A former Melbourne couple has given a grand old dame of a home near Ballarat a much-needed facelift.
Anthony Ingerson says he knew he wanted to buy Ballantrae before he’d even set foot inside the Heritage-listed 1857 Gothic Tudor homestead at Buninyong, just south of Ballarat in Victoria. The former Melbourne Football Club player turned construction industry project manager had spent a lot of time in Ballarat, where he was working for Haymes Paints during the COVID lockdowns, when he and his partner, Dahlia Bell, decided to start looking for acreage on which to build a home.
“Dahlia grew up in Yorkshire, in the UK, where her grandfather had a farm,” Anthony explains. “After living through the pandemic in [the Melbourne bayside suburb of] Sandringham, I think we both realised we wanted a bit of space around us. When we found Ballantrae, it and an adjoining five-acre (two-hectare) block were on the market. We spent a weekend designing the house of our dreams, only to find it had already been sold.”
Fortunately, that sale fell through, so Anthony arranged with the owner to come and inspect the property. “He turned out to be Peter Hiscock, who for 22 years was the director of Sovereign Hill, Ballarat’s living museum of the gold rushes,” he says. “He’d lived in Ballantrae for 40 years, so naturally had a deep connection to the property and concern about who he was going to sell it to. His wife, Yvette, had recently moved into a nursing home and the house had become too much for him to manage. So we shelved the idea of a new build and decided to focus our efforts on Ballantrae homestead. I’ve renovated a lot of houses in my time and I could see the potential before I’d even stepped inside.”
The first record of the land on which the homestead stands dates to 1854, when it was taken up by Patricius Welsh, the son of a Dublin doctor, who was a Melbourne merchant and landowner. He’s recorded as being insolvent in 1843, but regained his fortune during the gold rushes of the 1850s. Patricius sold the property with its six-year-old homestead in 1863 to his tenant, Thomas Coates. It then remained in the Coates family until 1944, when it was sold to Irene Lippiart. However, a Miss Coates lived in the house for a further 15 years after the sale.
The lace-encrusted building forms a square, composed by two cross-gable roofs with a central porch over the entry. The original hardwood shingle roofs are still in place, though were covered with corrugated iron in the 1870s, and the exterior of the building is clad in hardwood weatherboard. The most dramatic elements are the external decorations with elaborately carved Gothic-style barge boards from a book of patterns by the 19th-century English architect and Gothic revivalist Augustus Pugin. Each of the gables has a finial and the one on the apex of the porch is the most elaborate. Like the barge boards, the verandah valances and pilasters are carved from Baltic pine. When the Hiscocks came along in 1981, Ballantrae had been turned into a boarding house. They embarked on many updates including enclosing some of the verandahs, replacing the ladder to the attic with stairs and bringing the kitchen from the basement to the first floor. They’d also inherited a garden that included lots of noteworthy mature conifers such as Blue Atlas cedars, Bunya pines, Norway spruces, California redwoods and Himalayan cedars. Other mature specimens include bay trees, horizontal wych elms, American weeping elms, cordyline palms and silk tassel bushes.
By the time Anthony and Dahlia arrived on the scene, the garden was overgrown, so much so that six-foot five inch (196-centimetre) tall Anthony says he couldn’t walk around without hitting his head. They embarked on a huge clear out and had one massive dead cypress milled into timber slabs, which now feature throughout the property, including as a giant outdoor table that can seat 20, kitchen benchtops and bedroom furniture.
“Internally, we were determined to respect the integrity and flow of the house,” Anthony says. “We were greatly encouraged by Peter in this, though we did modernise the bathrooms and rearrange the layout a bit to make it better for contemporary living.”
The renovations nonetheless were not without their trials and ended up taking a year. At one point, Dahlia, who is a total perfectionist, found it all too much and she and Anthony separated. Fortunately, they reunited in time for her to exercise her considerable flair for interior styling. Dahlia is currently completing a design course majoring in photography and her talent for composition and colour is evident in every room.
“We’ve been together for 10 years,” Anthony explains. “Dahlia is a model and was here from the UK with a fashion stylist friend when we met on the last night of their holiday. She came back with her sister a year later and we’ve been a couple ever since. Even when we were separated, she agreed to style the house for me.” Given their relationship with the Ballarat-based Haymes family, it was a no-brainer that they would use their paints. “The interiors used to be olive green and heritage red,” Anthony explains. “We knew we wanted to make it more contemporary, but we went through about 50 sample pots before we settled on the final colours. We ended up going with bolder colours than we initially thought but, true to her style, Dahlia has really nailed it.”
Anthony adds that while the original intention may have been to do the house up for sale and build new on the adjoining block, nothing could now be further from their minds. “We’re relishing the quieter pace,” he says. “Buninyong has a population of 2000-odd and we’re enjoying getting to know the people in the community. The pub has just been renovated and there’s a community bakery with an honour box that sells baked goods once a month. Instead of walking to the beach, we get to walk on our own land, with no traffic to worry about. Peter Hiscock entrusted us to honour Ballantrae’s heritage and we truly do feel we are its custodians.
