1

HERITAGE ASSESSMENT:

FORMER SELKIRK HOUSE, 436 WENDOUREE PARADE, BALLARAT

History

Erected for Ronald and Dorothy Selkirk, this house was designed by Robin Boyd in 1960-61, and was

constructed to his design in 1963-64.

Ronald Robert Selkirk (1918-2002) was a scion of the Selkirk brickmaking dynasty, which had maintained

a significant presence in the Ballarat region since the late nineteenth century. It traced its origins back to

1854, when Robert Selkirk senior and his family migrated to Australia from Scotland. Three decades later,

in 1883, son Robert junior (1840-1921) began to make clay bricks by hand at Allandale, in response to the

building boom resulting from the Gold Rush in Ballarat. He subsequently acquired brickmaking

equipment and, in 1900, moved to a large site in Howitt Street, Ballarat, where the company remains based

today. Continuous kilns were introduced in 1905, and the business thrived. After Robert’s death in 1921,

it was taken over by his son James (1877-1935) and then after James’ sudden death, by his own two sons,

Ronald and William (1913-1991). A third child, elder sister Sylvia Edith Selkirk (1911-2005), married in

1935 and does not appear to have been directly involved in the family business.

Ronald Selkirk fought in the Second World War, serving with the Royal Australian Engineers (1940-42)

and then with the 1667 Conversion Unit of the RAAF (1942-45). The Selkirk brickworks in Ballarat,

which ceased production in 1943 due to the war, re-opened in 1945 and business was soon booming again.

The existing Hoffman kilns were refurbished in 1947, additional equipment installed, and the clay pit

gradually enlarged.1 In 1955, the company introduced brick packaging and the, in 1962, the first tunnel

kilns in Australia (and also, reportedly, the first in the world to be fired by butane).

Prior to his marriage, Selkirk remained living at Bournedale, the family residence that his parents had built

in Howitt Street, next to the brickworks, in 1925. After he married Dorothy Mary McKenzie (1920-1978)

in 1941, the couple initially resided with her parents at 18 Inkerman Street, moving thence to 23 Burnbank

Street and later to 126 Webster Street. By 1954, the Selkirks were living at 440 Wendouree Parade. Four

years later, they purchased the large vacant land alongside, which was then owned by the State Electricity

Commission. By that time, the Selkirks had three young children: daughters Susan (born c.1943) and

Patricia (c.1946-1987) and son James (born 1948).

1 Norman Houghton, A Century of Country Clay: Selkirk, the first 100 years, 1883-1983, pp 22-25.

2

During 1960, the couple engaged Robin Boyd (then still in partnership with Roy Grounds and Frederick

Romberg, although the former was soon to depart) to design a new family house on the vacant land. It has

not been established exactly how the Selkirks came to engage Boyd as their architect, although one suspects

that Selkirk, being in the construction business himself, was keenly aware of Boyd’s rising profile as one of

the country’s leading contemporary architects. At least one major Boyd project, namely the Domain Park

apartment block in South Yarra (1959-62), is known to have been erected using bricks supplied by Selkirk.2

This high-profile and widely-published project may well have been the impetus for Ron Selkirk to

approach the architect to design his own house.

Boyd’s original sketch plans, dated October 1960 and bearing the title block of Grounds, Romberg & Boyd,

show an elevated flat-roofed house with rectangular courtyard plan incorporating a central swimming pool.

An undercroft provided parking for four cars and an entry hall with enclosed stairway to the upper level. A

revised (undated) scheme was subsequently prepared, which replaced the stair lobby with an open staircase

leading directly down towards the street. A specification was issued in January 1961, but contact between

architect and client had petered out by March. Nearly two years passed before the project was revived in

April 1963, when the title to the vacant land was transferred into Ron Selkirk’s name. In May, Boyd (by

then practising under the auspices of Romberg & Boyd) issued amended working drawings. The design was

virtually unchanged from the revised scheme of 1960-61, with the open front staircase. The reason for the

delay remains unclear, although it did coincide with the Credit Squeeze of 1961-62. In addition, Boyd was

busy working on a monograph of architect Kenzo Tange between June 1961 and January 1962, research for

which included his first visit to Japan.3 After Selkirk’s project resumed in early 1963, Boyd advised him that

‘no additional charge will be made for the re-design and re-drawing of the project when revived this year’.

