Melbourne & Australian Architecture Topics

1950 shows the row of cottages:



In 2006, there is only one left:





17 Casselden place is a tiny remnant of the "Little Lon" area which has been nearly totally consumed by modern development. The house was derelict for many years but is now used by a business. I was lucky enough to be able to have a quick look inside in 2006 and the place is tiny - there's the "main" room which the front door opens into, then a smaller room to the south, a back door which opens into a tiny courtyard with a door for the third room (no direct internal access as far as I can remember), and an outdoor toilet. The whole block of land only measures about 7.5 x 7.1m, or around 53 square metres.

The plaque on the front wall today says:


17 CASSELDEN PLACE

The house is the last of a terrace of six brick two-
roomed cottages built in 1877 by John Casselden, a
shoemaker and small-time developer. The cottage is
the last remaining in the area known as "Little Lon",
long associated with slums, light industry and the
city's vice trade and accurately describes the other
side of "Marvellous Melbourne".

City of Melbourne / State Bank Victoria



Here's an MMBW map from 1894 showing Castletown Place, and the original row of cottages:



The bluestone paving appears to follow its original path, although the level (of either the paving or footpath) is different. Not sure where the light post came from, I'm guessing "G.L." between no. 9 and no. 11 means "Gas Light" but it's not visible in the 1950s photo.

Everything south of no. 17 is gone. Gorman Alley behind it still exists but again it ends after no. 17 (it's open space now)

It's interesting that Casselden Place was originally named Castletown Place. I wonder if it was a coincidence that it was similar to the developer's name, or he was able to choose that street name himself.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed this little bit of nostalgia hiding within the CBD (just)

PS: It's mind boggling in these days of outer suburban McMansions that someone could live inside such a small house. The entire set of 6 houses consumes less land than my 4 bedroom house does.

Wouldn't it be way cool to be able to build your own STREET! If I ever get a rural block without planning permit restrictions I'm going to go for it.

Wow! Thanks so much for posting.

Do you have any idea when the other cottages were demolished? To be honest, whilst one remaining building can demonstrate the size of the cottage and the design, its context is lost without its neighbours. They should have retained at least two in my opinion.

If you do a Google search for "Casselden Place" there are about a zillion interesting results (prepend "17" for more specific information). There was an archeological dig on a large area of the site in 1988.

I found a couple of images that give us a hint - the first from 1988 clearly shows a car parked in the space that its neighbour previously occupied (behind a cyclone fence), in the second from 1983 it's harder to tell but you can just see what appears to be the frame of the fence in the bottom left... so it looks like No. 17 has been alone for a while.





Here are some images of the interior from the 1988 project (crazy fisheye lens probably necessary because of the confined space)



This would have be taken from the rear wall of the main room, looking towards the front door.



This is one of the bedrooms, possibly the "outdoor" one. They're both about the same size.

I was half hoping that the building may have still been in this state when I visited it, alas, it was all nicely restored and turned into offices. The guys there said they'd been tenants for about 10 years.

Some further reading suggests this was a kitchen... not sure how that omission in the mental list of rooms in a typical house slipped my mind, considering it's so small!

I had no idea that this place even existed, or that any early housing had survived in the city. Thank you for posting this.

I think the road level has been raised to that of the footpath, as it looks newer (though more romantic) than the 1950s asphalt.