Historical information

Kilby Lodge (c.1845-c.1922). William Oswin purchased Crown Land Lots 52 & 53 in 1845. These lots ran north from an old bullock track [later Kilby Road] to the Yarra, and east to Burke Road. Oswin purchased a neighbouring Lot in 1851, separated by the bullock track from the rest of the farm. Oswin built ‘Kilby Lodge’ and, with his brother, farmed dairy cattle on the site. Oswin’s descendants owned the farm into the 1890s. New subdivisions of Kilby and neighbouring farms in the 1920s changed the rural nature of north Kew. Housing and large recreation reserves replaced dairy farms and market gardens.

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

A panoramic photograph of Kilby (or Oswin's) Farm in East Kew.

Inscriptions & markings

"Kilby Farm when Oswins owned it. Commenced 1845."