No expense was spared, with surviving correspondence discussing such luxurious appointments as Burmese

teak parquetry, air-conditioning, a ducted vacuum system and even the possibility of a small goods lift to

transport groceries from the carport to the kitchen above. Construction commenced by June, when Boyd

issued a concrete pouring schedule, and his office continued to issue detail drawings throughout the second

half of 1963 and early 1964. Boyd did not supervise the project closely, presumably due to the travelling

distance involved and the fact that Selkirk would have had every confidence in the work of his own

bricklayers. Instead, the contract scheduled for site visits, which took place between December 1963 and

June 1964. The house was evidently finished by that time, corresponding with ownership of the property

passing from Selkirk personally to that of his subsidiary company, R R Selkirk Development Pty Ltd.

2 Norman Houghton, A Century of Country Clay: Selkirk, the first 100 years, 1883-1983, Appendix D.

3 Geoffrey Serle, Robin Boyd: A Life, p 224.

3

Figure 1: Revised sketch plan for the Selkirk House, undated but circa November/December 1960

Source: courtesy Robin Boyd Foundation

Figure 2: Presentation perspective of street frontage, undated but circa November/December 1960

Source: courtesy Robin Boyd Foundation

4

Figure 3: Presentation perspective of pool courtyard, undated but circa November/December 1960

Source: courtesy Robin Boyd Foundation

The Selkirks lived in the house for over fifteen years. After Dorothy’s early death in July 1978, her husband

sold the property and moved to Torquay. He retired from the family business in 1981 and later moved to

Noosa in Queensland, where he died in November 2002. The next owners of the Selkirks’ former

residence in Wendouree Parade were John Henry Edwards, a company director, and his wife Elizabeth.

Description

The former Selkirk House is a two-storey brick dwelling that is expressed as a large flat-roofed volume

(containing the principal rooms) elevated above the ground to create an undercroft (providing semi-

enclosed carparking spaces with a central utility area). Laid out on a C-shaped plan, the main floor level

incorporates a central courtyard with a covered in-ground swimming pool. The elongated street façade is

symmetrical, with a flight of open-tread steps that leads up to a central recessed entry porch, flanked by

continuous bays of large metal-framed fixed and sliding windows. The flat roof, clad with metal decking,

has broad fascias and narrow eaves with exposed beams to the side elevations. The upper level projects

outward over the lower level, where the central flight of steps is flanked by two double-width carport

openings, now screened by powder-coated metal gates (not original). There is a semi-circular brick-paved

driveway, defined by low brick walls with tiled capping. A taller brick fence, similar capped, runs along the

street boundary, with two driveway entrances that have non-original powder-coated metal gates.

5

Figures 3 and 4: Views of the exterior of the house from Wendouree Parade, September 2014

Source: photograph by Brian Benson, City of Ballarat

6

The interior of the house appears to retain many original finishes and features. Ceilings have the distinctive

rough-textured finish of sprayed vermiculate (highly fashionable in the 1960s) with exposed beams and

flush-mounted rectangular light fittings. The living room has a face brick feature wall, dominated by

fireplace with a tall sloping copper fireplace hood. There seems to be a certain amount of built-in timber

furniture, include full-width storage units along walls in the lounge room and master bedroom, and smaller

units flanking the living room fireplace. Several rooms walls have floral print wallpaper that may not be

original, and there are also some colonial-style wall lights that were probably installed when the property

changed ownership in the late 1970s. Full-height metal-framed windows and sliding doors open from the

main hallway and living room into the central courtyard, and there is also a rear balcony of the living room

with mosaic tiled floor and solid brick balustrade with metal railing set into terrazzo capping. The courtyard

area has a semi-open roof with exposed beams. The ceramic tiled surround, and the powder-coated safety

fence around the pool, are not original.

Figure 5: Views of the living room interior, circa August 2013

Source: www.realestate.com.au/property-house-vic-ballarat-117639995

7

Comparative Examples

Comparable houses by Robin Boyd

It has been confirmed that the Selkirk House is the only example of Robin Boyd’s built work in Ballarat

(although evidence suggests that he once prepared sketches for a house there for a member of the Ewins

family, the project never proceeded). As an architect whose public profile rose rapidly from the early 1950s,

Boyd was never one to shy away from residential commissions in regional Victoria. One of the first of these

was the Winter-Irving House in Colac (1956-57), which was later followed by the Baker House in Bacchus

Marsh (1964-66) and houses in Echuca for the Blackwell (1965-66) and Moisey (1965-68) families. Far

from being forgettable footnotes in the career of an illustrious Melbourne-based architect, Boyd’s houses in

regional Victoria are amongst his finest, with the aforementioned Winter-Irving House identified as a

significant place in the Colac-Otway Heritage Study (2003), and the Baker House being one of six Boyd

houses included on the Victorian Heritage Register.

