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The

 Junction

  Hotel

Junction Hotel Timeline

 

1869     A Geelong Advertiser report suggests there was a hotel run by S. Hassall on this site

1871     Mrs Elizabeth Wensor, a widow, becomes owner of the Junction Hotel

1872     Charles Keen, Elizabeth’s new husband, becomes licensee of the hotel

1898     The Keens sell the license, but not the hotel, which they lease to members of the                       Tyers family

1910     Property leased to members of the Gugger family

1917     Hotel de-licensed as the licensing board decided to reduce number of hotels in district

             Hotel becomes a private residence known as 'Junction House'

             At some point the Gugger family take ownership of the property

1922     Property sold

1980     Building demolished, because of disrepair, by order of the Bannockburn Shire

1980s   New house built on premises

2016     All that remains of the Junction Hotel is a little bluestone outbuilding visible from road

A

Interesting Aside

“A settler woman, Elizabeth Wensor (nee Hooton) brought her British paper-piecing style with her when she arrived in the colony in the early 1850s. Originally a dressmaker, she purchased the Junction Hotel at Fyansford near Geelong following the death of her first husband. Remarried at the time of making, Keen declared her identity with this quilt, stitching the name of the hotel and her own, in the centre.”

Elizabeth Keen, Mrs Keen’s Quilt (detail), 1879, Queenscliffe Historical Museum collection.  National Gallery of Victoria

From the past...

From more recent times...

Images courtesy of Jo Mitchell ~ Barwon Blog

Former Junction/Keens Hotel ruins.

Victorian Heritage Database Report. Report generated 29/11/17

 

"This Victorian Vernacular styled building has a rectangular plan form and is constructed of coursed random rubble bluestone walls and a hipped corrugated iron roof. There is a brick chimney at one end which protrudes through the roof and is visible only above the spouting. There are window and door openings but the doors and windows have been removed.

Bluestone footings of a larger building are believed to be extant on the site. 

There are several mature trees surrounding the site.”

Still much the same...
Junction of the Fyansford-Gheringhap Rd and the Hamilton Hwy

A Geelong Advertiser report, (26th September, 1869) stated that the premises on the corner of the Hamilton Hwy and the Fyansford-Gheringhap Rd first operated as a hotel in that year.

 

The hotel, a single-storey, weatherboard structure built on stone footings, operated successfully for many years passing through the hands of numerous licensees.

 

In 1913 the Junction Hotel was leased by members of the Gugger family until 31st December, 1917, when the hotel was de-licensed.

 

The building then became a private residence known as 'Junction House' with the Guggers remaining until 1922 at which time the property was advertised for sale.


The property remained in private hands until 1980 when the main building was demolished by order of the Bannockburn Shire Council.

 

A new house was built on the premises. All that remains of the original structure is the little bluestone outbuilding (perhaps a stable) and some of the stone foundations of the main building.

For a much more detailed and well-researched historical  perspective of the ups-n-downs

of this ill-fated establishment see 

Jo Mitchell’s Barwon Blog

For more information click image...

Blog Number Six

Junction Hotel

Take me to it

Victorian pewter tankard, quart, circa 1

Them was the days grammar, punctuation ’n’ script was king.

But contemporarily they’re tending to be regarded as floccinaucinihilipilification.

 

I have always enjoyed word-play with one of my first books being

Word Stretchers (Longman Cheshire, 1990).

 

 

 

 

Word Stretchers.jpg

But, this morning before rising I was pondering the nature of blue-stone (as one does). God, doesn’t he have anything better to think about? And what terms were used to name the varied bluestone blocks.

You know - those things which during my early childhood lined gutters running down both sides of West Melbourne road hill, Newtown, and which can still be found to the consternation of many ladies as paving of Dromoland House (now Capri Receptions).

In Victoria bluestone, a basalt, was used in many buildings, walls, foundations and as cobblestones for kerbs and gutters. Crushed blue metal aggregate is still used extensively.

 

And what got me thinking thus?

It was the bluestone structure; all that remains of the Junction Hotel on NW-corner of junction Fyansford – Gheringhap Road and Hamilton Highway.

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Junction Hotel.jpg
Location of Junction Hotel (Google Earth
Junction Hotel, C. Fox 1936.jpg

Some press clippings from the period

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