Corio Villa

Geelong Historic Buildings

In the early 1850s, Victorian era attitudes to iron buildings and the relationship between architecture and engineering changed. Simple utilitarian iron buildings which in early Victorian times were regarded as daring and innovative industrial structures were later overlaid and enriched with architectural ornamentation. Corio Villa is a unique example of this changing attitude and one which is of paramount international significance to the history of industrial technology and aesthetic movements in the nineteenth century.

The prefabricated iron house, Corio Villa is situated on the corner of Victoria Parade and Fitzroy Street, Geelong, was manufactured in Edinburgh in 1855 by iron founder, Charles D Young and Company from designs by Bell and Miller, architects and engineers. William Nairn Gray, Colonial Land Commissioner, ordered this villa but he died on 11 June 1854 prior to the arrival of the portable house shipment. Alfred Douglas, merchant, acquired and erected the villa in 1856