"Wagstaff's Corner"
"Wagstaff's Corner". Unofficially used term by local due to the the prominence of the house at 36A Octantis St. owned by prominent businessman, Ernest Wagstaff.
John Cronin bought 47 acres on this corner in the 1880's. It was covered with bush then. Over the years Cronin cleared a large area and planted an orchard. When Cronin died in 1920, his widow sold the land to Ernest Wagstaff, the first General Manager of The Shell Company in Australia and New Zealand.
Standing on a hill at East Doncaster, Wagstaff looked at the rows of healthy fruit trees and beyond to the glorious view of the hills and distant mountains. It was 1920, the war was over, life had returned to normal and, with more cars in use, the future of his company looked bright. To Wagstaff, this seemed an ideal place for a weekend home away from the crowded area of his home in St. Kilda.
He planned a new house, designing it with ideas that were popular with the more progressive architects of the time. Last century people erected houses in the grand manner with a feeling for height, but during the second decade of the new century there was a movement towards horizontal lines with wide verandahs and protective roof lines. The type of house called bungalow style. The new house was typical of the style. The wide roof sweeping across the verandah in a protective manner, the panelled walls with built in fittings, and a large fireplace, the wide verandah protected by a lattice under the eaves and the high chimneys, solid at the base and tapering to the top, made the building fit into the landscape.
It was ideal for an Australian country home. When it was built, Hildene was the largest and ?nest house in the district.
Wagstaff employed Jack Snell as manager for the orchard. The unused land was cleared and pear trees planted to improve the orchard. Wagstaff had the resources to do it properly, the trees in his orchard were large and healthy but they were old varieties, not very productive, but the orchard was his hobby, being profitable was not important.
He used the land around the house for gardens including a tennis court and a spacious lawn sweeping down the hill from the house. Jack Snell lived in the original orchard house and Charlie Coe the gardener occupied a separate room at the rear.
On Friday evenings and Saturday mornings, Charlie Coe went to Sykes Store, in Blackburn Road, to cut hair. He worked in a back room behind the shop. When a customer was seated in the barbers chair, Charlie would ask his customary question, "How would you like it Sire?"
At the end of a week of work in the city, Wagstaff was driven out to Hilldene by his chauffeur. People at East Doncaster became accustomed to the sight of the large black Stutz going past, with Wagstaff sitting up in the back. Usually, he came on his own to enjoy the weekend as a gentleman farmer but at times he invited weekend guests. On these occasions, his wife Florence came with him. Then Hilldene came to life and there were happy groups on the lawn, lively games on the tennis court with afternoon tea on the verandah.
One New Years eve, the Doncaster band came to the house. Playing on the lawn, they entertained the guests assembled above them on the verandah. Afterwards the band enjoyed a sumptuous supper.
Wagstaff became a legend among the East Doncaster school children. Every year he provided them with a trip to the zoo. They travelled in fruit wagons, belonging to members of the school committee, the boys sitting on the tail boards with their feet dangling over the back. Before leaving, each child was given a bag of lollies and an ice-cream. It was a long trip to the zoo by horse and cart, so, at Kew, Wagstaff had arranged for a shop to have hot buttered rolls ready for the party. At the zoo, each child was given a ticket for a ride on the donkey, the train and on Queeny the elephant. Later, when motor trucks were being used in the Orchards these made a faster trip. They used Fred Zerbe's Leyland with its solid tyres, August Zerbe's old Morris, Tommy Buck's Fiat and Sam Magg's Chev.
In 1927, Ernest Wagstaff retired after twenty three years running and building up the British Imperial Oil Company in Australia and New Zealand, later known as the Shell Company. Two years before he had moved from St. Kilda to Heyington Place Toorak. On his retirement, he was presented with a book beautifully bound and hand tooled in Royal blue Niger Morocco and gold leaf. It contained 3163 signatures of the staff and photographs of the installations throughout Australia and New Zealand. His wife Florence was presented with a writing bureau in selected figured Australian blackwood.
