Rippon Lea Estate

Rippon Lea Estate
General information
Location	Elsternwick, Melbourne, Victoria
Country	Australia
Owner	Sir Frederick Sargood

Rippon Lea Estate is a heritage-listed historic house and gardens located in Elsternwick, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is in the care of the National Trust of Australia. It was added to the Australian National Heritage List on 11 August 2006.

The front gates of the Rippon Lea estate

History

Rippon Lea in 1880

The Rippon Lea mansion and garden was created for Sir Frederick Sargood, a wealthy Melbourne businessman, who successfully carried on his father's business importing softgoods, and was also a politician and philanthropist. In 1868 Frederick and his wife Marion purchased Crown Allotment 253 and either all, or part of Crown Allotment 260 in the Parish of Prahran, Elsternwick, giving them a total area of 11 hectares (26 acres), located about 8 kilometres from the Melbourne central business district, just outside the built up area of the city, and was soon joined by similar large estates. He named the property after his mother, Emma Rippon, adding 'lea', an old English word for meadow. He commissioned a two-storey, 15 room house designed by architect Joseph Reed, of Reed & Barnes, and like other mansion estates in Melbourne, an extensive pleasure garden was laid out around the house, together with glasshouses, vegetable gardens and orchards developed over the next three decades. The gardens were however more elaborate than most, designed to be self-sufficient as regards water, with the large man-made lake on the property gathering storm water run-off from the surrounding area. By the late 1870s Rippon Lea was a total of 18 hectares (45 acres) with the kitchen garden alone taking up 0.81 hectares (2 acres). From 1881 William Sangster was engaged as a consultant by Frederick Sargood for significant re-design work on the garden. In 1882 the Nursery lawn replaced flower beds. In October 1882 Head Gardener Adam Anderson arrived after being recruited by Mr Sargood in England. In 1883 the lakes were significantly expanded and the hill and lookout were created according to Sangster's recommendations.

The style of the house has been described as Lombardic Romanesque, a term coined by Joseph Reed to describe the elaborate polychrome patterned brickwork he introduced to Melbourne, which he said was inspired by the architecture of the Lombardy region of northern Italy, but also had parallels in England at the time. Over the 1880s and 1890s the house was extended on several occasions, in matching style, not all by Reed. One alteration was converting the conservatory on the south side of the house into an arched roofed ballroom that could fit 500, and then adding the current huge shade house for palm trees further to the south. The Sargoods entertained extensively, with fetes, charitable balls and garden parties. The last changes occurred in 1897 when the house was extended to the north, and the port cochere and tower added. The house also contained many innovations; it was one of the first in Australia to be lit by electricity, produced by its own generators, with a full-time electrician to maintain the system, and the fittings included an electrically powered bell system to communicate with the servants quarters and kitchens below stairs.

On Frederick's death in 1903, the property was sold to a consortium of real estate developers who had plans to demolish the house and subdivide the land, since Elsternwick at this time was a developing suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne. Adam Anderson remained as Head Gardener but departed in 1903.

The house was empty for six years, while the developers sold off various parcels of land, particularly the orchards and paddocks. However, before the final carve-up of the estate could be undertaken, the leader of the consortium, Sir Thomas Bent, died and the property was put on the market in 1910.

It was bought by Ben and Agnes Nathan, who owned the Maples chain of furniture stores in Melbourne. The Nathans lived there until Ben's death in 1935. The property then passed to their eldest daughter, Louisa, along with a legacy of £1 million.

Louisa (married name, Mrs Timothy Jones) was a leading figure in the Melbourne social set in the 1930s. She undertook extensive remodelling and renovation of the house to allow her to entertain on a lavish scale. Much of the interior of the house were redecorated, while leaving some Victorian features intact, for example the wallpaper in the entrance hall and corridors (originally embossed in gold) was over-painted in rich cream, while a new dining room featured brocades and tapestry fabrics.

The Sargood's ballroom was demolished to make way for a lavish Hollywood style swimming pool and a new ballroom in a glamorous 1930s Hollywood style. Mrs Jones also installed a new modern kitchen on the ground level and the original basement kitchen and service areas were closed up, which preserved many of the surviving 19th century features of this section of the house, including the cool room, the wine cellar and the large fuel stove. The 5.7 hectares (14 acres) of gardens were maintained.

In preparation for the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, a section of the property was sold by a family member while Louisa was overseas in 1954 to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) Victorian government to house a new television studio complex. The Rippon Lea studios then became the ABC's Melbourne home and in later years were used as the production centre for many renowned programs including Bellbird, Countdown, The Big Gig and The Late Show.

In 1963 the Commonwealth Government announced their intention to compulsorily acquire the main part of the garden, with the lake and lookout, setting off public protests and long-running legal action by Mrs Jones. She eventually settled with the government, agreeing that, on her death the house and the land still in her possession would be bequeathed to the National Trust allowing to remain intact in perpetuity. She died on 27 July 1972, and the house finally opened to the public in 1974. During the 1970s and 1980s the Vernon Family resided in the gate house.

Of particular note in the grounds are the lake, the spectacular iron-framed fernery, the swimming pool and associated ballroom and the stable complex (1868). The rooms of the basement kitchen complex are also of special interest, having been built in the 1880s and then abandoned in 1938 following the installation of a modern kitchen on the ground floor. Today they are a rare surviving Australian example of a 19th-century kitchen suite; comprising kitchen, scullery, pantries, cool rooms, servants' hall and wine cellar.

• Other photos of Rippon Lea
• 
  The front door of Rippon Lea
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  View of the lawns
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  View of the house from the lawn
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  The swimming pool as put in by Louisa, and where the original ballroom once was
• 
  The hallway on the 1st floor (note that image is less than perfect due to the restriction of no flash photography and no camera tripods inside the house)
• 
  Ground floor doors leading to servants areas. House decorated for Christmas as photograph was taken in mid December
• 
  Stained glass windows in the mansion stairwell
• 
  View from the back garden showing the large fernery structure to the right
• 
  Inside the fernery as seen in the previous photo
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  The small boat house on the lake
• 
  A wrought iron seat by the lake

External links

• Official Rippon Lea website operated by the National Trust
• Photo galleries of Rippon Lea Estate and function hire details
• Culture Victoria – story and historical images of Rippon Lea and the families who lived there