The Art Nouveau Ceiling of the Billiard Room of Billilla Mansion - Halifax Street, Brighton, Melbourne

            As one of the showpiece main rooms of Billilla mansion when male guests came to call, the billiard room is one of the grandest rooms in the house.  With an interconnecting door between it and the adjoining dining room, whilst the women retired to the feminine surrounds of the drawing room, the men could retreat to this strictly male preserve with their brandy and cigars and discuss business over a game or two of billiards. 

Although part of the original 1878 house and featuring some High Victorian detailing, the billiard room did not escape the 1907 redecoration, and as a result it also features some very fine Art Nouveau detailing.

The Billilla billiards room is also one of the most intact rooms in the whole house, as it still features its original and ornate Victorian carpet and the original walnut Alcock and Company billiard table and scoreboard.

A very masculine oriented room, the walls feature Victorian era dark wood dado panelling about a third of the way up the walls. Above that the walls are simply painted, and even to this day they still feature marks where chalked cues once rested.  Original ornate Victorian gasoliers that could be swiveled into position still jut from the walls above the dado panelling. With their original fluted glass shades remaining in place, the gasoliers still have functioning taps to increase or decrease the gas supply.

The room is heated by a large fireplace featuring an insert of beautiful tube lined Art Nouveau peacock feathers, once again quietly underlining the fact that this is a man's room.  

The Victorian era carpet of the billiard room is still bright and in remarkably good condition for its age.  It is thick and dyed in bright colours in a pattern designed to imitate ornate floor tiles.

The ceiling of the billiard room is decorated with ornate stylised foliate Art Nouveau patterns and mouldings of leaves.  Whilst Art Nouveau is often referred to as a feminine style, the ceiling of the billiard room shows how when applied in a particular way it could also be very strong and masculine.  

Suspended over the walnut Alcock and Company billiard table the gleaming polished brass foliate style gasolier has subsequently been electrified and features five of its six green glass shades.

One of the few more feminine touches to what is otherwise a very masculine room are the stained glass lunettes over the billiard room's three windows.  In keeping with other original windows of the house, they feature a single flower, in this case a red tulip.

Alcock and Company Manufacturers was established in 1853 when Melbourne was still a very new city of less than twenty years old. they still manufacture billiard tables from their Malvern establishment today.  

Built in High Victorian style in 1878 for successful gold miner Robert Wright, Billilla mansion was originally a thirteen room mansion erected on seven and a half acres of land.  

When economic boom turned to bust in the 1880s, the property was purchased in 1888 by wealthy New South Wales pastoralist William Weatherly who named it Billilla after his land holdings and established a home there for his wife Jeannie and their children Violet, Gladys and Lionel.  

The house was substantially altered by architect Walter Richmond Butler in 1907, extending the house beyond its original thirteen rooms and adding the Art Nouveau façade seen today. 

After William Weatherly's death in 1914, his wife, who was much younger, remained living there until her own death in 1933.  She bequeathed the property to her daughter, Violet, who maintained the home with reduced staff until her own death in 1972.  

The property was purchased in 1973 by the Bayside  Council who subsequently used Billilla as a historical house with guided  tours, a wedding and events venue, a school and finally in 2009 as an artist's precinct in the property's outbuildings.  Billilla is a beautiful heritage property retaining many of its original features thanks to its long private ownership still incorporating a stately formal garden and the magnificent historic house. 

Billilla, at 26 Halifax Street, Brighton, is one of Melbourne’s few remaining significant homesteads, built on land which had originally been owned by Nicholas Were.  The house has a mixture of architectural styles, featuring a Victorian design with Art Nouveau features and has exquisite formal gardens, which retain much of their original Nineteenth Century layout.

Billilla retains many original Victorian elements and a number of outbuildings still stand to the rear of the property including the butler’s quarters, dairy, meat house, stable garden store and coach house.

Billilla was opened to the general public as part of the Melbourne Open House weekend 2022.

Billilla was used as a backdrop in the 1980 Australian Channel 10 miniseries adaptation of Sumner Locke Elliott's "Water Under the Bridge".  It was used at the Sydney harbourside home of Luigi, Honor and Carrie Mazzini.

Taken on: July 30, 2022

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Camera: Canon DIGITAL IXUS 80 IS, f/2.8, 1/60 sec, 6.2mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon DIGITAL IXUS 80 IS
Aperture:	f/2.8
Exposure Time:	0.017 sec (1/60)
Focal Length:	6.2mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Auto, Did not fire
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	sRGB
Show full info

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