After retiring, the Wagstaff's left for a trip to England sailing on the S.S. Euripides.
After his retirement Ernest and Florence Wagstaff spent more time at Hildene. He now had two large English cars and continued his interest in the East Doncaster School making a gift to the school of a tennis court and helped many local projects.
There was one project that upset Wagstaff. The East Doncaster Hall was built on the corner across Andersons Creek Road but when the toilets were built, the doors faced the south. Relaxing on his verandah, instead of enjoying the extensive panorama of orchards and mountains, Wagstaff had a clear view of people entering the toilets.
In the 1930's, the Wagstaffs sold the property to J. J .Tully, who planned to add it to his estate. Tully's nephew, Russell, was planning to leave the district having bought an orchard in Wantirna. It was suggested that Tully sell Wagstaff's land to his nephew so that Russell could stay in the district.
In 1936, Mr. William Langlands Jack purchased the house and six acres. Langlands Jack was a man-about-town who had led a successful sporting and social life in the old boy set. At Melbourne Grammar School, he played in the football, cricket and athletic teams and was made a prefect. After completing a course at Melbourne University and becoming a cricket Blue he went to Oxford University where he graduated with a B.A. and was admitted as Barrister and Solicitor in Melbourne. During the 1st World War, he enlisted in the A.I.F., served in France as a Captain and was wounded twice. Ten years later he was elected to his Schools Old Boys Council and married a girl from Moss Vale at a social wedding in the School Chapel
Langlands Jack senior had been manager of an insurance company and also Consul for Portugal with an of?ce in Market Street. His son William was forty live when he came to East Doncaster. He had taken over his father's of?ce in Market Street working as an Estate Agent and had also taken over from his father as Portugese Consul.
Jack had visions of a grand country home for entertaining (his brother was a grazier in the Western District). He engaged an architect to enlarge the house to ?t it for consular functions. They added a new grand entrance and enlarged the house by joining on the old cottage. Mrs. Jack, as Langland Jack's wife, was accepted among the "Old Boys Set" and enjoyed an active social life. She used to drive a single sealer Hupmobile and would sweep down the drive into the road with reckless enthusiasm. Mrs Langlands Jack renamed the house after "Moss vale" the town where she grew up.
Russ Tully thought it was a pity to lose the name Hilldene, so he took the nameplate Hilldene and attached it to his own front gate in Andersons Creek Road so part of Wagstaffs land retained its original name.
Langlands Jack did not stay long in East Doncaster. The next year an Englishman, John P. Barnes, moved into Wagstaffs Corner, Barnes, who had been a Major in the army during the war was an advertising agent. After the war he and a partner formed one of Melbourne's leading agencies, United Services Publicity. Mr and Mrs. Barnes had three children - Joan, Margery and a son Tony. Life at Hildene changed. Once again the tennis court was being used. There were happy Occasions when friends came in. They played tennis, had afternoon tea under a beach umbrella on the lawn or lay on the floor listening to records in the friendly atmosphere of the warm panelled lounge room.
The Barnes were keen gardeners and built up a beautiful garden with 140 roses. On Andersons Creek Road, the cypress hedge that Wagstaff had planted had grown large, the drive entered through a gap in the hedge then led up to the house between two acres of fruit trees. Russ Tully looked after these and found Barnes a very satisfactory man to work with. He described him as a perfect gentleman.
In 1950, John Barnes built a new house on the east of the land for himself and sold Hildene to Mr. Ken Stonier. Later Stonier bought this house also and in the early 1970's subdivided Wagstaff's Corner.
Now the corner is a suburb of modern expensive homes behind them, Wagstaff's Hilldene still stands on its hill. The name Wagstaff's Corner is still remembered by old residents of the area and it seems a pity that the name is not retained for names such as this add character and interest to a neighbourhood.
