88 Leeds St, Doncaster East

Victorian Heritage Database Report Report generated 11/06/23

88 Leeds Street, Doncaster East

Victorian Heritage database, 1990

Included in Heritage Overlay
Heritage Overlay Numbers.  HO102

Of regional significance as a rare surviving (but typical) Early Victorian timber farmhouse with later alterations not. detracting from its form and with important historical associations with Williams.

Heritage Study/Consultant:  Manningham - Manningham Heritage Study Review, Context Pty Ltd, 2006;  Manningham - Doncaster & Templestowe Heritage Study Additional. Historical Research, Carlotta Kellaway, 1994;  Hermes Number 22485

Historical Australian Themes;  Local Themes;  5.03 - Eight hour pioneer settlement

Condition Fair

Integrity Altered

Physical Description 1

Associations:  W.S. Williams

Online http://planningschemes.dpcd.vic.gov.au/

https://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/22485. as at June 2023.

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88 Leeds Street, Doncaster East. Google Maps 2007

88 Leeds Street, Doncaster East. Google Maps May2021

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Annotated 1945 Aerial photo

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Days of Orchards and Lakes

THE area bounded by Weatherby Rd, Cassowary St, Blackburn Rd and Koonung Creek was originally the orchard of William Sydney Williams.  Mr Williams was a leader, a kind and gentle man who never said a nasty word. Except, so his grandson Roy told me, when his eldest son John Sydney put a fire cracker in the outdoor toilet while his mother was in there.

In the 1870s “W.S.” helped campaign for a school in East Doncaster, the children from there having to attend Pastor Schramm’s in Doncaster Rd, just west of where the municipal offices are now — a long walk for those living in the Blackburn Rd/Reynolds Rd area. To ascertain probable enrolment numbers for a feasibility study, an official of the Education Department visited every home and noted on a map the number of children in each.  After years of campaigning, the tiny Deep Creek school opened on the Andersons Creek Rd - Reynolds Rd corner.

Mr Williams was a Shire councillor from 1884-87 and again in 1893, wrote and lectured on fruit growing and became a fruit judge at inter-state shows. He died in 1912.

John Sydney Williams married cousin Amy Toogood from over the creek who bore 11 children — the last when John was aged 60. As the younger ones grew, John Sydney became to frail to work the orchard and so it fell to his older sons, John Thomas and Roy William, to help support them. John worked the home orchard while Roy went out to work for “the enemy” — as he called other orchardists.

In the 1920s the Williams family fortunes began to fall and John had to mortgage the orchard.

The eastern hill (within the boundary of Leeds St, Maxia Rd, Blackburn Rd and the creek) and part of the Leeds St (west) land was sold by the bank for two thousand pounds.

Mr William’s eldest daughter Rose had married William Elder and made their family home and orchard on the northern section of the eastern hill.  Now the Beverey Hills Primary School stands on what was their land and when this was first built, the Elder’s fine brick homestead was still nearby. It was demolished in 1959 for the small shopping centre in Rosella St.

When the bank sold the Williams’ land, the largest holding south of Elders’, including the lake that covered the present Renshaw St, was bought by the Gedye family.

The family marketed the water lilies, and from this enterprise grew today’s Gedye Water Gardens and Fountains and the Gedye fibreglass compost bin, the first of its kind.

The dam was demolished when the land was sold in the 1960s for subdivision.

Source: YESTERyear, Doncaster and Templestowe News,  February 10 1993

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The dam in Renshaw St

As you travel down the big dip in Renshaw St, East Doncaster, you descend into what was once the biggest dam in Victoria.  For two years around 1891 every orchardist in Doncaster, working with bullock teams and scoops, helped William Sydney Williams build this 14 ha dam.

It flooded the area south-west of Leeds St from just behind Williams' original homestead (still standing at 88 Leeds St) to what is now Peter St with 100 million litres of water seven metres deep.

Once during the dam building the wall broke, the welled up Koonung-Koonung Creek poured out over the lemon orchard and the men had to start again.

The dam's bank was so wide it was used as a road. A horse continually walked round and around it cutting chaff while others plodded by transporting lemons.

Local people called it a lake. In the middle was an island with a palm tree; fish were caught in it and on the surface floated water lilies.

One of the first steam pumping-plants in the dis-trict forced water up from the lake to a small holding dam at the eastern side of what is now 71 Renshaw St, from where it was siphoned to the Leeds St hill top to flow on, by a system of pipes and taps devised by Williams himself, to his 'eastern hill'.  This extended in that direction to Blackburn Rd and north-south between the creek and Cassowary St. 

Westwards, the 80ha property was bounded by Wetherby Rd.

'W.S.W.' was a 19-year-old sailor from St Ansells, Ienby (Editor:  Possible Temby ?), Pembrokeshire, South Wales, when in 1853 he deserted ship in Melbourne with four shillings and six- pence in his pocket.  He found work with Thomas Toogood just south of the creek in Box Hill, two years later marrying 16 year old Anne Toogood. They started their dynasty in a log cabin.  Seven of the 14 children Anne had, died.  Two were buried around the busy street roundabout by the Leeds/ Cassowary St corner store.  

Sydney Williams was the first to grow citrus trees in Doncaster with pears, plums, cherries and strawberries as well.

'BOATING on Gedye's lily pond 1930s'. Picture courtesy of eric Collyer (replaced by image from Gedye Family Collection in 2023)

But in the 1920s the Williams' family fortunes began to fail and had to go on the bank'.

The eastern hill and part of the land west of Leeds St was sold by the bank for two thousand pounds.

The section of this land, on which the Beverely Hills Primary School was later built, had been worked and lived upon for years by W.S.W.'s eldest daughter, Rose and her husband William Elder, whose beautiful brick homestead was demolished in 1959 for the Rosella St shops.

The largest holding, including the lake, was bought by Gedye and the lake became Gedye's lily pond.

And so a new industry began. The Gedye family marketed the water lilies and from this enterprise grew to today's Gedye Water Gardens and fibreglass pools and the Gedye compost bin.

Gedye St now runs along the site of the famous dam.

The dam was still there in the 1960s when that land was subdivided.  The (then) Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works declared it a danger and health hazard and ordered it destroyed.

Workmen tore the bank apart and just let the water go and out with the water flowed big 3000 gram eels!  The subdividers had difficulty putting in storm water drains because of the accumulation of 60 years of silt nearly four metres deep.   Whenever we have heavy rain I wonder about all this silt under the modern houses in the dip of Renshaw St.

Source: Doncaster & Templestowe News May 27 1992 p19 Yesteryear