Captain Charles Hutton left an enduring legacy in Collingwood, as he was responsible for subdividing land northwards from Victoria Parade as well as building himself a landmark mansion, which survived until the 1920s.

He arrived in the colony in 1838 and took up a run at Campaspe Plains and later Hutton’s Station or Flowerdale on the King Parrot Creek. In 1841 he acquired a property on the Merri Creek; the following year he took his young bride to the property and several of their children were born there.

Hutton had also bought a substantial parcel of land in Crown portions 52, 53 and 68, northeast of the intersection of Smith Street and Victoria Parade. In the late 1840s he commenced subdividing and created a new north-south axis, Wellington Street.  Another landowner, the Reverend George Otter, owned land to the north in Portion 73, and continued Wellington Street northwards to suit his own subdivision. However Hutton’s subdivision also created several shorter streets without reference to Otter's neighbouring subdivision, creating a typical Collingwood hodgepodge of unrelated streets, some of which required Council initiatives in later years to resolve.

Earlier sales included some substantial blocks of around half an acre in Victoria Parade and Smith Street. Sales in the 1850s of the ‘celebrated Walmer Estate’ of building blocks in streets such as Oxford, Cambridge, Peel, Stanley and Derby were often blatantly promoted as being outside the area covered by the Building Act and thus free from what were regarded as its onerous requirements. Hutton built a mansion fronting Victoria Parade on a large piece of land, which can be seen on an 1858 map (see link below). Here the family resided until early 1855 when they set sail for England and settled in Bath.  The effects auctioned at Walmer House included a mahogany sideboard, three dinner services and drawing room chairs, as well as a cabriolet, two phaetons, a carriage horse and a milch cow.  He let the house to Thomas Turner A'Beckett (his solicitor in relation to the land sales, and chairman of Collingwood Council), and later to a Mr Pole. Finally the house was sold to Isaac Hart in 1865, when Hutton still owned many other Collingwood allotments and houses. In 1872 Charles and Mrs Hutton returned to Australia and settled in Brighton. By the time of his death he retained only one piece of land in Wellington Street.

The Argus; Barrett, The inner suburbs; Billis, Pastoral pioneers of Port Phillip.

Melbourne Mansions  
Hutton family history

CHS 1858 map
SLV Hutton photo 1872