1990 03 DTHS Newsletter
36A Octantis Street, Doncaster East VIC
September 2005 . DP0840
1914 'A NEW INDUSTRY.', Punch (Melbourne, Vic. : 1900 - 1918; 1925), 10 December, p. 32. , viewed 02 Sep 2018, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article121088168
Ernest Edward Wagstaff (1870-1965), petroleum executive, was born on 13 May 1870 at Stifford, Essex, England, son of Thomas Wagstaff, farmer, and his wife Ann Jane Jardine, née Guiver. Educated at Grays and Stratford, young Wagstaff began work as an office junior in London in 1886. Three years later he entered the petroleum industry, rising quickly in the Anglo-American Oil Co. Ltd (a subsidiary of Standard Oil), and then in the Anglo-Caucasian Oil Co. Ltd and the Consolidated Petroleum Co. Ltd (both belonging to the Rothschild group). He made his name by efficiently organizing the construction of terminal facilities for imported kerosene, then the main oil product. On 10 October 1894 at the parish church, Woodford, Essex, he had married Florence Emilie Clerc (d.1952).
In 1903 Consolidated joined the 'Shell' Transport & Trading Co. Ltd and the Royal Dutch Petroleum Co. in forming the Asiatic Petroleum Co. Ltd to distribute the products of the three parent firms in Asia, Australasia and parts of Africa. Wagstaff was sent to Melbourne in 1904 to head Asiatic's Australasian subsidiary. He named the enterprise the British Imperial Oil Co. Ltd, hoping to appeal to the imperial patriotism of his customers, and fearing that the word 'Asiatic' might be poorly received in Australia. The business was to be retitled the Shell Co. of Australia Ltd in 1927.
Wagstaff arrived in Australia just as the motorcar was about to become practical and popular. After World War I he oversaw the introduction of bulk-handling of motor spirit. His company was the biggest supplier of the commodity in Australia for most of the twentieth century. The principal reason for this success was that the crude oil which the Royal Dutch/Shell Group produced in the Netherlands East Indies and British Borneo was particularly suitable for refining into fuel for early automobile engines. As an employer, Wagstaff shared the conglomerate's paternal, gentlemanly, public-spirited values, which the colossal expansion of a profitable industry made practicable. He worked both co-operatively and competitively with other leaders of the local oil industry such as H. C. Cornforth of the Vacuum Oil Co. Pty Ltd, the chief Standard Oil outlet in Australia.
A pioneer motorist, Wagstaff helped to expand the market for his products. On an earlier trip to Australia in 1901, he had driven from Melbourne to Sydney—then a hazardous undertaking, over rough roads that deteriorated into tracks, and without roadside fuel and repair facilities. In 1908 he drove a 28-horse-power Daimler through the Ninety Mile Desert in South Australia, the extremely sandy stretch that inhibited motoring between Melbourne and Adelaide. He was an early member (life member 1958) of the (Royal) Automobile Club of Victoria.
Made wealthy by the commission basis of his remuneration, Wagstaff retired in 1927 and built up a notable collection of antiques in his home at Toorak. He died on 16 September 1965 at Kew and was cremated. Having had no children of his own, he directed in his will that the bulk of his estate, sworn for probate at £506,736, was to be used to provide incomes for his nieces and nephews in England until their deaths; the principal was then to be shared between the (Royal) Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital and the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind. The last surviving niece turned the estate over to the institutions in 1996, when its value was approximately $11 million.
Robert Murray. This article was published in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 16, (MUP), 2002 http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wagstaff-ernest-edward-11932
"Hilldene" 36 Octantis Street, East Doncaster (194.30)
"Hilldene", formerly located on the comer of Blackburn and Andersons Creek Roads, is a large bungalow house of cl921.It was built for Ernest Wagstaff, the first General Manager of the Shell Company in Australia and New Zealand(3). The land on which it stands was first planted as an orchard in the 1880s by John Cronin. For Wagstaff it was really only a 'hobby' farm, and he employed a manager. Jack Snell, to work the orchard. Snell lived in the original orchard cottage.
The locality has long been known as Wagstaff s comer.
