By Helen Mann, Yarra Glen & District Living & Learning Centre
This photograph appeared on the Facebook page ‘Growing up in Healesville’ recently and raised a few questions about its location and possible family connections.
The site, on the corner of King and Bell Streets, Yarra Glen, is now occupied by the Commonwealth Bank. A General Store operated here for about 100 years from the mid-1860s until 1964 during which time the proprietor changed several times and the buildings were replaced or modified.
In the late 1860s Phillip Joseph Kiernan bought an acre on the corner of King and Bell Street from William Herbert and is listed in the 1868 and subsequent Trade Directories as a storekeeper in Yarra Glen. On the 19th August 1887 he advertised in the Evelyn Observer that his ‘Old Corner Store’ was to be demolished and that his extensive stock of ‘Drapery, Hosiery, Groceries, Ironmongery, Boots & Shoes, Crockery, Brushware and Sundries’ was being removed to the ‘Old Cheese Factory’ to be sold by auction on 26 August. Mr Kiernan stated that he was going to build a new store, but this never eventuated. Kiernan disappears from the records and indications are that he may have suffered a mental illness. His wife managed the store for a while until in May 1890 another advertisement appeared, this time by Robert Hart & Co, stating that they are instructed by Messrs Gilmour and McGibbon, agents for the Trustees, to sell by public auction items from the assigned estate of P.J. Kiernan.
The next person known to own the store was George Rose who appears in the Trade Directory from 1893. The store was managed for him by Mr W. C. Andrade. In January 1895 an advertisement appeared for his ‘first and final sale’. It was immediately taken over by Mr Rene Yde, who previously managed the Lilydale Cash Store. His tenure was also short-lived.
Finally we come to the name of A. H. (Anthony Henry) Scott (1868-1949). Anthony was the fifth child of John Scott and Margaret Walters. His grandfather Joseph Scott and some of Anthony’s uncles settled in Steels Creek in the 1860s but John and Margaret Scott made their home in the Greensborough area. Anthony’s maternal grandparents lived in Dixons Creek and as a child he attended the Dixons Creek Primary School for a couple of years. In 1894 Anthony married Edith Bennetts of Daylesford and he was obviously looking to settle down in his own business when he bought into the Yarra Glen store in 1895. He invested in a new building as shown in his advertisement in the Evelyn Observer 22 May 1896 which includes the statement “new buildings” under the banner “Scott’s Stores”
Anthony Scott employed Samuel John Allen (1867-1934) in the store. It is possible that Sam was related to Anthony’s wife Edith, whose mother was Catherine Allen, because both Allen families came from Daylesford. Even if they were not related to start with, Anthony and Sam definitely were from 1899 when Sam married Anthony’s cousin Alice Evelyn Scott (known as Nettie). By 1903 Sam had become a partner in the business and the store was then known as Scott & Allen General Merchants.
Disaster struck on Saturday 8 February 1913 when the wooden store and neighbouring buildings were destroyed by fire. These included Scott and Allen’s store and its eight-roomed dwelling, Mrs Hubbard’s confectionary shop next door and her eleven-room boarding house, plus Mr J. Reynold’s eight-room boarding house. Mr Weller was the first to notice flames coming from a back room in Mrs Hubbard’s house about 8:30pm. The only equipment to fight the fire was buckets of water. The huge blaze could be seen from Lilydale and Healesville. The Healesville Guardian (14 Feb 1913) reported that bran, oats and chaff at the store burned for hours and baked onions and potatoes were …strewn broadcast. When the fire reached the portion wherein the oils were kept, the flames leaped to tremendous height, and the scene was one long remembered…there were 50 cases of kerosene, petrol, turpentine, etc in stock….So fiercely did the fire burn, that within a single hour the three premises were razed to the ground. The stables at the rear of Scott & Allen’s and the flower house were saved. …Messrs Scott and Allen estimate their loss at about £2000, against which the place is insured for £1000.
For the next couple of years Scott and Allen conducted their business in Lilydale, firstly in a building on the corner of Main and Clarke Streets Lilydale, and then they moved to the corner of Main and Hutchinson Streets. This business was purchased by R. Oliver and Son early in 1915 when Scott and Allen resumed trading in Yarra Glen. The Scott and Allen partnership continued until 1923 when Anthony Scott left the business and retired to Ivanhoe.
Sam Allen died in September 1934 but his daughter Doris Myrtle Clarke (1900-1977) remained associated with the business until the late 1940s. The picture taken during the 1934 flood, displays the initials of Sam’s son Norman Allen (1903-1963) who took over for a short period but chose not to keep the business. Albert Woodroffe (1883-1955) bought the property about 1935.
There were several changes of ownership and management during the next fifteen years: Eric Thomas managed the store in the early 1950s. Some will remember Charlie Papworth who also worked at the store during this period. Thomas was followed by Lyle Minns who is reputed to have been a detective before becoming a store keeper at Yarra Glen. He taught the local boys boxing in the Presbyterian Church Hall. Ivan Cazaly had the store from about 1955 until the early 1960s. After the grocery business was terminated the building was used only for temporary purposes, and was often unoccupied, until another fire gutted it on 28 June 1964.