As an example of Boyd’s work, the Selkirk House is ultimately unique in Ballarat, and relatively rare in a

broader western Victorian context, where the architect is represented by the aforementioned houses in

Bacchus Marsh and Colac, and by the Tower Hill museum near Warrnambool. Yet, notwithstanding its

seemingly anomalous geographical location, the Selkirk House is worth considering in Boyd’s broader body

of residential work, as it exhibits a number of themes that recur throughout it.

Figure 6: The Marriott House at Flinders,

designed by Robin Boyd (1953-55)

Source: courtesy Robin Boyd Foundation

Figure 7: The Lyons House at Dolans Bay,

designed by Robin Boyd (1967-68)

Source: Geoffrey Serle, Robin Boyd: A Life

8

The expression of a house as an elongated and flat-roofed volume, elevated above the ground with the

principal living areas raised above an implied or actual undercroft, is a recurring motif in post-war modernist

architecture. Boyd explored it very early in his career in holiday houses on the Mornington Peninsula,

namely the Harbig House at Mornington (1949), the Wade House at Mount Eliza (1950) and the Marriot

House at Flinders (1953-55), and subsequently re-visited in such suburban counterparts as the Walkley

House in Adelaide (1955-56), the Wilson House in Kew (1955-56), the Cowen House in Kew (1956-59)

and, later, in the Lyons House in Dolans Bay, NSW (1966-67).

The use of face brickwork in the Selkirk House, no doubt at the client’s insistence, represented a notable

return to that material for Boyd. While he had obviously used clay bricks in some of his earlier houses

(Including his own residence in Camberwell of 1948), it was rarely, if ever, exploited as a feature in its own

right. Boyd’s design for the Bridgeford House in Black Rock (1954) had a seemingly blank front wall of

light-coloured brick, coupled with a tall brick wall defining a private open space along the side. The more

prominent use of bricks at the Selkirk House, however, anticipated Boyd’s far more conspicuous and

expressive exploration of face brickwork during the 1960s, which would include the Burgess House,

Ivanhoe (1962-64), the Versteegen House, Ringwood (1964-68), the Lawrence House and Flats, Kew

(1966-68), the Purves House, Kew (1966-68), the Fletcher House, Brighton (1966-67) and the Featherston

House, Ivanhoe (1967-69). This contrasted with Boyd’s use of somber grey concrete block in such

buildings as the Brett House in Toorak (1955) and the McNicholl House in South Yarra (1959-61), as well

as his new passion for bagged-and-painted brickwork in the later 1960s, typified by the Milne House,

Toorak (1966), the Moore House, Wheelers Hill (1966), the Noble House, Vermont (1966) and the

Hegarty House, Ringwood (1969-72)

The courtyard plan exhibited by the Selkirk House is a manifestation of a theme that Boyd explored in a

number of other houses, both earlier and later. The specific configuration of a house on a C-shaped plan,

creating a central courtyard the remained open to one side, can be traced back as far as the Holford House in

Ivanhoe (1956). Over the next few years, Boyd returned to the courtyard theme, notably in the design of

his own house in Walsh Street, South Yarra (1957-59), where the semi-enclosed courtyard was sandwiched

between two otherwise separate wings. The next development, inevitably, was a centralized plan with a

fully landlocked central courtyard, which Boyd used for the Baker House at Bacchus Marsh (1964-66), the

Lyons House at Dolans Bay, NSW (1966-67) and the McClune House at Frankston (1967-68). The Lyons

House is a particularly pertinent comparator to the Selkirk House, in that, in both cases, the courtyard is

dominated by a large rectangular in-ground swimming pool

9

The interior of the Selkirk House, as indicated in recent photographs taken from an estate agent’s website, is

also wholly typical of Boyd’s work at the time. Exposed ceiling beams recur through many of Boyd’s

residential projects from the late 1950s and ‘60s, including his own house in South Yarra (1957-59), the

Handfield House (1960), the second Wright House in Warrandyte (1962), the Shelmerdine House in

Portsea (1964-66), the McClune House (1967-68) and the Fletcher House in Brighton (1969-70). The

integration of long, low items of built-in timber furniture can be seen in Boyd’s own house at South Yarra

as well as others including the second Wright House (1962), McClune House (1967-68), and Purves House

in Kew (1968-69). While elements such as the textured ceiling finish and the broad copper fireplace hood

were fairly typical of the era in general, Boyd had recently used similar ceiling treatment in his Domain Park

Flats (1960-62) and had incorporated copper fireplace hoods, of various forms, in such earlier projects as the

Troedel House in Wheelers Hill (1954; dem), the Wilson House in Kew (1955-56) and his own houses in

both Camberwell (1948) and South Yarra (1957-59).

