Lorne Victoria Australia

Waverley House property has had several owners, and it has been rebuilt and refurbished several times. Early photos of Lorne show Waverley as the only house north of the Erskine River.

Approximate Timeline of ownership:

• 1881 John Elkington recorded in Winchelsea Rate Book
• 1881 – 1908 Waverley bought by S.F. Staughton
• 1908 E.H. Lascelles reported to have bought Waverley, he died in 1917
• c1920 –  1989, Cicely Lascelles, died in 1989
• c1989 – 1994, Hilda Lascelles, died in 1994
• c1995, St John Sutton
• Sprague, reported to have renovated and added central staircase.
• 2023 Spicer family

It is not clear from the records who actually built it in the first place. The Geelong Advertiser in 1881 reports that S. F. Staughton bought at auction, for £390, a 12 roomed, 2 storey house at Lorne – near Erskine House, which could have been Waverley House. It was later reported that S. F. Staughton’s name was substituted in the Winchelsea Shire rate books for John Elkington’s, relative to property at Lorne. So it could be that John Elkington may have been an early or first property owner. It was then sold to S.F. Staughton in 1881, who later sold it to E. H. Lascelles in 1908.

In 1999, Len Harris recalled that for many years Lascelles owned a lot of land, in fact right up to the golf course. They used to keep a herd of goats to help to get rid of the blackberries and undergrowth. Behind Waverley they had a magnificent vegie garden with fruit trees, and a tennis court. A live-in gardener, Dave Logan, looked after the garden. Lascelles property originally included the flat land, where the camping ground and  motel are now located, every time it rained heavily, it would flood and turn into a lake.

Black Friday Bushfire

The Black Friday Bushfire threatened to destroy Lorne. The Geelong Advertiser reported in 1939, that by 2pm North Lorne was a blazing mass of fire. All the outbuildings at Waverley the beautiful two storey residence of Miss Cicely Lascelles, developed into an inferno and a £3,000 home met the fate of many beautiful little residences facing the sea in what is termed “Little Colac”. Six other houses in the vicinity were quickly swallowed up in the raging inferno. The township was very lucky as the wind changed to the south west when it did otherwise the town would have been burnt out.

 Waverley Rebuilt

After the 1939 bushfire, only the stone walls of Waverley were left. Fires appeared to have meet near this residence after travelling from the north and south behind Lorne. The bush was still burning at the back of the township at night, but, with so much undergrowth destroyed, the danger apparently had passed. Waverley was built incredibly solid, its outer walls being blue stone rock withstood the fire extra well. They were certainly strong and with high workmanship. When Horrie Williams and Bill Lynch rebuilt Waverley, they incorporated the same walls without touching them.

Gardening was also a keen interest of Cicely Lascelles. Living at Waverley, the holiday house of her youth, Cicely established a rose garden featuring a number of Alister Clark roses, including her own “Cicely Lascelles”.

The garden, almost lost in the Ash Wednesday bushfires of 1983, later revealed the Clark rose “Zara Hore-Ruthven”, rediscovered in 1992.

Cicely was involved in the home effort during both world wars, was a Commissioner in the Girl Guides movement, and also worked for the YMCA. When she retired she frequently shared the company of her younger sister Hilda, passing away in 1989 at the age of ninety-four.