Visited 19 January,
2013
On the corner of High Street and Harp Road stands the Harp of
Erin Hotel, a well-known establishment that the proprietors would doubtless like
to regard as a landmark, if not an institution.
The building stands solid, and if the business is as solid as formerly it’s
courtesy of renovation, nightly featured entertainment, and gaming - in the
form of pub poker, a TAB agency, and poker machines. In some form or other the Harp of Erin has
graced the corner since 1854, and gave the name to Harp Road. Moreover, the small shopping strip is known
as “Harp Village.” The Harp Village
section of High Street was today’s destination.
If we’re looking for landmarks, the Dunnings wood yard, on a
corner opposite the Harp of Erin, would be a more apt choice………..but only if we
were nominating a former
landmark. The Dunnings and Sons business
closed in March 2012 after more than 100 years and three generations of family
ownership. The business started in 1911,
and moved to the Harp Road/High Street corner site in 1941. It weathered the loss of business as
electrically heated home units replaced family homes and their open fireplaces;
it weathered the emergence of briquettes as a fuel source, and their later demise;
it weathered the falling supply of red gum and Mallee roots. Nevertheless
the business declined, and towards the end would not have represented an economic
use of the valuable site. Prior to
closure Mr Ern Dunning, aged 66, told the Herald
Sun newspaper that after a seven-days-a-week working life he was “setting
off to see the world”.
Simply existing as a wood yard into the 21st
Century would have qualified Dunnings as a landmark, but most notable was the
annual pile of Mallee roots. By the time
autumn was well advanced each year, the pyramidal-shaped stack stood eight or
nine metres high, only to be depleted by the trailer load or the barrow load
through the winter. The pre-winter 2012 stack was never to be.
There was no place suitable for breakfast in Harp Village,
so we travelled further along High Street, to the equally small shopping strip
known as Kew East. There we had the most
excellent porridge and coffee at Fat Penguin.
Two old shop premises have been converted into the café, with minimal
re-modelling. It’s a friendly locale,
with extensive outdoor seating under umbrellas.
Back towards the city, beyond Harp Village, is the Boroondara
General Cemetery (aka Kew Cemetery), with its two remarkable tombs: of David
Syme and his family, and of Annie Springthorpe.
David Syme, while not the founder, was – from 1859 - an
early proprietor of the The Age newspaper. During Syme’s years of oversight The Age became the colony of Victoria’s
most widely read and influential daily paper.
Through his paper Syme was a vehement advocate of land reform: he was against
concentration in too few hands. He
campaigned vigorously for the establishment of local manufacturing business,
and believed that tariff protection was a necessary pre-condition. There were indeed Victorian State tariffs in
the latter part of the 19th century, but ultimately Syme’s long-term
fight for tariffs was unsuccessful: upon the federation of the Australian
States on 1 January, 1901, tariffs between the States were expressly prohibited
by Section 92 of the new Commonwealth Constitution.
Prior to his death in 1909 Syme had planned a substantial
tomb, and it was duly built, and built largely in accordance with his wishes. Syme had repudiated the Calvinist rigidity of
his upbringing, but had not repudiated the Christian religion, and it is
curious that his tomb has no Christian symbols. The tomb, however, features
many references to the religion of the ancient Egyptians - something consistent
with the architecture and decoration of Freemasonry at the time………….and yet there
are no records of Syme being a Freemason.
In a 2012 essay by Dr. Veronica Condon [see the below web reference] there is much
detail about Syme’s (apparent) beliefs, and how they (may or may not have)
influenced his choice of funerary motifs; but Condon’s approach seems too
speculative, and I am not convinced that Syme’s religious beliefs (if any), and
his views about an afterlife, have been nailed.
The Syme tomb is in the form of a square open-roofed Egyptian
temple.
There are five granite pillars on each of three sides and four on the front side, so - not double counting the corner pillars - fifteen in all. There is a knee-high wall between each of the pillars on the sides other than the entrance side. The pillars ascend to acanthus-leafed capitals, with substantial masonry above. The posts of the surrounding garden enclosure are capped with copper decorated with scarabs. Around the inside of the upper cornice masonry of the temple are 136 pythons; and above the entrance is a copper decoration of snakes overlaying eagle wings. The copper-clad crypt cover, of Brobdingnagian proportions, shows the names and dates of David Syme and his widow Annabella Syme. There are three memorial plaques to other Syme family members, but the many Syme descendants seem mainly to have rejected the opportunity of joining ancestor David in his nightly journey through the netherworld.
