. It would ideally suit a professional person or retiree who could move in with nothing to do but add their own footprint over a period of time.
HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE
This former miner’s cottage is historically significant as a good example of a cottage built by a former puddler and/or waged miner. It is associated with nearby mud brick cottages, many of which were built by unemployed miners and sustenance workers during the Depression years of 1890s and 1930s. It shows continual use since the 1870s. It was owned by Mr. G Hilson, who was a meat worker at the local Foggitt Jones & Co abattoirs and bacon works. His sons became local builders and built nearby. The cottage belongs to a group of increasingly rare vernacular structures that show a combined use of timber weatherboards and pise, rammed earth construction techniques, the mud coming from the nearby creek. Groups of mud adobe and pise rammed earth dwellings associated with the German and Cornish community were once a common feature in Bendigo, but are now becoming increasingly rare. Miner’s cottages were a major feature of the built landscape of the Bendigo goldfields.