East Melbourne, Hotham Street 175, Hotham House

Hotham House was built in 1866-67 for Thomas Joseph Occleston by P. Reid and designed by Edward Poulton.  

According to the death notice in the Argus at the time of Poulton’s death in 1893 he was a colonist of 44 years, dating his arrival in Melbourne to c.1849.  His early work, according to tender notices, was as a builder but by 1865 he was advertising as an architect with an office in Elizabeth Street.

Thomas Joseph Occleston was most commonly described as a cork merchant, but his trade was in a wide range of bottling supplies and equipment.  He also had interests in companies supplying explosives to the mining industry.  Debts owing by these companies caused his insolvency in 1877 and he was forced to sell everything including Hotham House.

The next owner was Thomas Stoneman.  Stoneman was an early settler in both Geelong and Queenscliff. He became a councillor for the local borough in 1868 and remained so until his death in 1887.  He was mayor for eleven years.  He started a coach-building business in Geelong in the early days of the gold rush.  He soon won the local contract with Cobb & Co coaches to operate from both Geelong and Queenscliff, delivering passengers and mail to towns in the western district. He also ran a large livery stable and had available a wide variety of coaches and buggies suitable for any occasion.  In the 1880s he had coach-building premises also in Cubitt Street, Richmond, making Hotham House a convenient location for his new home.   However he retired to Queenscliff not long after, transferring the house to his daughter, Emily, wife of George Hugh Ormond. 

George Ormond was a merchant, and Emily was the mother of two young children born at Hotham House, and a committed charity worker helping to raise funds for the underprivileged children of Fitzroy and Collingwood.  About 1903 the couple left Hotham House to move into separate addresses in Toorak.  From that time the house was rented out, at first possibly as a whole, but later certainly as a boarding house.

One of the first tenants was Barnet Glass, who was in residence from about 1904-08  The Australian Dictionary of Biography gives a full account of his life, but briefly he was a rubber manufacturer and his business made waterproof clothing including rubberised coats and capes for the mounted troopers and 'Baptist trousers', used by ministers when baptizing by total immersion. In 1905 the Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Co. (Dunlop Rubber Co. of Australasia) bought the business. He started a new company which he called the Barnet Glass Rubber Co. Ltd. As well as manufacturing rubber, the company were agents for Michelin motor tyres.  This too was eventually bought by Dunlop.

Two families living at Hotham House over the war years lost sons in the fighting.  On 2 November 1916 Norman Carey Lucas, M.A., B.Sc., 2nd Lieutenant Royal Irish Rifles (sometime temporary captain), younger son of William and Agnes Lucas, died of his wounds in Macedonia.  And on 7 March 1917 Private Henry Metcalfe Shepherd died in France.  He was the son of Henry Metcalfe Shepherd and his wife, Alice.  Henry Snr had moved to East Melbourne from India where he was a tea planter.  He had died in 1914 but Alice remained in the house until 1930.

Emily Ormond died in 1918 but the house continued in her estate until about 1939 when it was purchased by Frederick Pemberton and his wife who had been tenants since about 1935.

By the 1930s a small pear tree planted by either the Occleston or Ormond families had grown into a giant worthy of a long and colourful newspaper article.  Its fruit was so abundant that the birds could eat their fill and still leave plenty to be shared by local residents who collected pears by the bucketful. [see link below]

In 1974 the house was purchased by Frederick Romberg, professor of architecture and partner in the firm of Romberg and Boyd.  He built an apartment block behind the houses, while retaining the original house for himself and his wife, Diane.