There are five granite pillars on each of three sides and four on the front side, so - not double counting the corner pillars - fifteen in all. There is a knee-high wall between each of the pillars on the sides other than the entrance side. The pillars ascend to acanthus-leafed capitals, with substantial masonry above. The posts of the surrounding garden enclosure are capped with copper decorated with scarabs. Around the inside of the upper cornice masonry of the temple are 136 pythons; and above the entrance is a copper decoration of snakes overlaying eagle wings. The copper-clad crypt cover, of Brobdingnagian proportions, shows the names and dates of David Syme and his widow Annabella Syme. There are three memorial plaques to other Syme family members, but the many Syme descendants seem mainly to have rejected the opportunity of joining ancestor David in his nightly journey through the netherworld.
The Springthorpe memorial was commissioned by Dr. John
Springthorpe for his wife, Annie, who died in 1897 while giving birth to their
fourth child. Annie was 30. Dr. Springthorpe was 11 years Annie’s senior,
and there’s a story – which I’m happy to dismiss as an urban myth – that
Annie’s wealthy family had been against the marriage, believing that Springthorpe
was after Annie’s money, and that Springthorpe defiantly spent every penny of
Annie’s inheritance on her tomb. The
numerous inscriptions of love and sorrow, however, quite dispel the “marriage
for money” canard. And it’s rather
unlikely that Dr. Springthorpe - as they
would have said in those days – was short of a quid anyway. He was a “successful” physician, and his
home, “Camelot”, was at 83 Collins Street, Melbourne. Nobody knows the cost of the memorial,
incidentally, but it was likely over $1 million in today’s terms. I doubt whether it could be replicated today
for several millions.
As with the Syme memorial, there is a spacious garden
surrounding the building; but whereas the Syme memorial has its Egyptian
references only, the engravings on the Springthorpe memorial have multiple
sources – inscriptions from Whitman, Wordsworth, the Greek classics, Dante, the
Bible, Browning and Rossetti. The words
of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, from his 1850 poem The Blessed Damozel, are in the mawkish language of another era:
The blessed damozel leaned out
From the golden bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the
depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were
seven.
but are featured not only to exemplify Dr. Springthorpe’s
grief, but also as a reference to the central sculptural feature.
The centrepiece of the memorial is a monumental tableau in
white marble; an ornate sarcophagus, with the recumbent figure of Annie on top,
and an angel and a crouched mourning female in attendance. Echoing the Rossetti poem, Annie holds a
bouquet of three lilies, and her head has a crown of seven stars.
Given that this is the physical burial site, the sculpture
is touchingly impressive, but it is not beyond reproof: today’s observer may
well say that it is excessive, over the top, even tasteless. So be it.
But the same cannot be said of the temple itself. Dr. Springthorpe’s request to the cemetery
trustees was for a site 24.25 metres square (80 feet by 80 feet) with allowance
in the centre for the temple site of 6.06 metres square (20 feet by 20
feet). The garden area was landscaped
by William Guilfoyle, the curator of the Royal Botanic Gardens. I don’t know whether this huge area was in
fact committed to the project, but much less remains today [I read somewhere
that after Dr. Springthorpe’s death in 1933 the cemetery trustees reclaimed
some of the original allotment, contending that the acquisition documentation
from 1897 was incomplete!]. And what
remains of the Guilfoyle conception, who knows?
But the temple survives, virtually intact. Wear and tear for sure – lifted paving, some
movement in the stonework, and some of the sculptural features gone walkabout –
but otherwise the brilliance remains on show…….…..choose a sunny day.
Like the Syme memorial, the architecture of the Springthorpe
temple is derivative of the ancient past, but more modern by a thousand years
or so, Greek instead of Egyptian.
The columns are of dark green granite, and there are serpent-headed gargoyles protruding from the lower roofline. There is a paved floor, including red tiles; and iron pickets forming the outer perimeter of the temple. The most striking feature is the domed ceiling, made from hundreds of pieces of glass in shades of red set in ornate ironwork.
The columns are of dark green granite, and there are serpent-headed gargoyles protruding from the lower roofline. There is a paved floor, including red tiles; and iron pickets forming the outer perimeter of the temple. The most striking feature is the domed ceiling, made from hundreds of pieces of glass in shades of red set in ornate ironwork.
When visited on a sunny day, the ceiling – with a little
help from the sun – confers a reddish glow on the white marble scene below. And heightens the mystery of why, among all
the inscriptions, Annie’s name appears
nowhere.
Gary Andrews
