Tavistock Place

Sometimes known as Tavistock Lane. 

Tavistock Place was classified as a public place.

Named pre-1856.

Located at or near: 377-381 Flinders Lane.

Probable or possible origin of name: Tavistock House, London; constructed 1850s as Ship">https://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM01365b.htm">Ship Inn, renamed Tavistock Hotel, 1895, Tavistock House c 1906.

Location is approximate.

For more information, see: Bate, W., Broome, R., Davis, N., May, A. J., & Stitt, H. (2024). The story of Melbourne’s lanes: Essential but unplanned (pp. v, 55, 58). ISBN 978-1-875173-12-9.

"The original roughness was not intentional. Subdivisions near the port carried high-sounding names-Coromandel, Powells, Russell, Tavistock and Victoria places, Cheethams and Wright lanes and the terrace of houses, Roach Terrace.Yet only 31 people lived in them in 1847, compared with hundreds along unnamed tracks. Off Little Bourke, there were 307, off Little Collins, 100, and off Flinders Lane 35 inhabitants living in anonymous lanes. Lanes obviously bred lanes, for the major streets had few. Only 46 people lived in offshoots from Collins Street, 34 off Bourke, 16 off Lonsdale, 4 off Flinders, and 2 each off Elizabeth and La Trobe streets. Owners of important allotments probably shared the view of James Graham, a merchant, that cutting up those frontages would devalue them by bringing unpleasant neighbours. He was dismayed that a subdivision near his property had become a perfect nest of wretched hovels and a complete den of infamy." p. 55.

"Because only relatively high-value production justified a central location, Union Lane, off Little Collins Street near the heart of the city, contained electroplaters, brass finishers, locksmiths, an engraver and lapidary, a stereotyper, a wholesale newsagent, and a watchmaker in 1895. No dwellings remained. At the same time the offices of mining companies, which had dominated Tavistock Lane (earlier Tavistock Place, towards the west end of Flinders Lane) since the 1860s, were upgraded, and famous Bank Place, off Collins Street, was almost rebuilt to house solicitors, assignees, conveyancers, liquidators, accountants and (harbinger of further change) Mrs Walpole's typewriter office. Eldon Chambers sheltered the Society for the Assistance of Persons of Education (fallen on hard times?) and the Dragon Whist Club. At the Mitre Tavern John Garden provided business lunches, and in basements beneath Bank Place, conveniently, there were wine merchants. Alfred Place, at the Paris end of Collins Street, had sloughed off its earlier livery stables, builder's yard, cabinet maker, estate agent and boarding house in favour of a German Association and a firm of printers and publishers who produced Melbourne Punch, Once a Week and the Australasian Schoolmaster." p. 58.