Speaker: Samantha Westbrooke – Conservation Architect
So my name is Samantha Westbrooke and I am the conservation architect for the National Trust in Victoria.
Como was constructed in stages and it was originally on a much larger site that went down to the Yarra. The first part of the house was constructed in 1847 for Williams, a barrister. And then in the 1850s a second storey was put on that single storey.
Speaker: David Simpson
So yeah my names David Simpson and I work for SIDA Constructions, we’re a heritage based company and we’re at Como House, South Yarra. One of the original National Trust houses.
We’ve got about six people on site. We’ve got a heritage plumber, a heritage painter, two carpenters and myself. The people I’ve got working for me, essentially that’s all they do is heritage work. We have built all the scaffold and then we started doing all the slate work, replacing all that.
Replacing any capping that was up there, all the lead copper guttering. We’ve built all new rain heads and a lot of copper gutter all around the ball room because that had all been rotten.
Speaker: David Hardingham
The old way that they did things, the old stumps, the old room frames and all of the old things and the way they were done there was a lot of pride in even the simplest job back in those days. So yeah I enjoy that work.
Speaker: Ray Wiltshire
A couple of weeks ago we re-pointed the stone wall our near the kitchen and that was a bit of an amazing discovery because we didn’t even know that there was a stone wall there. So we were lucky enough to clean the render off that, clean the stone up and re-point it with a sand and lime mortar to give it another new lease on life.
Speaker: Samantha Westbrooke – Conservation Architect
Another great find was the paint removal for the parapet repairs revealed the detail of the urns on the top of the parapet which look like we think repurposed garden urns. Which were repurposed and the finials were put on top of them to make them look like parapet decorations rather than garden urns.
Speaker: Ray Wiltshire
The National Trust have been fantastic in allowing us to take the time to do the research, dig up and discover what kind of materials should be used where and how. So I think they need to get a round of applause as well.
Speaker: Samantha Westbrooke – Conservation Architect
This has been such a great project to work on because it’s been pure conservation and we’ve been able to take it slowly and make decisions as we’ve revealed things which is very important for a conservation project. We haven’t been rushed, we’ve made some great discoveries about the history of the building and materials and we’ve been working with great tradespeople who really know what they’re doing. I’ve learnt a lot from this project as well.
Page last updated: 18/04/23