Villa Cuddlesthorpe

A short history of an eccentric architectural masterpiece.

 Introduction

When Thomas Whitby Long Esquire was found dead and purple from apparent viper bite after a brief but intense infatuation with the germanic siren of the river towns Emerald Fist, his family had no further need for Villa Cuddlesthorpe. Eldest son Lincoln and his wife Gwendoline lived in Argyle Street, Restless Pleasure, at the expansive residence later known as "Little Romsey" while younger son Carlyle and his wife Elizabeth May lived on their rolling property just north of Bixly Downs. Daughter Christabel had run off with a rogue from New Zealand, whereabouts unknown, and sons Horace and Clarence both pre-deceased their mother Angelina in 1901 and 1902 respectively. Thomas' brother Gaylord had died in the previous spring of bitter reflux after complaining of an uneventful career in large women's lingerie. Consequently, it seemed that the wide and proud estate that Long had established on the gold-inflected tussock mounds overlooking Elegant Ridge thirty years before might fall into disuse and disrepair. It was in 1896 that the gentry of the district had assembled there for a sumptuous dinner with the famous Swedish chef Yergil Hennsoncroft in the kitchen. The crystal chandeliers had just been fitted and the stained glass features in the observatory were brought to their magnificent conclusion by craftsmen from Italy and France. The gardens were brimming with snapdragons and the sequence of lakes and ponds that circled the grounds were covered in creamy white lilies on cool black water. It was the obvious venue for a dinner of swells and landowners enjoying the rustic boom. It is a remarkable fact, then, that at the settlement of Long's estate there was serious talk of dismantling the Villa and auctioning the pieces to well-to-do farmers, mining engineers and leading members of the powerful postal worker's union.

The Victorian Exchange Mining Company

This outcome was averted when - it is said - a party of mine inspectors on their way to Beryl's Crossing stayed the night at the Fortune Hotel and were persuaded by the bartender to visit the Villa and consider it as a possible investment. The next morning before catching the train they bribed a guard three shillings, walked around the outsides of the deserted buildings and broke into the stables complex in the southern corner. They immediately cancelled their trip to Beryl's Crossing - so it is said - and reported back to their superiors that they had found an ideal site for the company's new expansions. A few weeks later the Victorian Exchange Mining Company purchased the entire place for 3000 pounds, a fraction of the 25,000 or more that Long had paid for the site in the first instance. The Company took possession of the Villa a few months later (there were legal hold-ups because of the not-entirely-certain circumstances of Long's death) and a team of mine workers and an inspection crew, along with their families, relocated from Melbourne. This brought a more functional - some might say uncouth - presence and no doubt something of the Villa's fine beauty faded. Many of the gardens were let go, some of the ponds were drained, and many of the main building's better Italianate and French Second-Empire features were lost to rust and rude neglect. In fairness, the Victorian Exchange Mining Company were there to conduct their business, not to maintain a waning heritage against the salivations of ravenous time.

Prussian Gentry

Despite good yields over many years and the pleasant cheer of the great zinc boom VEMC was mismanaged and on the eve of the Depression it was decided it would shed its Cuddlesthorpe investments. At this time a long-lost relative of Thomas Whitby Long, Randolphus Steiger-Manne, a member of the Prussian gentry, journeyed to southern shores and took an interest in the purchase. Dressed in a distinctive royal blue jacket adorned with medieval insignia and medals from the First War, he toured the river towns and made it known that there were several properties he would like to add to his estate. He also made it known, for the very first time, that the name "Cuddlesthorpe" was, in fact, a mistake. The Prussian derivative, going back many centuries in the family, and allowing English adaptations, was surely "Cundlesthorpe", and so it turned out to be. A local historian at this time, Doris Litchenplack, went back through papers belonging to Long and discovered that he had indeed named the property "Cundlesthorpe" but that the wrought-iron workers at Barrimore who had constructed the front and side gates had made an error in the spelling. At this, there was a huge row in the household with the precocious Christabel insisting that the error be allowed to stand, saying that "Cuddlesthorpe" was altogether "cuddlier" than "Cundlesthorpe" and that it was at a "Cuddlesthorpe" she wanted to live. Her father relented and the events surrounding the naming were never made public. But the staunch traditionalist Randolphus Steiger-Manne vowed to restore the proper name as soon as the property was his. He was entertained at Council Hall by the Mayor and his wife and did interviews with the local press. He spoke of a new era of luxuriance and gorgeous gardens, beautiful grottoes and a reconstructed bathing pool. He promised that after renovations he would open the Villa to the public and show the world what a marvelous architectural wonder had blessed this stray corner of the world. He arranged with the realtors, Mason, Forbes and Dinkly, to come in on a Monday morning to sign the deeds and initiate the appropriate transfer of funds. When Monday morning came, however, he was nowhere to be seen. Dinkly phoned Mason and eventually Forbes marched down to his hotel room only to find that he had skipped town in the middle of the night. It later emerged that he was, in fact, a penniless pretender who was running tabs across the country and had nothing of the wherewithal to purchase even a single brick of Villa Cuddlesthorpe. He left an exorbitant debt at the Fortune Hotel and a local belle, Miss Nelly Hammond, had felt his aristocratic lips upon her cheek and pursued him relentlessly claiming breach of promise.