Comparable architect-designed houses post-war in Ballarat

Unlike certain parts of Melbourne, such as Beaumaris, Balwyn North or Kew, there was never a strong

tradition of architect-designed houses in Ballarat in the 1950s and ‘60s. This is clearly evident from a brief

review of the city’s modern residential architecture that formed part of a special Ballarat-themed issue of

Australian Home Beautiful, published in March 1954 to coincide with that year’s Begonia Festival. While

the issue largely concentrated on public and private gardens, three recent examples of architect-designed

houses were also discussed. The earliest of these was the Norman Henderson House at 208 Lyons Street

North, designed circa 1950 by the Melbourne architectural firm of Muir & Shepherd. A relatively

conventional gable-roofed brick house, it was nevertheless deemed to be progressive for its consideration of

passive solar design principals and, in particular, provision of a glass-walled gallery that opened onto a paved

terrace. Tellingly, the article quoted some comments from the house’s owner that provides insight into

how modern residential architecture was perceived in Ballarat at the time:

Mr Henderson says he was surprised to find that the first bank manager whom he approached

disapproved of an architect-designed house. “I was informed that I would do better to find a

‘good solid builder’, and let him draw me a house and build it”, Mr Henderson told Home

Beautiful. “The same banker pointed out that most houses in Ballarat had been built in that way

without bothering about architects”.4

4 ‘They wanted something different’, Australian Home Beautiful, March 1954, p 24.

10

Similar sentiment is evident in a discussion of another early post-war modern house, the John Price House

at 1805 Sturt Street West. Designed by local architect H L Coburn circa 1952, it was described by Home

Beautiful as “one of the most controversial houses built in Ballarat in recent years”.5 Of white-painted brick

with full-height windows and terrace with timber pergola, the house was distinguished by its boldly raked

skillion roof. The article not only noted that the house was “the first to break away from the traditional

gables”, but also that, at the time of writing in 1954, “in the whole of Ballarat today, there are probably not

more than six or seven houses with skillion roofs”.6 Amongst these was the new home of William Williams

at 109 Wendouree Parade, the most recent of the three architect-designed houses profiled in Home

Beautiful. Williams was a manager of ICI Ltd, and the house was designed by the company’s in-house

architect.7 A large single-storey skillion-roofed house, its street frontage incorporated bays of tall windows

and glass doors onto a full-width terrace, partially enclosed by broad eaves and flanking wing walls.

Figure 8: Exterior view of the Williams House, 109 Wendouree Parade, designed by ICI Staff Architect

Source: Australian Home Beautiful, March 1954 (author’s collection).

5 ‘A house they argue over’, Australian Home Beautiful, March 1954, p 27.

6 ‘A house they argue over’, Australian Home Beautiful, March 1954, p 27.

7 ‘House with a lakeside view’, Australian Home Beautiful, March 1954, p 23.

11

The former Selkirk House at 436 Wendouree Parade follows closely in the tradition of these

groundbreaking modernist houses in Ballarat. Like two of the three examples cited above, it was

commissioned by a businessman who held a managerial position with an important local company. John

Price, of 1805 Sturt Street, was the manager of Ballarat’s Myer Emporium, while William Williams, of 109

Wendouree Parade, was a local manager of ICI Ltd. Clearly, these high-powered local businessmen were

the pioneers in introducing architect-designed contemporary housing into Ballarat in the early post-war

period. Williams’s house is particularly comparable to the Selkirk House, in that it was also sited along the

prestigious strip of Wendouree Parade, and designed to take advantage of its lakeside setting. Given that the

Price House has apparently been demolished, and the Williams House evidently compromised by a large

block of flats erected in front of it, the Selkirk House remains an early and important survivor of Ballarat’s

post-war modernist residential architecture.

