Como House and Garden

 Melbourne Australia

Como House can be found in the Melbourne suburb of South Yarra, it's an historic home, now owned by the Victorian National Trust. The house and surrounding garden is open to the public, the gardens are open every day and are free to enter. The house is open for guided tours Saturday and Sunday. There are special exhibitions held in the house at various times. It's easy to get out to see the house as a tram runs along Toorak Road and then it's a short walk to Como House. And to make life easier the road you need to walk down from Toorak Road is called Como Road.

The house was originally built as a single storey house in 1847 for a barrister Edward Eyre Williams and his family. He named the house Como after Lake Como where apparently he proposed to his wife. As well as the house he had 54 acres of land going down to the Yarra River. The land was subdivided in 1909 and there's about 5 acres that has remained. 

The Williams family didn't live there for very long and in 1853 John Brown, who was a wealthy wine and spirit merchant bought the house and added the second storey. He also employed a gardener, William, Sangster, to design a picturesque garden surrounded by orchards and farmland.

The final owners of the estate was the Armytage family, Charles and Caroline Armytage were wealthy pastoralists (you needed money to run this type of house!) They bought it to be their Melbourne town house for when they were going to be in the city. They bought the property in 1864 and it was in their family until their two surviving daughters sold it to the National Trust in 1959.

The house came complete with the contents, it was the first house museum that came with the original contents and furnishings that were the taste of their owners. That's what can be seen in the house as you're taken through on a guided tour.

The dining room

The sitting room

The library

The billiards room with its enormous billiard table!

The croquet lawn

The Ellis Stones Garden

A woodland walk

Como house externally is looking a little worse for wear and that's because it's due for some restoration work. Last time I visited some preliminary work had started at the back of the house.

For lovers of historic home and National Trust properties Como House and Garden are well worth visiting. The area itself is interesting and it's a nice ride out on the tram from the city centre.