Angliss House

6-8 Yamala Drive, Frankston

History
Built: 1961
Lady Jacobena Angliss of Hawthorn purchased Lot 1 Yamala Drive in 1960 and a house was built on the 2/3 of an acre in 1961.1 She owned the property until after the mid-1960s.2

Married to Sir William Angliss, a prominent political and business man at the time of the marriage and many years her senior, Lady Angliss worked for the Red Cross during the Second World War and was one of the organisers of the Lord Mayor’s War Fund Appeal.3 As president of the Children’s Welfare Association, a position she held for 22 of the 25 years she spent on the executive committee, she encouraged co-operation and understanding between its many affiliated infant and child welfare agencies.4 She also worked to improve the standards of child care and the training of mothercraft nurses.5 Lady Angliss was president of the Tweddle Babies’ Hospital and the Sutherland Homes for Children at Diamond Creek.6 For her lifetime of community and welfare work, particularly for mothers and children, Lady Angliss was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empir4e on January 1, 1975.7

Description
Built in concrete masonry and of two storeys, the house, with its box-like form, differs markedly from the Chancellor & Patrick approach of low ground-hugging forms. Like a classical temple, the roof eaves are supported on steel columns which form a colonnade around the house. The use of steel is extended to echo the columns, as piers, in the expressed wall framing and mark the first storey, like a classical revival string-mould, with a steel angle set into the masonry and painted to contrast against the grey. The timber-framed window elements are generally full-height, the actual glass area differing from window to window but the design element remaining the same. Like 56 Woodland Grove, openings from slits or slots within the overall possibly modular format. The essence of the building is classical serenity with minimal detailing or expression beyond the function of containing a volume and providing breath-taking views to the bay with full-height glazing on the west face.

The design compares more with the work of Yuncken Freeman & Associates than any other firm, with some parallels to the sea-side designs of Neil Clerehan and Guilford Bell.

External Integrity
Generally original.8

Context
Set in a prestigious residential domain, with mature adjacent landscape and sea views, the house is typical of the modernist houses in nearby Gulls Way and the Nepean Highway.

Significance - Study Grading C
Architecturally, the house is a rare and accomplished use of classical Modernism for a beach house, sited among other notable post-war architect designs and posing an interesting contrast in approach: of regional importance.

Historically, the house is important for connections with the Angliss family: of regional importance.