Silva’s folly, 'Etloe Hall', later to become 'Oberwyl' Ladies College

Date: [unknown] [unknown]
Location: St Kilda Road, Melbourne

Oberwyl - formerly Etloe Hall
35 Burnett Street, St Kilda, corner of Burnett and Princes Streets.

In 1853, the 12 acres (4.85 hectares) of Dalgety’s Paddock was subdivided and auctioned- The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957) Wed 23 Mar 1853 Page 5 Advertising. Etloe Hall was built on five of these allotments. It has been suggested John Felix Matthews as architect.

Henry ‘Money’ Miller, MLC (1809-88), financier and opportunist, who died leaving an estate of over £1.6 million, is said to have advanced £4,000 to merchant John Gomez Silva to finance construction of his house, Etloe Hall, in 1856; an amount so fabulous that the house is said to have been known as Silva’s Folly. Silva was a Jamaican born London merchant and importer who lived in Melbourne from 1852-60, the initial prosperous years of the Gold Rush. Even in this brief time, his business is said to have failed twice, INSOLVENT COURT, leaving Etloe Hall undecorated. By 1860, John Gomez Silva had suffered sufficiently in business to have escaped from the colony.

Etloe Hall

The symmetrically-gracious Greco-Regency mansion with the shuttered French doors, columned front porch and backyard stable block was built on the highest hill in St Kilda in 1856. It was constructed with such thick walls and such a quality of fit-out that it sent Silva broke. He was never able to furnish it.

But from 'Silva’s folly', the view – to Albert Park Lake, then surrounded by virgin bush, to the Dandenongs, and possibly over the gum trees to glimpses of Port Phillip beyond Elwood Swamp – would have been unimpeded by many buildings save for a pub at the junction of the dirt track that became St Kilda Road, the few little farm houses in Windsor and some smoking chimneys in distant Prahran.

The house would have been lonely up there on the high point. It was not until the railway line was built across Middle Park’s swamplands and day-tripping Melburnians, weary of the dust, chaos and people crush of a gold rich township, discovered an easy way to commute to St Kilda that the house really began to hit its stride – albeit in button-up boots, from the 1860s.

In March 1857, the Argus reported the Auction of Silva’s newly erected seventeen roomed house, but remained on the market in July, and subsequently, the house was resumed by Bank of Victoria. In 1858, Etloe Hall was leased by the bank to John Mackenzie, of the Victorian Board, Australasian Branch, London and Lancashire Insurance Companies , who retained it for almost twenty years. Around 1860 Mackenzie added the ballroom, to the north-west corner, near Barkly Street.

Oberwyl

Late 1877 John MacKenzie passed away, his wife having died the year before, and Eltoe Hall was bought by James and Elise Pfund, and was renamed Oberwyl, after their home village in Switzerland. Madame Pfund, a woman of some refinement, had arrived in Melbourne from Switzerland in 1863 and had established herself as a teacher of young girls. The purchase was enabled by a loan of nine hundred pounds by John James Clark, a notable architect. Along with her husband, James Pfund, an Officer of the Public Works Department, she was an important patron of artists associated with the Heidelberg School, Elise immortalized as one of Tom Roberts most memorable sitters.

The seventeen room house now being used as a girl’s school, which continued until the early 1930s, its wide and tessellated corridors clattered with the busyness of schoolgirls and mistresses going about the business of bringing up well-versed young women.

1878, the colonnaded verandah and two storied south-east wing were added.

Oberwyl

In 1885 Oberwyl Ladies’ College was purchased and run by Berthe Mouchette and her sister Marie Lion, who arrived in Melbourne from France in 1881. Madame Mouchette was the widow of the Deputy Chancellor of the French Consulate, Nicolas Émile Mouchette who died in 1884. She was a significant artist who is said to have exhibited from 1878-81 at the Paris Salon. She kept two studios at different times, in Collins Street. Whilst the sisters were at Oberwyl, they enjoyed the powerful protection of Lady Loch, wife of the Victorian governor Sir Henry Loch (1827-1900, governor:1884-89). This was the period when the scale and grandeur of life at Government House in the Domain was at its height and governors had real influence in society. Their hospitality was on a very large scale and continued incessantly. Oberwyl and Mouchette’s school were vividly described by Oscar Comettant, in 1888. they also established the Alliance Francaise – still operating now but from the much bigger mansion,' Eildon', down the hill. The sisters were also associated with the Melbourne Theosophical Society. The important Australian artist Margaret Preston, née Margaret Rose McPherson, 1875-1963, is thought to have been a student at Oberwyl College, during the Berthe Mouchette period.

Mid 1892, the sisters auctioned their picture collection, as well as furniture, and moved to Adelaide, with a mortgagees' sale of Oberwyl. Subsequently obtained by Miss Lucy James, but insolvency saw Dr Samuel McBurney with his wife, Marie Louise Accleston, take over early 1894.

In 1898 was purchased by Misses Adelaide Garton and Isabella Henderson, and run in association with Kalymna, a school already established by them in nearby Acland Street. By 1906 Oberwyl was one of the largest private girls' schools in Victoria. Misses Kathleen and Violet Dickens, grand-daughters of Charles Dickens were pupils, as was the novelist Joan Lindsay, author of Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Garton and Henderson owned Oberwyl and its Ladies’ College until 1910, when Miss Henderson left their partnership and bought the Fairelight Ladies College, which she developed into the eminent girls’ school, Clyde. For some years, the St Kilda Conservatorium of Music also occupied part of Oberwyl, with the girls’ school Cranleigh. The building was also used by St Michael's Grammar School until its closure c1935.

From 1910, Miss Garton remained living at Oberwyl and from 1935; it became the home of five Garton sisters: Kate, Adelaide, Mary, Anetta, and Florence, with their greatnephew [[Bromley-537|John Arrowsmith Bromley]. By 1967 Oberwyl was still owned by the Garton family and in 1974, Mr Bromley was still living there, in a rather eccentric lifestyle and occasionally opening Oberwyl to the public, rather as if it was an English Country House. Having been in the Garton family for almost 100 years, Oberwyl was sold in 1996. Then restored and on removing plaster board in the entrance hallway, the new owners found a series of painted images of the female muses of the arts that have been left as revealed.

References

https://storeyofmelbourne.org/2020/06/16/oberwyl-st-kilda-1856/

Richard Peterson: “A Place of Sensuous Resort: Buildings of St Kilda and Their People”, 2005, St Kilda Historical Society Inc.
https://richardpeterson.squarespace.com/a-place-of-sensuous-resort-st-kilda

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957) Wed 26 Apr 1854 Page 7 Advertising
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5853098

The Argus (Melbourne, Vic. : 1848 - 1957) Thu 21 Feb 1878 Page 4 Advertising
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/5922375

The Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946) Sat 15 Jan 1921 Page 30 SOCIAL NOTES
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/140252941/11773723

https://www.flickr.com/photos/78453720@N06/albums/72157689122402333/