This left the Villa's future in a penumbra of uncertainty. The worst of it was that Mason, Forbes and Dinkly had fended off other interested parties in the belief that Mr Randolphus had the goods. The Victorian Exchange Mining Company was perilously near to falling into receivership and the State government declined a plea to subsidize the bridging finance needed to find another buyer. Bad times descended upon Elegant Ridge. The mustard oil crop went sour overnight. Three mines closed on a bleak weekend in January and men who had once eaten oysters and raspberries and camembert cheese lined up at the soup kitchens in the park near the Law Courts where a statue of Thomas Whitby Long Esquire overlooked the faltering haunts of commerce.

The Commonwealth Cartography Office

In a secret deal that many say involved the intervention of a senator, however, the site was at this juncture purchased by the Commonwealth Cartography Office and the Villa was saved again. Map-makers from throughout the nation took up residence in the old buildings under the supervision of Major Robert "Two-Bob" Watch who had a vision of charting every nook and cranny of the dusty land. As he once said famously, there were at that time better maps of the mines and underground gullies than of the surface hills and rivers. In their obsessive pursuit of ore body and onyx men had mapped every seam and twist of the land's subterranean temper, but the sunburnt surface was barely surveyed except along the railway lines and the cuts made for the highways. "Two-Bob" was a surveyor on a mission. He felt called by God to convert the land into lines upon paper and there were vast advances in cartographical arts to help him realise this ideal. In a short while, drawing upon public monies, he had established Villa Cuddlesthorpe as a world-class mapping centre. "Cuddlesthorpe" became known as a brand of quality - the most accurate and best drawn topographical renderings in the southern hemisphere.

But this didn't last either. Two events intervened to bring prosperous days to a close. Firstly - and ironically - Major Watch was killed when he fell into a covered cellar in the eastern wing of the Villa. While he was busy charting the wide expanses of the country-side no one had gathered an accurate plan of the buildings and one day while instructing a group of apprentice map-makers who had just arrived from Adelaide he fell through the floor and didn't survive the thirty foot drop into a pit of jaggered bricks and debris. This was a blow to the entire operation. From the first he had given it his guiding hand. After his death the team was leaderless and demoralised and lost a number of important contracts. And secondly, there was the outbreak of hostilities in World War II. Consequently, the cartographical survey unit was incorporated into larger army divisions and from about late 1940 onwards Villa Cuddlesthorpe changed in character to become a low-level army base supporting both clerical and combat staff. The map-makers were squeezed to one side, the gardens were tarred over to form new parade grounds and several cream-brick barracks were constructed along the edges of the central lake which increasingly supported only puddles of water, copious reeds and a massive population of frogs.

