Melbourne Australia

Bryant and May factory, home of Redhead matches

Cremorne is a small suburb to the south of Ricdhmond, bounded by the Yarra River, Punt Road, Swan and Church Streets, and divided down the middle by the railway to South Yarra. Covering only about a square kilometre, until 1999 Cremorne existed only as a locality in the larger suburb of Richmond. Cremorne's charm is in its rather chaotic mix of uses and the unique character resulting from being walled in by main roads and railways on all sides. There are industrial icons such as the Bryant and May and Rosella Factories and the Nylex Clock, side by side with Victorian cottages, modern townhouses, offices and light industries. Both Swan and Church Streets have regular tram services. East Richmond Railway Station is in Cremorne off Church Street.


Dimmies building, Swan Street

Swan Street is one of Melbourne's most popular shopping strips. Once famous for the Dimmeys department store, full of discounted seconds and distressed stock, now redeveloped as an apartment complex, it also has an eclectic collection of restaurants and clearance shops. The street also features some fine examples of Edwardian and Victorian architecture. A period of renewal since the early 2000s has seen an influx of cafes and restaurants as well as modern residential apartment development along the strip.

Cremorne takes its name from the Cremorne Gardens, an amusement park which occupied a riverfront location in the western half of Cremorne for a brief period in the mid 19th century. Although Cremorne was a largely residential area in its early history, the banks of the Yarra became home to many so-called noxious industries, such as tanneries, a power station and soap maker. In the 20th century Cremorne became increasingly industrial. Large manufacturing complexes were built, including the Bryant and May and Rosella factories. Well-known Melbourne criminal Dennis Allen once owned about a dozen homes in Cremorne, which were used for a variety of illicit purposes.

North Richmond housing estate

The area north of Bridge Road contains the first parcel of land in Richmond to be bought in the area's first land sales of 1839. It was the first area in Richmond to be re-subdivided and became the home of some of the first buildings to be constructed outside of the township of Melbourne. North Richmond was the home of workers cottages and grand mansions. One such grand mansion was Coles Terrace, which occupied the land now bounded by Victoria, Burnley, Johnson and Buckingham streets until the 1890s, when it was subdivided.

Unemployment was a large problem for Richmond in the 1860s, which resulted in Richmond Council repealing the Yarra Pollution Act of 1855 (which forbade industry from discharging waste into the river). As a result, properties abutting the river were seen as attractive places to establish manufacturing. This saw the primarily residential / farming properties along the Yarra River being transformed into industrial areas in the 1870s. As industry moved in, the standard of housing declined, with many areas being declared slums. In the 1950s and 1960s, large areas of housing were acquired by the State Government and these were bulldozed to make way for the North Richmond housing estate which comprises walk-up and high rise public housing.

During the middle of the 20th century, the area of North Richmond centered on Victoria Street has been revitalised in more recent years as the shopping and community focus for Melbourne's South-East Asian migrants. Victoria Street is today known as Little Saigon or Little Vietnam because of its huge Vietnamese community, and its numerous Vietnamese restaurants, bakeries and Asian grocers. Increasingly, there are also restaurants offering food of other ethnic groups, such as Thai and Korean.

Richmond Racecourse was operated by the notorious entrepreneur John Wren from 1907. Located at the eastern end of Bridge Road, it was Melbourne's principal trotting track for many years before it closed in 1932. This study details the residential development of that site.

The inner suburban slum abolition campaign of The Herald newspaper and social reformer, F Oswald Barnett, had inspired the formation of a new State Government committee (Housing Investigation and Slum Abolition Board) to seek out inner city housing development sites for local government slum reclamation. One such site arose in 1935 when John Wren's Victorian Trotting and Racing Association informed Richmond Council that its lease on the Richmond Racecourse was due to expire the following February. Council was unable to raise the £200,000 required to build the new housing estate so the area of the proposed estate was reduced by 10 percent and 15 of the 157 acres was sold to British Australasian Tobacco as a factory site, as a form of subsidy.

The result was an estate in the English cottage style as inspired by public housing in England and seen elsewhere at the Garden City development and early Housing Commission of Victoria estates at Newport and Sunshine. There was consistent use of materials and detailing in both two storey and single storey house formats; including clinker bricks, terracotta tiles, timber framed double-hung sash windows and low brick front fences, with a communal landscape approach that united front gardens along the streets. The cul-de-sac planning was also distinctive and had been used in only a small number of estates at that time (see the AV Jennings' estate at Ivanhoe).

