Bishopscourt Melbourne: Official Residence and Family Home

MINT COPY. x, 350 pages : illustrations (some colour), portraits, plans ; 25 cm First Edition #0121

Bishopscourt is one of the last surviving pre-gold rush house and garden complexes within the City of Melbourne. Set in an Arcadian landscape, it was designed as an Italianate villa by James Blackburn, one of Melbourne’s leading architects. The building was extended fifty years later by Arts and Crafts advocate Walter Richmond Butler, and although it has been renovated and refurbished over the years, the original building remains largely intact. The centre of diocesan life, Bishopscourt was built as the family home of Melbourne’s Anglican bishops and archbishops and their wives. For the fourteen women whose task it was to manage her private household, Bishopscourt represented a unique challenge. Each of these women interpreted her role in her own way and each maintained the tradition of generous hospitality, but such a life was not without cost. This illustrated book focuses on the work and lives of these women

Bishopscourt (East Melbourne