The Klobbers

When anti-German paranoia gripped the nation in the early parts of the War any citizen of German extraction came under increased suspicion and many were rounded up and incarcerated in the interests of national security. This eventually included the mild-mannered Klobber family, struggling bootmakers resident in Yackandandah for nearly fourteen years. Commonwealth troops raided their store on Christmas eve and bustled  them into custody, the parents Hans and Hilda and their several children Deitrich, Mika, Ulrich, Helmut, Beatrice and the regrettably named Adolf. They were interrogated at the army barracks just outside of Barrimore and then it was decided they would be placed in on-going detention at Villa Cuddlesthorpe for the duration of the war. Hans and Hilda's protestations came to nothing. The War Act had stripped them of any avenue of appeal. They arrived in Elegant Ridge under heavy guard in March 1942 and were relocated to the Villa in the weeks that followed. A whole section of the western wing was set aside for their detention including the former servant's kitchen, the old billiards room and a small vegetable plot outside. The conditions provided for them, in fact, were extraordinarily generous and once they had moved in they quickly became accustomed to the luxury and dropped all requests to have their case re-examined by the Interior Minister. Each child had a separate room and their quarters included three bathrooms and the magnificent turret sitting room with its marble fireplace, gilded wall features and collection of impressionist masterpieces hanging in the lushly papered stairwell. Their house in Yackandandah was merely a two bedroom humpy at the rear of their boot store. By turns of happy circumstance they had suddenly moved up in the world and were content to sit out the war years residing in the Villa and even having picnics on the lawns below the bunja trees. When they requested a piano for Beatrice, the grand piano forte was moved from the far end of the lodgings and the sounds of Franz Lizt echoed through the estate almost every evening. Life, in fact, became so felicitous for the Klobbers that they all developed a deep fondness for the Villa and thanked their lucky stars that the Nazis had invaded Poland. After years of tacking together a bootstrap existence they finally found prosperity in the bosom of their adopted home. As far as officialdom was concerned, they were largely forgotten. A guard checked on them about once a week and from time to time the senior staff from the Survey Platoon dropped by to challenge Hans at chess.

So comfortable and so forgotten were the Klobbers at the Villa that when the war ended no notice came to return them to their former life and for their part they were in no hurry to remind the authorities that this was so. In fact, it wasn't until early 1947 before someone in the central office noticed that the family were still under the care and provision of the taxpayers. By this time Hilda had made an impression on the decor and the children had constructed a substantial treehouse in the cypress that shaded the Venus grotto. Hans had removed the linoleum from the dining area and had somewhere acquired tins of slate-blue paint with which he refreshed the kitchen. Although the alterations they had made were minor they were nevertheless distinctive and later occupants and chroniclers increasingly referred to the western parts of the building as the Klobber wing, some even suggesting they had forged a new stylistic synthesis with their limited means and sparse Germanic tastes. This view was furthered by the publication of Ulrich Klobber's memoirs, Krouts in Paradise, in 1963 where he recounted stories of his parents consciously refining the ornate and somewhat flamboyant interiors in which the family was forced to live. If anything, they made the wing more sober and homely, preserved most of the original character but added a tidy domesticity and modesty that, according to some, had always been lacking.

Southern Command Centre

In any case, the homely era of the Klobbers was soon replaced with a new functionalism after the dawn of the Cold War. The Villa was given an extended role as the southern command centre for military intelligence and a pall of silence and secrecy fell upon its buildings and grounds. The high stone walls and wrought-iron gates that had kept the Germans in now kept the Russians, and everybody else, out. Additional security and barbed wire was installed along with an unsightly communications tower that dwarfed the turret and required metal rails and maintenance access ladders that scarred the gentle slopes of slate on the eastern outlook. Further side buildings were constructed, even uglier than the cream-brick military barracks, and the beautiful old stables, which had admittedly developed a lean after several wet winters, were demolished to make way for a new car park.

The personnel who occupied the Villa at this time were and remain nameless. It was said that Cuddlesthorpe was home to not only Australian but also British and American spies and that it was to Cuddlesthorpe that spies "disappeared" in the event of their cover being compromised in active duty. It was said that the cosy Klobber wing was used as a "safe house" for spooks from throughout the world for whenever they needed to "lay low". It was also widely rumored - although of course the government would neither confirm nor deny such reports - that the site had become a nuclear target with a barrage of Russian warheads aimed at its genteel structures, Italian balustrades and curvaceous roof-lines. Some in the general public began to feel uncomfortable and there were occasional letters to the Elegant Ridge Reporter demanding to know what was going on behind the estate walls. "Do these activities make us a target in the event of a nuclear exchange?" These complaints were met with a solid front of official silence. For over a decade no member of the local community was permitted beyond the front gate and as the cypress trees slowly grew taller the Villa and other buildings were increasingly obscured from view from every angle. Since it occupied the highest hill in the region there was nowhere from which any vantage of the site could be made. For most people, out of sight also meant out of mind, and on the whole the townsfolk forgot about the Villa and were more absorbed by the introduction of television and the advent of bobby-socks and the twist.

