A photograph of historic homestead "Lyndhurst" in Drouin.
Lyndhurst was a Victorian house built in about 1901 on an elevated site on the 320-acre property belonging to the pioneering McNeilly family.
The house had three chimneys and a bull nosed verandah around two sides. Samuel McNeilly, the eldest son of John and Eliza McNeilly, lived here with his family.
After Sam's death in 1944, two of his sons Cecil and Geoffrey continued to live in the house and ran the farm on the northern edge of residential Drouin.
The house was a significant landmark in Drouin, located at the end of a long Bhutan Cypress driveway. After Geoffrey's death in 2002, the property was sold for residential development. The Bhutan Cypress avenue listed under the National Trust was preserved but not the house.
Thanks to the foresight of a local real estate agent, Lyndhurst was saved at the death knell and moved to another location in Drouin where it is being lovingly restored.
Photograph courtesy of June Sealey, the great-granddaughter of John McNeilly, and information courtesy of Drouin History Group.
To listen to the McNeilly family's recorded story, visit storiesofdrouin.com.au.