Historic Western District station Chatsworth House up for $25 million

Chatsworth House, one of Victoria's grandest Western District's properties, has been listed for sale.

It's set to be traded for the first time in 25 years, having not sold when listed three years ago.

The price guide is $22.5 million to $25 million through CBRE.

It is named after the grand home of the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, in Derbyshire.

The historic property dates back to the late 1850s when it was erected for pioneer pastoralist John Moffat

Historian Margaret Kiddle records her book Men of Yesterday, the social history of the famous pastoral district of Western Australia from 1834 to 1890, that Moffat began life in the Port Phillip district in 1839 as a shepherd employed by the Clyde Company.

His rise in fortune, on the back of a Merino stud, is well demonstrated by the expenditure of £20,000 on the house, outbuildings and landscaping. 

He entertained Prince Alfred at Chatsworth in 1867.  

Prominent Hamilton architect James Henry Fox, who also created the iconic Werribee Park mansion, design the conservative classic style house with Doric portico and encircling verandah.

The 1,200 sqm, single-storey Victorian bluestone mansion features a grand entrance hall with Roman Corinthian style columns, gilded ornate cornices, over door entablatures and original multi-paned skylights.

The six bedroom home also has a drawing room, billiards room, ornate formal dining room, office, and private library. All feature marble open fire places.

On the 2,400 hectare property sits a bluestone Baronial hall with commercial kitchen and refurbished accomodation, as well as fully renovated bluestone stables and coach houses.

There are two manager's residences and four country style cottages.

One of the substantial bluestone building now known as the Longroom was once the mens’ quarters on the original Cobb & Co route and the stables that run parallel to them have been well maintained and were completed in 1867.

The complex also originally included a school and church.

The kindergarten that rests opposite the Longroom today was relocated to Chatsworth House farm by the Jones family in 2008 to save the building from demolition.

The Longroom was renovated by the current owners in 2002 and then completed in 2006, when the remaining quarters at the western end of the building were converted to accommodation.

Chatsworth has been described as one of the most versatile property holdings in the district.

The gently rolling fertile grey and red sand loam soils has seen canola, red and white wheat, barley and oats all grow with success. It's fattened livestock, held ewes and produced lambs.

It currently holds 12,000 composite ewes which annually produce around 15,000 lambs.

There's an 11 stand woolshed, experts room, and full shearers facilities with stagg kitchen.

Up to 300 steers are grazed twice annually on the property, and pasture set aside for hay and silage.

The property has two dams and paddocks with access to the permanent Hopkins River and Churrup Creek.

Chatsworth Prime has become a brand of choice for prime lamb retailers on the east coast of Australia.

The gardens surrounding the substantial home were laid out by noted garden designer Edward La Trobe Bateman in the late 1860s. They then comprised of more than 5,000 plants and shrubs.

Bateman, a cousin of Charles Joseph La Trobe, the superintendent of the colony, was one of Victoria's first garden designers.

He earned praise from botanists von Mueller and Harvey, who were famous for developing Melbourne's Botanical Gardens. CHECK FULL NAMES

Bateman was excelled as an illustrator and artist, however turned to garden design as a more likely way of earning a living.

He was commissioned on a three year contract to create the extensive gardens at Chatsworth, but paralysed his right arm in a buggy accident while doing so.

The gardens with cascading symmetrical hedge lined rose gardens now includes a solar heated swimming pool.

The garden is entered through a planting of Monterey Pines and is laid out within a perimeter planting of mainly conifers. A feature of the garden is a curved cypress hedge which encloses the garden on the east side.

Another curved planting of pines, cypress cedars and carobs, once surrounding a church, occurs west of the drive, to the farm buildings.

An unusual landscape feature is the raised banks used for tree planting. The planting makes extensive use of conifers , - pines, cypress and cedars – oaks and figs, blue gums and remnant river red gums as specimen trees and in stands to create a ‘picturesque’ arrangement of trees in a parkland setting.

A feature of the garden around three sides of the house is the impressive bluestone steps and sloping retaining wall capped by a cast iron rail.

The planting features old camellias and several large dramatic English box (Buxus sempervirens) ‘balls’ and hedges.

The new parterre garden is planted on the site of a former tennis court. The garden is maintained by Colin Langley of CY Landscaping based in Camperdown.