Individual Hotel Details

by | 6 Dec, 2015

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Hotel:Studley Arms Hotel

Suburb:

Collingwood

Hotel Address:

[274, later 252] Wellington Street, northeast corner Little Bedford Street
Collingwood 3066
Australia
Map It

Hotel ID No

79

Most Recent Name:

Studley Arms Hotel (1850 - 1908)

Previous Name(s):

N/A

When Built/Licenced:

1850/51

When Delicensed:

1908

Status of Building:

Demolished c.1968

Rebuilt/Altered:

Enlarged in 1852 to accommodate the influx of gold immigrants

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: Y ; Hodgkinson 1858: Y ; MMBW: Detail Plan 1197 & 1198, 1899

Comments:

Peter Petherick, Collingwood rate collector and sometime councillor, owned and occupied the two-storey bluestone hotel from about 1861 until his death in 1877. According to his son Edward, the Studley originally belonged to Alderman John Hodgson and was the most substantial hotel in the district; it was originally planned as three shops, one of which was afterwards used for municipal offices and the Court of Petty Sessions until purpose-built structures were erected in Johnston Street in 1859.

In 1862 an anonymous letter in the Collingwood Observer remarked of Councillor Petherick: 'Being chairman of the public works committee what more natural than that contractors and their men should flock to the bar of the Studley Arms where the landlord can dispense nobblers and patronage at the same time'.

In 1863 the first large public meeting of the Labour, Protection and Tariff Reform League was held at the Studley Arms. Collingwood was at the forefront of the Victorian protectionist movement, supported by Graham Berry's Observer. Petherick's daughter Rosa conducted a private school in the hotel in the 1870s (perhaps in the room formerly used for council meetings).

By 1900 the hotel was owned by the Castlemaine Brewing Company. After closure, the building became a laundry, then Cockatoo Preserves Pty Ltd and eventually spent many years as a cardboard box factory, first operated by the Austral Box Manufacturing Company, and later Wood and Carson Pty Ltd. By January 1964 its bluestone walls were still looking very solid, but with its lower storey windows altered and doors replaced it had an uninviting air, hard to imagine as the centre of conviviality and political intrigue that it once was. All the buildings in the block of Wellington Street bounded by Vere and Perry Streets were demolished 1968/1969 for the building of Housing Commission high rise flats.