Ambleside homestead and garden
About the museum
Ambleside Park Museum is a local history museum housed in a century old farmhouse. Two of the rooms contain a parlor and a bedroom inspired by the early twentieth century. The School Photograph Collection is a popular section of the museum, with approximately 21,000 photographs in the collection so far. Other displays show aspects of the development of the area from a series of past farming communities to the current urban areas of Knox. The area depended on agriculture, and a large collection of farm machinery and implements are on display in the garden and in the tool shed. A two room cottage and the former porch of St Bartholomew's Anglican Church are also part of the museum complex.
A history of the property
The property originally consisted of 210 acres from Olivebank Road, north along Forest Road to what is now Boronia Road, then north easterly to Nyora Road. William Edwards was granted a licence by the Crown in 1872, and 3 years later the property was taken up by Edward Perry Amesbury who then sold his interest in the land to Edmund Wicks. Edmund Wicks fenced the land with a picket fence, built a five roomed slab and weatherboard home with a galvanised iron roof and two chimneys, together with a stable, a cowhouse and a piggery, sunk two dams, and had 11 acres under cultivation.
When Edmund Wicks died in November 1880, his widow sold the property to Ephraim Hansen who received the land title in 1887. Before building the homestead in 1889 Ephraim Hansen had built a small cottage which still stands at the back of Ambleside. Ambleside Park is a modest and comfortable farm house, built with Hawthorn bricks. The original building contained six rooms leading off a central passage and had a fireplace in every room as well as a large cellar. Additional rooms were later added to the house.
Ephraim Hansen died in 1942 aged 90 and the property was inherited by his son, Ephraim Hansen junior. When he passed, the property was further subdivided and sold. Oliver and Mable David bought the house and in 1975 upon Oliver’s death the house and two acres of land were bequeathed to Knox Council for the people of Knox. On the 28th of May 1977, Ambleside Park was officially opened as the headquarters of the Knox Historical Society Inc. The David family named the homestead Ambleside Park in the 1950s after Ambleside in the Lakes District in England.
Inside Ambleside
Admissions
Adults - $5.00 (18 years and over)
Children - $2.00 (5-17 years of age)
Infants - Free (0-4 years of age)
Companion Card holders - Free
Family - $10.00 (includes 2 adults & 2 of their children)
School groups by appointment $6.00 per child, escorting teachers and carers no charge