Geelong's 1856 Corio Villa sells to its fourth owner
Corio Villa, the landmark 14-room Geelong home, has been sold.
Its sale price has not been disclosed, but its most recent declared asking price was $5.85 million.
It was listed in August with $5 million-plus hopes through Wilsons listing agents Guyon and James Wilson.
Set above Corio Bay at 56 Eastern Beach Road, it's one of Australia's only surviving buildings to be made from pre-fabricated cast iron.
Manufactured in Scotland, the home was shipped to Geelong in boxes. Corio Villa was manufactured in 1855 by iron founder Charles D Young and Co. from designs by Bell and Miller, architects and engineers.
William Gray, colonial land commissioner, ordered the villa, but he died prior to arrival of the portable house shipment.
The crates with the ornate, sprawling design pieces sat unclaimed on Geelong's docks for six months before wool merchant (and later owner of The Geelong Advertiser) Alfred Douglass bought it, carted it up the hill and assembled it like a jigsaw above Corio Bay.
The house remained in his family until it was sold to Dr Keith Ross of Ballarat in 1938 and then to Arthur and Alice McAllister in 1945.
Their son, Glenn, and wife, Rosslyn, live in the house today.
Most of the decorative work echoes the pattern of the rose, and the thistle of Scotland.
Corio Villa is considered by heritage authorities as of paramount international significance not just in Geelong but to the history of industrial technology and the 19th-century British aesthetic movement.
Prefabricated residences were often imported in the 1850s to satisfy housing demand during the gold rush boom, Heritage Victoria notes.
It has its many original character features including intricate leadlight windows, plaster roses and cornices, detailed timber ceiling and wall panelling, plus ornate marble fire places.The McAllister family have hired out the property for weddings and functions. The house sits on 375 square metres of the 2,885-square-metre block.