The estate was completed in 1941. The streets were named after the trade unionist and MHR for Yarra, Frank Tudor, and Richmond Councillors O'Connell, Lightfoot, Vesper, Longfield and Jackson. The properties have gradually moved from Housing Commission tenure into private ownership with approximately only half the residents being public tenants by the end of the 20th century.

Heritage Study and Report >>

The land which now comprises the Richmond Hill Area was purchased from the Crown in 1839 and consisted of six portions each of 25 acres in the parish of Jika Jika. In the early 20th century the expansion of manufacturing across the nation was reflected in new industrial centres that were developed close to rail and road transport, as distinct from the Victorian-era industrial development that had occupied coastal sites or river and creek banks. Near to the transport hub of Richmond Railway Station and busy Punt Road, grew a distinctive group of factories and warehouses, mainly associated with the growth of the clothing manufacturing industry in the City and dating substantially from the early decades of the 20th century.

Heritage Study and Report >>

Yarra Park was part of a proposal to surround the city of Melbourne with a ring of parks and gardens. This is largely credited to Charles La Trobe, who was appointed to govern the Port Phillip District in 1839, and responded to instructions to make sufficient land available for public purposes. The result was an inner ring of gardens, including the Fitzroy, Treasury, Parliament, Alexandra and Royal Botanic Gardens and the Domain, and an outer ring including Yarra, Albert, Fawkner, Princes and Royal Parks. The former were generally designed spaces, intended for passive recreation, while the latter were developed in a less sophisticated manner for both active and passive recreation. Yarra Park was set aside as a reserve within Robert Hoddle's first Town Reserve Plan for Melbourne in 1837 noted as 'Government Reserve' and then shown in more detail in Hoddle's 1843 Plan of North and South Melbourne as 'Government Paddock'.

Yarra Park developed on the Government Paddock which was east of the adjacent Police Magistrate's Paddock. This land, of some 157 acres, was recommended for reservation in 1862. It became known as Richmond Park before being temporarily reserved and renamed Yarra Park in 1867. It was not permanently reserved until 1873. A network of paths developed through Yarra Park, along desire lines. The first of these, from Punt Road to Wellington Street, were established as early as 1852. These grew in complexity as north-south pathways were developed, as the sporting venues grew in popularity and the railway stations were established at the park's boundaries. These pathways generally continue to be used. Yarra Park has been used for the provision of parking for sporting events since the 1920s and continues to be used in this manner.

Yarra Park was the 'village green' for Melbourne and for its role in the development of Australian Rules Football, being the place where the earliest games were played in 1858. The Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) is in Yarra Park. The park is also an important Aboriginal ceremonial, camping and contact site that retains evidence of Aboriginal use, such as the scarred river red gums.

The diverse suburb has been the subject of gentrification since the early 1990s and now contains an eclectic mix of expensively converted warehouse residences, public housing high-rise flats and terrace houses from the Victorian-era. The residential segment of the suburb exists among a lively retail sector and a shrinking industrial and manufacturing base. Richmond was home to the Nine Network studios, under the callsign of GTV-9, until the studios moved to Docklands in 2011. Dimmeys, on Swan Street in the south, is long associated with Richmond, although it is located in the neighbouring suburb of Cremorne. The suburb is well known for its textile industry history and popular factory outlets, centred along Bridge Road and remain an attraction to the area.

Richmond was named after Richmond Hill, London, with its outlook of the river bend (Richmond overlooks The Yarra, Richmond Hill overlooks The Thames), however the waterfront area was later named Cremorne.

Richmond is home to the Richmond Football Club, an Australian rules football club, which is a member of the Australian Football League. Richmond is one of the most successful football teams in Australia, having won 10 premierships in the VFL/AFL. The club has a cult following not only in Richmond, but throughout the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. There home ground is the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground).

Among Richmond's notable residents, past and present, are Megan Gale, Stan Keon, Norman Lacy, Peter Lalor, Andy Lee, Rove McManus, Dame Nellie Melba (she was born in Richmond in 1861), Molly Meldrum; David Mitchell, Van Tuong Nguyen, Frank Scully, Billy Slater and Squizzy Taylor.

The Architecture of Richmond