In 1936 it was bought by William Langlands Jack and enlarged by him, with a new grand entrance and extending the house by joining on the old cottage. The land around the house has since been subdivided.
Of local significance for its associations with Ernest Wagstaff, and with earlier orcharding activities. Once a local landmark at "Wagstaffs Comer", resubdivision of the area has resulted in the loss of this aspect of its significance.
House
3. Doncaster Templestowe Historical Society Newsletter. March
1990
City of Doncaster and Templestowe Heritage Study 1991 Richard Peterson.
http://www.manningham.vic.gov.au/file/26126/download
Former "Hilldene" - 36 Octantis Street, East Doncaster.
The history of this property goes back to 1885 when William Cronan (or Cronin),farmer, was rated for land in Section Road.(191) This was later identified as the Hilldene site on the comer of Blackburn and Andersons Creek Roads. An early cottage (incorporated into the later house in the 1930s) was built on this land and completed by 1887-89. It was owned and occupied by John and Thomas Cronan, farmers (192)The Cronans, who became orchardists, were early district farmers. William Cronan purchased a farm allotment in the Carlton Estate, where his modest home and land were rated in the earliest surviving 1863 district rate records.(193)
An 1874 map showed this property near Edger Road and the Koonung Creek.(194) William still owned his Koonung Creek house on 17 acres in the 1880s(195)
The site of John and Thomas Cronan’s new house on 47 acres (on the Blackburn/Anderson Creek Roads comer) was originally part of Section 8B, a 312 acre property owned by A. McArthur. It was located south of Lewis Robinson’s Pre-Emptive Right allotment, bounded on the north by Reynolds Road.(196)(197)(198).
Robinson, an early district squatter, arrived at Andersons Creek in the 1840s.(197)
The Cronans planted an orchard and lived on their 47 acre property until the First World War period. Shire of Doncaster rate records confirmed a transfer by September (198) to Ernest Wagstaff, manager, of St.Leonards(199) Avenue, St.Kilda. The large asbestos-cement clad timber Bungalow style residence constructed as a holiday house and hobby farm for Wagstaff was completed by 1919.(200)
Oakden and Ballantyne (and others) were designing single ridged Craftsman Bungalows from 1906, but in 1918, bungalows were still rare in Melbourne.
Asbestos-cement building sheet was imported from 1903-4 and manufactured locally from 1917. By 1927, Wunderlich’s Durabestos was promoted as economical, durable, easy to use, and offering more fire resistance and vermin-proofing than an all-timber home. lt was used particularly in the construction of holiday homes.
The new East Doncaster residence became a district land mark, the intersection soon being called Wagstaff s Comer. At this time, Hilldene was said to be the largest and finest house in the district.(203)
Wagstaff, the first general manager of the British Imperial Oil Company (Later, Shell, AustraIia) appointed Jack Snell as manager of his East Doncaster property, the old orchard being extended and replanted. District rate records confirm that Snell lived in the 1880s Cronan cottage, which had been retained.(204) After his retirement in 1927, and his move to a residence in Heyington Place, Toorak, Wagstaff and his wife, Florence, spent more time at Hilldene.(205)
In 1932, the Wagstaffs sold the property to J.J.Tully, who retained the house site but sold 41 acres of the farm land to his nephew, John Russell. (206) The following year, William Langlands Jack purchased the house site with the 1880s and 1918 houses on it and five (or six) acres of land. Jack, a graduate of Melbourne University and Oxford University, became a Melbourne barrister and solicitor. By the time that Jack came to East Doncaster, he had taken over his father’s Market Street insurance agency and the role of Consul to Portugal(207). Some additions were made by Jack in the 1930s, including linking the 1918 house to the old cottage and adding a side entrance. Mrs Jack renamed the house Mossvale after the town where she grew up.(208)
Other owners of the former Hilldene included John Fothergill Barnes in about 1936. He was a retired British Army major, and later, an advertising agent.(209) Barnes renamed the
property Hilltop.(210)
In 1950, Barnes built a new house on the east of the land and sold the(211) former Hilldene to Ken Stonier. Subsequent additions were made in the 1960s and more recently by the present owner, Mr. N. J. Macpherson. Today, no fruit trees remain on the once well-known orchard property.(212)
Of local historical significances a timber house which has developed over time from an 1880s orchardist’s cottage to a businessman’s hobby farm; for its associations with John and Thomas Cronan, early district orchardists, and with Ernest Wagstaff, first general manager of a company which became Shell Australia; and once the local land mark at Wagstaffs Comer.