While exhaustive comparative study of Ballarat’s later post-war houses in Ballarat is beyond the scope of this

assessment, research to date suggests that relatively few standout examples were built in the city during the

later 1950s and 1960s. The Richards House at 36 Beaufort Avenue was designed in 1957 by leading

Melbourne architect Peter Jorgenson, but is a relatively unprepossessing weatherboard house with a low

gabled roof, distinguished only by its ingenious interior planning that includes an integrated carport to the

rear.8 Chief amongst the architect-designed 1960s houses yet identified are the A M Gooch House at

1401b Sturt Street, Ballarat, and the J Symons House at 44 Howe Street, Miners Rest. Both date from the

late 1960s, and both were published in the Australian Home Beautiful. Like the Selkirk House on

Wendouree Parade, both are courtyard houses. The Gooch House, designed by Geelong architect

Geoffrey Fulton, has a C-shaped plan, with walls of rock-faced concrete bricks and a slate-clad mansard that

conceals the flat roof.9 The hip-roofed Symons House, designed by Ballarat architect Ewan Jones, has a

centralized square plan modelled on a Roman villa, with a central atrium top-lit by a pop-up monitor

roof.10

Conclusion

The former Selkirk House is deemed to meet the threshold for inclusion on the heritage overlay schedule as

an individually significant heritage place.

8 ‘Pleasing home in timber’, Herald, 20 September 1957, p 23.

9 ‘Plan a view on a crowded block’, Australian Home Beautiful, May 1969, pp 24-27.

10 ‘House reflects Roman grandeur’, Australian Home Beautiful, August 1969, pp 14-17.

12

Both the exterior and the interior of the house are substantially intact to their original mid-1960s

appearance. The interior, which includes a number of Boyd trademarks including a fireplace with

prominent copper hood, brick feature walls, exposed timber beams and low-slung built-in furniture of

pale-coloured timber, is considered to be representative of his residential work of the period.

Statement of Significance

What is significant?

The former Selkirk House at 436 Wendouree Parade, Ballarat, is a large flat-roofed two-storey brick house,

with the habitable rooms concentrated on the elevated upper level while carparking spaces and a utility area

occupying the undercroft below. Designed by Robin Boyd, the house was commissioned and occupied by

businessmen Robert Selkirk, the third generation of a prominent local family that established the

eponymous brickworks in Howitt Street in 1900.

How is it significant?

The house is of architectural and aesthetic significance to the City of Ballarat

Why is it significant?

Architecturally the house is significant as a notable example of the residential work of Robin Boyd, one of

Australia’s best-known and most celebrated modernist architects (Criterion H). While the house is rare as

the only example of Boyd’s work in Ballarat (and one of only a few Boyd buildings in Victoria’s western

district), it is significant in its own right for its ability to illustrate a number of themes that recurred in the

architect’s residential work of the 1950s and ‘60s, including the courtyard plan, the bold articulation as an

elevated volume with recessed undercroft and its expressive use of face brickwork (Criterion E). The last of

these is particularly pertinent, in that the house was designed for a leading firm of brick manufacturers and,

as such, was clearly intended to be something of a showpiece for the company’s products (Criterion C).

In a broader architectural sense, the house is also significant as one of a relatively small number of high-end

architect-designed houses to be built in Ballarat in the 1950s and ‘60s (Criterion B). Modernist residential

architecture was evidently slow to arrive in post-war Ballarat, with the earliest examples (and the Selkirk

House itself) being commissioned by high-powered local businessmen. With the demolition of Ballarat’s

first flat-roofed modernist post-war house (at 1805 Sturt Street), and the comprising of the setting of a

slightly later one at 109 Wendouree Parade, the former Selkirk House remains as an important early

survivor of the emergence of post-war modernist residential architecture in Ballarat (Criterion F).

13

Aesthetically, the house is significant as a textbook example of early 1960s residential design (Criterion E).

It displays many of the qualities that characterised fine contemporary dwellings of that era, including its

elevated expression, its generous fenestration with large metal-framed windows, its open planning and,

internally, its sprayed Vermiculite ceilings with exposed beams, brick feature walls, built-in furniture and

open fireplace with tapering copper hood. Subject to only minor alterations (such as the installation of

powder-coated metal gates), the substantially intact house remains one of the most striking and evocative

examples of 1960s residential architecture in Ballarat (Criterion F).

References

Norman Houghton, A Century of Country Clay: Selkirk, the first 100 years, 1883-1983.

Certificate of Title, Volume 4966, Folio 993184, created 13 August 1924.

Grounds, Romberg & Boyd Archive, Australian Manuscripts Collection, State Library of Victoria.

Information provided by Tony Lee, Robin Boyd Foundation.

Prepared by

Simon Reeves, Built Heritage Pty Ltd

2 October 2014