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McCrae Homestead is an historic property located in McCrae, Victoria, Australia. It was built at the foot of Arthurs Seat, a small mountain, near the shores of Port Phillip in 1844 by Andrew McCrae, a lawyer, and his wife Georgiana Huntly McCrae (15 March 1804 – 24 May 1890), a portrait artist of note. The homestead is under the care of the National Trust of Australia, and is open to the public.〔(National Trust McCrae Homestead )〕 Volunteers who are knowledgeable about the history of the house conduct tours and answer questions. One of Victoria's oldest homesteads, it illustrates how early pioneers used whatever they found locally to build houses and farms using primitive construction techniques. The walls of the house are made of horizontal drop slab cut from local timbers including stringybark from the top of the mountain.〔(Mc.Crae Homestead, Beverly Road )〕 Tuck, who was employed by the McCraes and assisted by the older boys of the family, used wattle and daub, bark, messmate shingles and sods as well as slabs and squared logs. Georgiana designed the house and each detail such as the Count Rumford fireplace . The three thousand bricks necessary to build it were sent down the Bay from Williamstown to Arthurs Seat on the ''Jemima'', a small sailing boat . The house is small but well thought out with a separate kitchen as was common at that time to prevent fires. A floorplan drawn up by Georgiana in 1850 exactly reflects the present layout of the homestead with a small addition being done on the side of the house in the 20th century.〔Australians at home: A documentary history of Australian domestic interiors from 1788 to 1914, Terence Lane & Jessie Serle; introduction by Jessie Serle.()〕 ==Provenance and restoration of the homestead== Following the departure of the McCraes, (who resided at the homestead from 1844 to 1851), the interior structure of the house remained unchanged during the Burrell's seventy four year habitation, apart from the addition of two bay windows. (They resided at the homestead from 1851 to 1925 ) . John Twycross, a Burrell descendant, who had stayed at the house often as a child was able to point out the previous functions of each room, seventy five years later, such as where his bed had stood in the present child's bedroom, where his aunt Kate had roasted scallops in the open fireplace of the kitchen, as well as the location in the dining room of the Broadwood piano that had been dropped into the sea during transportation to "The Seat" and had thereafter been difficult to tune. Kate Burrell died in 1925 and the Williams family purchased the house in 1927. There was an auction under the name of "The Lighthouse Estate" and the remaining property was subdivided into blocks of land. The Williams carried out some renovations, (possibly covering the original walls) and converted the outside kitchen into a small flat. From 1938 to 1947 the homestead was used as a private nursing home until it was sold in 1952. From 1952 until 1955, the house was divided into two flats to be let as holiday accommodation, a new development on the peninsula following the second world war.〔"Our Mountain Home." The McCraes of Arthur's Seat. Mary Ryllis Clark. Grania Poliness.1996 ISBN 0-7306-8794-5〕 In 1961 the house was repurchased in a visionary act by George Gordon McCrae, who was named after his grandfather and was thus Georgiana's great grandson. Following his death ''his'' son, Andrew, donated it to the National Trust of Victoria in 1970. By then, the exterior surroundings of the house were greatly changed by time and the original vast land run purchased by Andrew McCrae had shrunk to a mere few blocks. The interior of the house was dilapidated. But amazingly, there the homestead still sat, now the oldest wooden structure to survive the ravages of time in Victoria. It still waited, hopefully facing the Bay, but with its view mostly obscured. In the 20th century the Burrells had covered the original wooden messmate shingles with a corrugated roof both for tank water and to protect against bushfires.〔(The Argus, Melbourne. Monday 5 February 1912. Dromana Residences Lost )〕 When the homestead was restored by the National Trust, the shingles were revealed under the newer cladding roof, which had protected the integrity of the original messmate shingles that had remained in position since 1844. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「McCrae Homestead」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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