191 Shire of Bulleen RB 1885 Doncaster Riding No. 150 (NAV 18 pounds).
192 Shire of Bulleen RB 1887 No.169 (NAV 35 pounds); I888N0.186 (NAV 151 pounds).
193 Templestowe District Board RB 1863 No.37 (NAV 12 pounds 10 shillings).
194 Plan ofBulleen, Parish of Bulleen Plan 526B, 1874.
195 Shire of Bulleen RB 1888 Doncaster Riding No. 187.
196 T. F. McGauran, Dept of Lands and Survey, Vic, 30 Aug. 1906.
197 Billis and Kenyon, Pastoral Pioneers of Port Phillip p.132. (A small cottage on this allotment may date from the 1850s).
198 Hilldene Doncaster-Templestowe Historical Society Newsletter, March 1990, p.8.
199 Shire of Doncaster RB 1917-18 No.389 (NAV 112 pounds).
200 Shire of Doncaster RB 1918-19 Doncaster Riding No.3 99 (NAV 170 pounds).
201 John Clare, “The Post Federation House in Melbourne: Bungalows and Vernacular Revival Styles from 1903-1930,” Univ. of Melb., 1984, p.36.
202 Miles Lewis, Physical Investigation of a Building, Technical Bulletin, 9.1, National Trust of Australia (Vic),1989, p.33.
203 Hilldene, Doncaster-Templestowe Historical Society Newsletter, pp.8,9.
204 Shire of Doncaster and Templestowe RB 1927-28 Doncaster Riding No.742.
205 Hilldene,
206 Shire of Doncaster and Templestowe RB 1932-33 Doncaster Riding Nos.648-650; 1933-34 No. 621
207 Hilldene. p11
208 Hilldene, p12.
209 Hilldene, p.12.
210 Shire of Doncaster and Templestowe RB 1936-37 Doncaster Riding No. 15 (2 houses, shed. 5 acres. NAV 70 pounds).
211 Hilldene, p.12
212 "34 Octantis Street (formerly Hilldene). Doncaster” Richard Peterson 9 Feb., 1923 (Includes sketch showing 1880s, 1918,1930s and later section of the house.
Doncaster and Templestowe Heritage Study Additional Research Carlotta Kellaway - July 1994 -
http://www.manningham.vic.gov.au/file/26136/download
HILLDENE 32-34 Octantis Street DONCASTER EAST, Manningham City
Of local significance for its associations with Ernest Wagstaff, and with earlier orcharding activities. Once a local landmark at "Wagstaff's corner". Subdivision of the area has resulted in the loss of this aspect of its significance.http://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/22486
'Hilldene', formerly located on the corner of Blackburn and Andersons Creek Roads, is a large bungalow house of c1921. It was built for Ernest Wagstaff, the first General Manager of the Shell Company in Australia and New Zealand [1]. The land on which it stands was first planted as an orchard in the 1880s by John Cronin. For Wagstaff it was really only a 'hobby' farm, and he employed a manager, Jack Snell, to work the orchard. Snell lived in the original orchard cottage.
The locality has long been known as Wagstaff's corner.
In 1936 it was bought by William Langlands Jack and enlarged by him, with a new grand entrance and extending the house by joining on the old cottage. The land around the house has since been
subdivided.
Ref: Doncaster and Templestowe Historical Society Newsletter, March 1990.
http://images.heritage.vic.gov.au/attachment/3434
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