Costerton

149-177, Golf Links Road, Baxter

History
Once the south part of W.Russell Grimwade's Westerfield (q.v.), this property (lots 6-9) was purchased by South Australians, Thomas & Wendy A. Borthwick, in c1957 from a subdivision of allotments 30 A&B, Crown Section 6, made for David Knox in c1956- 7.1 The present house was erected 1960-1 for the Borthwicks to the design of Yuncken Freeman Brothers Griffiths & Simpson.2 It was built by Arthur Moore of Frankston and presumably designed by one of the Freeman brothers.

The original drawings show a hall, nursery, sitting and dining rooms, kitchen and laundry, on the ground level, and four bedrooms plus a bathroom on the first.3 Today there are two bathrooms on the upper level.4

Contrary to all modernist principles, most of the sitting room windows faced south, away from the sun, with French doors to the west and east terraces, presumably to allow views of an established landscape. Further work included the addition of a garage to the north end in 1962 and its extension and conversion to guest bedrooms, service rooms and a playroom in 1968 to the design of Palliser & Associates.5

T.M. Borthwick was one of the ten directors of Thomas Borthwick & Sons (Australia) Ltd., meat packers, wholesale butchers, exporters of frozen meats, hides, tallow and fertilizers.6 Established in 1905, the Australian firm had branches in all States and an affiliation with Thomas Borthwick & Sons' firms in America, France and Canada. The parent company was British- based and, in the 1970s, had a nominal capital of £750,000 (stg.) and employed 4,500 in Australia.7

Description
The house design illustrates both the versatility of the architects who were able to design Colonial Georgian revival buildings such as this and turn their skills to Modernist schemes such as the Dr. Geoffrey Smith house, Toorak, built nearly 20 years earlier. The house is two-storey, of painted brick (typical of the era) and equipped with a concave-roof verandah, trimmed against a projecting room bay (nursery) on the front elevation. Shutters are fitted to the major groundlevel windows and the roof is tiled. A deep well to the north of the house takes roof water and provides the house supply.

Structures dotted around the property include a 19th century (?) slate-roofed octagon-shaped summer-house, moved from another property by the Borthwicks to beside the lake, a hoop-form iron- framed aviary also removed from elsewhere on the peninsula and one of Russell Grimwade's weatherboarded sheds (in disrepair) reputed to be the first structure he erected when he occupied westerfield in 1920 and subsequently used as a packing and drying shed. The iron vats which once were set in the ground near one end of this shed have been removed.

Landscape
Other Grimwade legacies include Westerfield's former service driveway to Golf Links Road, bordered by alternating plantings of white and pink flowering Locust trees (`Robinia pseudoacacia' (Black Locust) and `X. ambigus' (cultivated form), one olive tree and Grimwade's dam system (2 dams in Costerton, one in Westerfield) with a flowering gum grove beside the first built.8 Roses (`Rosa' `Sunny South') bred by Alister Clark, the noted hybridist of Glenara, still grow in the fields as remnants from the perfume farm run by Grimwade. Much of the landscaping of the grounds, such as the perennial border and around the dams, is of recent origin but is sympathetic to the setting.

External Integrity
Single-storey addition to north end of house, and conversion of the former garage for habitation.

Context
One of three large houses set in extensive grounds and dating from the 1920s-50s period, all in close proximity (Westerfield, Costerton, St. Mirins), and related in turn to the Mulberry Hill, Cruden Farm and Netherplace properties through the type and social exchange of the occupiers and the scale of the house and original land area of each.

Significance
Architecturally, the house is a conservative and undistinguished design by a prominent architectural firm. The former Grimwade shed is valuable for its connection with the Westerfield property: of local importance and regional interest. As a landscape, it contains representative elements from the important adjoining Grimwade property (driveway, avenue and lily pond): of local importance and regional interest.

Historically, the property is connected by its architecture with the nationally known Borthwick company and by its setting to the noted Grimwade family also a contribution to a group of elite residences in the area: of local importance and regional interest.