Aliens and Ghosts

One man, an American named Chuck Zeigler, who said that he had worked as a "clerk" at the Villa, retired and stayed in Elegant Ridge and opened an American style Icecream Emporium that featured the only jukebox in a hundred miles. He would sometimes get drunk in the bar at Fortune Hotel and relate wild tales of how Cuddlesthorpe was, in fact, a global hub for tracking flying saucers and how he had personally been involved in the interrogation of aliens captured after their space ship had crashed in the northern desert. It was mainly through Zeigler's reports that Elegant Ridge first developed its unusually high population of Ufologists and crack-pots, a trend that has continued to this day. Even now there are those who conjecture that Cuddlesthorpe was used as a secret government UFO centre under a cloak of Cold War intrigue. A whole chapter was devoted to such conjecture in the 1975 bestselling exposé Aliens Among Us which included a photo of the front gates with the caption 'Did government agents hold aliens at Villa Cuddlesthorpe? You decide!'

For strategic and administrative reasons that also remain obscured by the clandestine mechinations of the Cold War, however, army intelligence wound down their operations at the Villa from about 1964 onwards and by 1969 the site had been abandoned, unoccupied for the first time in its history. The lease still remained with the military but the entire site had been cleared of the slightest evidence of military deployment, the gates were locked and the buildings turned over to the rats and spiders and cockroaches. As well as the town's Ufologists, ghost-hunters and ghoul afficianadoes developed a repertoire of tales about how the Villa was haunted and how poltergeists had chased the army from the site. A whole chapter was devoted to this in the 1982 bestselling exposé Ghosts of the South featuring interviews with a Mrs Eileen Cogan who claimed to have been a cleaner there in the 1950s and to have seen unearthly spectres and heard eerie wailings that had nothing to do with flying saucers or the struggle against the Soviets. She was later revealed to be a paid publicity seeker with a history of psychiatric illness by the Skeptics Society but, like the Ufologists, ghost-hunters remain indefatable and have always insisted on the veracity of her reports. It was the deserted and inaccessible character of the buildings, and their shadowy darkness night after night, throughout this period that fed such stories. The human imagination provides phantoms to populate hidden and empty corners. When Cuddlesthorpe's gates were locked and the weeds started to grow up through the driveway people started wondering and the tales grew more lurid and insistent.

The Mod Squad

It was then, for the first time, that public-minded preservationists started taking an interest and people began to appreciate that the Villa - haunted or not - was an architectural and historical treasure. But the first efforts to have this acknowledged by the authorities came to nothing. Instead, the next important episode in this history came in 1971 at the height of counter-cultural iconoclasm and the tangerine excesses of Flower Power. A team of young architects who promoted themselves as the "Mod Squad" and who stood opposed to the entire ethos of preservation added the Villa to their list of "architectural anomalies" that should be either renovated according to the latest styles, with deep purple carpets and paisley drapes, or else torn down to make way for a "groovier" complex. They described the buildings as "square" and "past-ville" and to some extent the town's people, eager to be "with the times", agreed. The leaseholders felt no obligation to stand up to "progress" and so gave permission for the "Mod Squad" to undertake some "improvements" with a view to holding a "Happening" there in 1972. The older and more conservative members of the district Historical Society were publicly ridiculed for having "old fashioned" ways, the modernists prevailed, and the bullnosed verandahs that surrounded three sides of the Villa were torn down to "let the sun shine in" and advance the "Age of Aquarius". At the same time the newly formed National Arts Council provide half a million dollars to radical muralist Lance Joplin to paint a fifteen foot tribute to Jim Morrison and the Doors in the former State Room.

Upon reflection, it must be said that the hippys did more damage to the Villa in a twelve month period than the army had managed in more than twenty years. The military had at some point installed a bar and kitchenette in the former reading room and constructed it of a ghastly imitation teak wood paneling, but the "Mod Squad" moved into the Master bedroom and painted the ornate plaster features that Thomas Long had imported from Paris at extraordinary expense bright orange and lime green in an effort to make the room more "trippy". The "Happening" never happened, but a tribe of hairy Anthropology graduates from Monash University squatted in the old dairy near the south gate and set up a laboratory for making LSD. Because the lease was under Federal authority the local police couldn't move against them. Hallucinogens manufactured on site became notorious in the psychedelic underworld and for several years drop-outs and acid freaks from Brighton to Bali would drop a "Cuddlesthorpe" in pursuit of a spurious enlightenment. The local community were eventually able to move the anthropologists along by invoking sanitation by-laws and, in any case, once their high flattened out most of them retrained as bankers and went into careers in finance. This was the fate of Lionel Candy, one of the original "Mod Squad", who abandoned architecture for stockbroking and who became involved in a committee of business leaders and financiers who wanted to put Villa Cuddlesthorpe on a "sound economic footing". They proposed renting out the buildings to high-end boutique and niche market vendors with an emphasis on South-East Asia. This never happened either, but it did draw attention to the fact that the Villa was in need of long-term financial management if it was ever to see brighter days.

