Peppercorns,
Boundary Road,
Mt Cottrell

A house built of course bluestone with a gable roof and skillion section to the rear.

1997

Context Pty Ltd

City of Wyndham Heritage Study 1997

text

eng

The house is built of coursed bluestone with a gable roof and skillion section to the rear. Timber shingles remained in 1990, mostly covered by corrugated iron. Works on the building were underway in 1990, with a reconstructed front verandah noted in the Werribee Corridor Heritage Study (Stage) 1990.

Ruins of another bluestone building is nearby. Stone walls enclose the paddocks. Two buildings and a complex pattern of stone walls are shown on the 1938 plan.

The Peppercorns is a bluestone cottage set in a landscape of stone walls on the open plains. It may have been built by Henry Liddard (or Liddiard) who was the first purchaser of this allotment from the Crown in 1853, (CA A, Section 25, Parish of Tarneit). The rate books list LIddard as owning and occupying a farm on 80 acres from 1863 but there is no mention of a house until the 1900 description of "homestead" although the building is far earlier than this. The property was leased out from 1868 to John Minns and then to John and William Minns (the latter a butcher) from 1871. It was sold out of the Liddard family in 1896 and purchased by Alfred Austin who held the property until (at least) the 1920s.