Tile Dado of the Former Caledonian Hotel – High Street Yea
Built in 1901, the former Caledonian Hotel in Yea’s main thoroughfare of High Street is today known as the Grand Central Hotel. Like many other hotels of the same era, the former Caledonian Hotel features a beautiful dado wall of majolica tiles. This building’s glazed Arts and Crafts style tiles are green and the wall features a frieze of arabesques and ellipses edged by black and white chequered tiles.
Yea is a small country town located 109 kilometres (68 miles) north-east of Melbourne in rural Victoria. The first settlers in the district were overlanders from New South Wales, who arrived in 1837. By 1839, settlements and farms dotted the area along the Goulburn River. The town was surveyed and laid out in 1855 and named after Colonel Lacy Walter Yea (1808 – 1855); a British Army colonel killed that year in the Crimean War. Town lots went on sale at Kilmore the following year. Settlement followed and the Post Office opened on 15 January 1858. The town site was initially known to pioneer settlers as the Muddy Creek settlement for the Yea River, called Muddy Creek until 1878. When gold was discovered in the area in 1859 a number of smaller mining settlements came into existence, including Molesworth. Yea expanded into a township under the influx of hopeful prospectors, with the addition of several housing areas, an Anglican church (erected in 1869) and a population of 250 when it formally became a shire in 1873. Yea was promoted as something of a tourist centre in the 1890s with trout being released into King Parrot Creek to attract recreational anglers. A post office was built in 1890, followed by a grandstand and a butter factory (now cheese factory) in 1891. There was a proposal in 1908 to submerge the town under the Trawool Water Scheme but it never went ahead. Today Yea is a popular stopping point for tourists on their way from Melbourne to the Victorian snow fields and Lake Eildon, and is very popular with cyclists who traverse the old railway line, which has since been converted into a cycling trail.
Tile Dado of the Former Caledonian Hotel – High Street Yea
Built in 1901, the former Caledonian Hotel in Yea’s main thoroughfare of High Street is today known as the Grand Central Hotel. Like many other hotels of the same era, the former Caledonian Hotel features a beautiful dado wall of majolica tiles. This building’s glazed Arts and Crafts style tiles are green and the wall features a frieze of arabesques and ellipses edged by black and white chequered tiles.
Yea is a small country town located 109 kilometres (68 miles) north-east of Melbourne in rural Victoria. The first settlers in the district were overlanders from New South Wales, who arrived in 1837. By 1839, settlements and farms dotted the area along the Goulburn River. The town was surveyed and laid out in 1855 and named after Colonel Lacy Walter Yea (1808 – 1855); a British Army colonel killed that year in the Crimean War. Town lots went on sale at Kilmore the following year. Settlement followed and the Post Office opened on 15 January 1858. The town site was initially known to pioneer settlers as the Muddy Creek settlement for the Yea River, called Muddy Creek until 1878. When gold was discovered in the area in 1859 a number of smaller mining settlements came into existence, including Molesworth. Yea expanded into a township under the influx of hopeful prospectors, with the addition of several housing areas, an Anglican church (erected in 1869) and a population of 250 when it formally became a shire in 1873. Yea was promoted as something of a tourist centre in the 1890s with trout being released into King Parrot Creek to attract recreational anglers. A post office was built in 1890, followed by a grandstand and a butter factory (now cheese factory) in 1891. There was a proposal in 1908 to submerge the town under the Trawool Water Scheme but it never went ahead. Today Yea is a popular stopping point for tourists on their way from Melbourne to the Victorian snow fields and Lake Eildon, and is very popular with cyclists who traverse the old railway line, which has since been converted into a cycling trail.