The Cuddlers

From this time on, beginning in the mid-Eighties, admirers of the Villa started holding regular meetings and eventually formed an incorporated body called The Cuddlesthorpe Appreciation Society Inc. Members were popularly referred to as "Cuddlers" by the locals but despite this disarming appellation they developed a reputation for an unbending - some would say radical - commitment to heritage conservation. Led by the temperamental and desperately lonely Edie O'Nicholl, an habitual activist, the Cuddlers staged loud and vocal protests in order to bring the plight of the Villa to the attention of elected representatives. Most famously, they marched into the Elegant Ridge Council chambers and disrupted the investiture of the new Mayor, Peter Pike, by the State Premier in 1992. The meeting descended into bedlam until the riot squad arrived and in the end Edie and half a dozen Cuddlers spent the night in jail. When the Council took steps to upgrade the stone walls on the northern boundary to prevent their total collapse the Cuddlers cried out against what they described as "heavy handed intervention" and objected to the fact that earthmoving equipment would need to access the wall from across the front lawns. Edie threw herself in front of the tractors and said she was prepared to die. It was suspected, but never established, that Cuddlers might have been behind a spray paint attack on the Mayor's Ford Camri. Pike vowed that his administration would not be taken hostage but, in fact, it was during his extended Mayoralty that the lease for the Villa was finally given across to the National Preservation Tattoo with a nominal contractual interest given to Jed Long of Voltaire, the only surviving descendant of Thomas Whitby Esquire still on Australian shores. On March 15th 1995 the flag of the Survey Corps was lowered for the final time and the Villa was once again in civilian hands.

Conclusion

Hopefully, these accounts of the history of Villa Cuddlesthorpe will underline for the reader the sombre reality of exactly what has been lost in the fires that engulfed the complex just last week. The ashes are still crackling and a pillar of smoke can still be seen rising over the cypress trees. No doubt much more will be said, but it is important to reflect over the whole life of the buildings in a comprehensive and dispassionate way before the new round of controversy begins. There have been many ironies in this history, but the final irony may be that - as it seems - the fires were electrical in origin and came about when workmen started rewiring the Klobber wing in preparation for the installation of fire alarms in accordance with new government regulations. It seems that the Villa has been destroyed in its entierity. Only the treehouse over the Venus grotto escaped the flames. In another irony the town's new state-of-the-art firetrucks were not able to reach the blaze because of large-vehicle obstacles installed at all approaches for security purposes in the late 1950s. The firemen could reach the main carpark but could go no further. All they could do was stand by and watch as the flames chewed away the foundations of the turret and the glass observatory came crashing down when the roof collapsed.

Predictably, there are already rumours about some sinister background - including Ufo and ghost stories that, we can be sure, will not go away any time soon. Indeed, one of the firemen on the scene, Darrel Hardy, has already appeared in the Reporter claiming that for a fleeting moment, as flames raced up the stairwells to engulf the second floor, he caught a glimpse of a mature woman wearing black lace - he actually said it was sad-eyed Angelina Long, though how he would of known that is impossible to say - standing at the side bedroom window, her face forlorn and ghoulish. He was going to report an occupant to his command but when he looked back her figured faded right before his eyes and, he said, he realised that what he had seen was "not of this world." No one else, it seems, saw her and authorities have declared with confidence that there was no one inside when the building came down.

The insurance investigators have arrived in Elegant Ridge in the last few days and the task of writing the final chapter of this history will fall to them. There is no serious suggestion of foul play but there is still the question of what went wrong and how the tragedy might have been averted. For now, as Cuddlesthorpe passes into legend, all we can do is look back over a rich chronicle of events and colourful characters and be thankful that such a baroque pearl of eccentric and resplendent architectural blamange ever graced this dreary land.