Roseneath and Culloden Cottage 311-313 Coventry Street, South Melbourne. Victoria

Roseneath and Culloden Cottage are a fine pair of semi-detached single storey Victorian Italianate terrace houses in South Melbourne.  The most notable feature is the elaborate parapet mouldings which is strongly visually separated by a bold cornice and includes a named cartouche framed by scrolls and other mouldings in an unusual free classical composition.  Both are currently adaptively used as cafe/restaurants.

The party walls feature vermiculation and triglyphs with a deep double dentilled cornice in between.  A slightly bullnosed corrugated iron verandah roof projects to just short of the property line, allowing for a small courtyard and is dressed in iron lacework with a wooden framed composition consisting of a row of fine dentils, frieze, fine fringe and brackets split by a central capital-less column.  The tall window openings are also notable.  The plain Victorian door is in a tall rectangular frame with a rectangular transom, but the window openings feature a very high and wide Palladian window composition to allow maximum room to the front parlour of what is quite a narrow house.

The terraces are both named after Scottish towns, with Roseneath being a common historical mis-spelling of Rosneath.

I’m not certain of the date or architect (my guess is between 1886 and 1887), however the houses are protected under the City of Port Phillip’s heritage overlay HO3.