Lancefield: An Historical Guide

Happy Motoring! Lancefield Central Automotive

Australia’s first motor garages were adapted from the basic form of coachbuilding structures, being large sheds dressed up by brick facades with huge double doors facing the street. As well as providing service to cars, motor garages sold petrol to run the cars. Petrol bowsers were first seen in Melbourne in 1914 and some garages immediately ordered one. First placed inside garages, during the 1920s they were progressively installed on kerbsides and the sale of petrol then became a separate retail activity from motor-body building or car maintenance.

Albert (or Alf, we are unsure which name is correct) Williams came to Lancefield from Daylesford in 1904, where he had trained at the School of Mines as both a plumber and tinsmith. Originally the garage business operated from the premises owned by Mr Frank Jenkin of the former Plough Hotel at 13 Dunsford Street, opposite the Farmer’s Arms Hotel. Jenkin also had a car hire business he operated from the Farmer’s Arms. The motor garage on the corner of High Street and The Crescent began in the 1920s and continued in the Williams family until the late 1980s. It was then taken over by Steve Climas who has now owned it for thirty years.

 The building has been used more than once as a set in Australian film and television productions. In the 1990s when it was used as the set for the series, Flying Doctors, signage was added to the exterior of the building. When the time came for the signage to be removed, Steve decided that he was happy for it to remain. The striking typeface used for ‘Garage Automotive Repairs’ and ‘Pratts High Test Sealed’ still adorn the exterior of the building. The old bowser proudly resides in the street. Car enthusiasts regularly photograph the exterior, and in 2014 the RACVs magazine, RoyalAuto, featured the garage as well as the former Hay and Grain Store across the road.

The Oldest Grain Store in the southern hemisphere?

Richard Onians, storekeeper, auctioneer and grain merchant, and his wife Charlotte, née Smith, were both natives of Shropshire, England. They arrived in Victoria in 1855 and eventually settled in Lancefield in 1864. Onians kept the Post Office store for the first five years of his residence in Lancefield before purchasing farming land at Rochford. This did not seem to agree with him and he returned to the world of general business in the early 1870s. He was at one time a partner in Allan Glover & Co, Melbourne grain merchants and it appears that by 1879 e was a commission agent selling rye grass, white clover, cow grass, lucerne, cape barley, seed oats and seed wheat. One year later he advertised in the Lancefield Mercury his business as auctioneer with sale yards in Lancefield. In October 1880 he advertised for tenders for the erection of a hardwood building ‘48 ft by 16 ft’ in Lancefield; it is thought that Onians commissioned the existing building to be constructed. By 1885 he was partner of Onians & Vinnicombe, High Street, Lancefield. Their business was wide-ranging and included as auctioneering and sail-making. Onians was also a councillor in the Newham and Romsey shires.

Robert Parks owned and operated this grain store from the early 1890s. He advertised in the Lancefield Mercury in 1892 that ‘R Parks & Son desire to intimate that they have purchased The Lancefield Malthouse and that they are prepared to give the highest market values for best samples of Barley’ with ‘Cash on Delivery’.  They retained the business through the early years of the 1900s, advertising once again in 1908 as ‘Maltsters, Grain and Potato Merchants’. Eight years later, in 1916, the same advertisement appeared in the Mercury in conjunction with a brewery and malthouse (now demolished) which stood to the rear of the property.

The Parks family were well-known farmers in the Lancefield and Rochford areas, and Robert ran the family farm Parkside. Robert’s son William Henry Parks eventually ran the hay and grain business and became a leading light in Lancefield society. As R Parks & Son, he and his father became maltsters. William took a keen interest in local politics and was elected to the Lancefield Shire Council from 1896-1904. He was also a member of the local Rifle Club, Anglers Club, Farmers’ and Gardeners’ Society and of the Royal Agricultural Society of Victoria. He was honorary secretary of the Board of Guardians of the Church of England, Chairman of the Lancefield Water Trust; a Past Master of the Romsey Lodge of Freemasons and a Justice of the Peace.

The 1903 photograph shows the grain store much as it is today but without the malthouse which was demolished some time in the early 1900s. One later owner of the store was Robert Hemphill who sold or leased the store to Dan Slattery in c.1921. He later reclaimed it for his son Walter Robert Hemphill in c.1926 and he held the property until the 1930s.

Set on the corner of High Street and The Crescent, the store has the characteristic splayed corner plan with a hipped roof. The timber building is considered by the authors of the 1994 Macedon Ranges Cultural Heritage and Landscape Study to be rare for a building of this age, ‘particularly commercial or storage buildings which were often burnt down because of their inflammable contents’. An old timbe stable in the rear of the property is still visible from the street. The study concludes that ‘This grain store has significant links to local agriculture. It is also a rare reminder of the importance of the grain trade to the area at mid-century. Architecturally it is rare as a two-storey timber store and contributes to the Lancefield Commercial Precinct’.

The timber two-storey grain store was claimed by a real estate agent in 1992 to be the oldest continuously used grain store in the southern hemisphere. Where he found this information is unknown, but it makes a good story!

The current owner of the old Grain Store, Bruce Ferguson, has held the property since the 1990s. While the exterior remains very much as it has been for most of the twentieth century, one recent addition is the balcony for entertaining; a BBQ and bar stools make the balcony an inviting sight.