Historical information

Dr William Butler Walsh was born in 1854. He bought from James Venn Morgan on the corner of Charles Street and Cotham Road and in 1886 built Wilton on this site. He was at one stage the only doctor between Melbourne and Lilydale.

Significance

This work forms part of the collection assembled by the historian Dorothy Rogers, that was donated to the Kew Historical Society by her son John Rogers in 2015. The manuscripts, photographs, maps, and documents were sourced by her from both family and local collections or produced as references for her print publications. Many were directly used by Rogers in writing ‘Lovely Old Homes of Kew’ (1961) and 'A History of Kew' (1973), or the numerous articles on local history that she produced for suburban newspapers. Most of the photographs in the collection include detailed annotations in her hand. The Rogers Collection provides a comprehensive insight into the working habits of a historian in the 1960s and 1970s. Together it forms the largest privately-donated collection within the archives of the Kew Historical Society.

Physical description

Grave of the Walsh family in the Boroondara General Cemetery