Individual Hotel Details

by | 6 Dec, 2015

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Hotel:Bakers Arms Hotel

Suburb:

Abbotsford

Hotel Address:

355 Victoria Street,
Abbotsford 3067
Australia
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Hotel ID No

6

Most Recent Name:

Bakers Arms Hotel (1876 to present)

Previous Name(s):

N/A

When Built/Licenced:

1876

When Delicensed:

N/A

Status of Building:

Existing hotel

Rebuilt/Altered:

c.1935/1936

Heritage Victoria Register:

N/A

National Trust Register:

N/A

Collingwood Conservation Study 1989 & 1995:

N/A

City of Yarra Heritage Review 1998:

N/A

City of Yarra Review of Heritage Overlay Areas, 2007 & Heritage Database:

N/A

Maps:

Kearney 1855: N ; Hodgkinson 1858: N ; MMBW: Detail Plan 1310, 1901

Comments:

There was a bakery on the site before the hotel came into existence with Patrick Fenane as the first licensee.

In 1935 a reporter related an entertaining incident relating to an inhabitant of the hotel:

“Houses in Richmond from Church to Hoddle Street were without light for an hour... because a white cockatoo which had escaped from its cage at the Bakers Arms flew into a fusebox on an electric light pole... there was a violent explosion that could be heard a mile away... the bird's feathers were singed black ... Mr J O.Brien, licensee, retrieved the indignant bird and took it back to the hotel where it is responding to treatment.”
( The Argus February 1935, p. 8)

When the freehold was put up for auction in October 1936, the Bakers Arms was described as a brick building of two stories recently reconstructed on land 33 feet by 91 feet, with 16 rooms and all mod. cons. The highest bid was 9,700 pounds, at which figure the property was withdrawn from sale. ( The Argus, 27 October, p. 2 and 28 October, p.11)

This hotel is cluttered with signs; ground floor windows and doors have been altered or replaced; a single storey section has been added at the rear; but a closer look reveals the typical form of the old hotel with splayed corner and simple window treatments on the upper floor.