WINDSOR PARK

SIR MATTHEW DAVIES (1850 – 1912)

Windsor Park was a large estate in Surrey Hills that was developed for suburban living in the 1880s by the Freehold Investment and Banking Company. This company and many others like it eventually went broke. This ultimate holding company was owned by Sir Matthew Davis and six of his associates, including one of his brothers, who were responsible for a number of property developments in the suburbs of Melbourne.

Sir Matthew Davis was also an Australian politician. He was originally born in England to a family of some means and came to Australia in 1849 after inheriting an annuity of about £500 from an uncle. He settled with his wife and family in Geelong where be became a tannery and property owner and a director of the Geelong and Melbourne Railway Co. His wife died in 1853 at Geelong and in 1857 he married Jane Vines. He was deeply religious and had many children.

Through his company, he controlled a network of 40 companies, in which Victorian and overseas interests had invested millions of pounds. They got wind of plans for a train-line extension from Hawthorn to Lilydale and bought up land in the Surrey Hills and Mont Albert area. They named the estate Windsor Park after the Queen’s family name, and many of the streets were named after famous people and places in England. The streets were mapped out and lined with English oaks, reminiscent of old England.

Melbourne was experiencing a suburban development boom in the 1880s. Around the time that Surrey Hills station opened in 1883, large auctions were being held to sell off residential properties. The suburban life was sold as an idealist lifestyle when compared to the overcrowded and crapped conditions of the inner suburbs. With wide streets and private gardens, these blocks of land promised a new start.

Properties near the station were sold first. As the blocks got further away from the station, the properties became smaller and cheaper, so there was something for both the high end and low end buyers. Buyers were typically of English descent, and of evangelical faith. Posters advertising Surrey Hills were produced by real estate conglomerates, such as the ones shown below.

Posters from left to right: Advertisements for auctions on 24 January 1885, 14 January 1888 and 6 June 1885. Source: State Library of Victoria, viewed 9 September 2022,

Corio Bay Villa was situated in the southern part of Windsor estate, known as the chicken farm. In the advertisement below, from 1886 states:

"The now famous CHICKEN FARM is so well known that to mention its superiority of position for VILLA RESIDENCES is superfluous, yet the Auctioneers would wish to call attention to the that fact nowhere within equal distance to the City can such a DELIGHTFUL SPOT be found..."

Image: " The Celebrated chicken farm, Surrey Hills, with frontages to main roads" (1886). Melbourne: Harston. Source: Source: State Library of Victoria, viewed 9 September 2022,

But Surrey Hills was not all that it was cracked up to be, as many residential complaints in the early twentieth century attest to. The area did not include any public open areas, such as squares, parks or lakes. The roads were all dirt roads which turned to mud in winter. There was no street lighting, drainage, sewage or rubbish collection in the 1990s, and even though Surrey Hills had a water reservoir in 1892, it did not service the Windsor Park estate until many years later.

Sir Matthew Davis and the Freehold Investment and Banking Company was experiencing great success in the 1880s, however, the good times did not last. In 1890 the UK and America experienced an economic crash, which was followed by a bank and property collapse in Australia in 1892. Many jobs were lost and debts defaulted on.

This meant that while most of the properties had been sold, some owners walked away and most remained uninhabited for two decades. Like many other public figures, Sir Matthew Davis was caught in the property crash and his companies suspended payments in 1892. Davis resigned from Parliament and went to London to try to arrange finance to rescue his business empire, but was unsuccessful. He returned to Melbourne to face insolvency.

Image: Freehold Investment and Banking Company office on the corner of Swanston and Collins Streets, Melbourne. Source: State Library of Victoria, viewed 9 September 2022.

Davis and five others were committed for trial on charges of conspiracy to defraud by means of a false balance sheet. They were acquitted of the charges, but Davis was declared bankrupt in 1894, with personal debts of 280,000 pounds. The losses of his companies totalled over 4 million pounds — one of the largest corporate defaults in Australian history.

Davis died in Armadale, survived by four of six sons and two of six daughters of his first marriage, and one of four sons and the one daughter of his second marriage. Despite his death and the collapse of Freehold Investment and Banking Company, the suburb of Surrey Hills lives on with most of the original street designs intact.