Rippon Lea Estate is a heritage-listed historic house and gardens located in Elsternwick, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It is in the care of the National Trust of Australia. It was added to the Australian National Heritage List on 11 August 2006.
History
The Rippon Lea Estate was built in 1868 for Sir Frederick Sargood, a wealthy Melbourne businessman, politician and philanthropist. Frederick and his wife Marion purchased Crown Allotment 253 and either all, or part of Crown Allotment 260 in the Parish of Prahran, Elsternwick giving them a total area of . Located about 8 kilometres from the Melbourne central business district, he contracted a two-storey, 15 room house be built. An extensive pleasure garden was laid out around the house, together with glasshouses, vegetable gardens and orchards. The gardens were designed to be self-sufficient as regards water, and the large man-made lake on the property was designed to store storm water run-off from the surrounding area. By the late 1870s Rippon Lea was a total of with the kitchen garden alone taking up . From 1881 William Sangster was engaged as a consultant by Frederick Sargood for significant re-design work. In 1882 the Nursery lawn replaced flower beds. In October 1882 Head Gardener Adam Anderson arrived after being recruited by Mr Sargood in England. In 1883 the lakes were significantly expanded and the hill and lookout were created according to Sangster's recommendations.
The Sargood family lived at Rippon Lea until Frederick's death in 1903, and over the years extended the house on several occasions. The greatest structural changes occurred in 1897 when the house was extended to the north, and a tower was added. The style of the house has been described as "polychromatic romanesque" and the architect, Joseph Reed, was said to have been inspired by the architecture of the Lombardy region of northern Italy. The house also contained many other innovations; it was one of the first in Australia to be lit by electricity, produced by its own generators, and Sargood employed a full-time electrician to maintain the system, and the fittings included an electrically powered bell system to communicate with the servants quarters and kitchens below stairs.
On Frederick's death in 1903, the property was sold to a consortium of real estate developers who had plans to demolish the house and subdivide the land. Adam Anderson remained as Head Gardener but departed in 1903 as the subdivision commenced. Elsternwick at this time was a new suburb on the outskirts of Melbourne; 35 years earlier when the Sargoods bought the land, it had been well outside the built-up area of Melbourne.
The house was empty for six years, while the developers sold off various parcels of land, particularly the orchards and paddocks. However, before the final carve-up of the estate could be undertaken, the leader of the consortium, Sir Thomas Bent, died and the property was put on the market in 1910.
It was bought by Ben and Agnes Nathan, who owned the Maples chain of furniture stores in Melbourne. The Nathans lived there until Ben's death in 1935. The property then passed to their eldest daughter, Louisa, along with a legacy of £1 million.
Louisa (married name, Mrs Timothy Jones) was a leading figure in the Melbourne social set in the 1930s. She undertook extensive remodelling and renovation of the house to allow her to entertain on a lavish scale. The interior of the house was redecorated in a restrained classical 1930s style, drawing heavily on Hollywood film style of the 1930s and Syrie Maugham's "all white room" as influences. These renovations substantially altered most of the surviving Victorian features of the house—for example, the wallpaper in the entrance hall and corridors (originally embossed in gold) was over-painted in white, as were the marble columns around the main entrance.
The ornate iron-framed ballroom built by Frederick Sargood (which was converted from an earlier conservatory) was demolished to make way for a lavish "Hollywood style" swimming pool and ballroom and of gardens were maintained. Mrs Jones also installed a new modern kitchen on the ground level and the original basement kitchen and service areas were closed up, which preserved many of the surviving 19th century features of this section of the house, including the cool room, the wine cellar and the large fuel stove.