Review: Lost Laneways of Melbourne by Robyn Annear

* Copy courtesy of Text Publishing *

Historian Robyn Annear is back and this time she's guiding us through the streets of my home town in Lost Laneways of Melbourne. Annear begins with the Surveyor Robert Hoddle's plan to set out a grid for Melbourne which is now referred to as the CBD. The original plan incorporated lanes to access properties in what we now know as 'little' streets, like Little Flinders Street and Little Collins Street. What I didn't know was that the size of the blocks at the time were so large that they were subdivided into smaller lots and sold several times over.

These subsequent subdivisions meant many properties no longer had convenient rear access and owners didn't want to pay to create and maintain approved crossings in order to comply with the municipal by-laws. Landlords and businesses still needed access to their properties for loading and unloading deliveries, and unofficial laneways and rights-of-way sprang up throughout the city as a result. Many of these were privately owned and, consequently, were not maintained by the council.

As a result, they became a dumping ground for waste, including privy buckets and overflow from cesspits, slaughter yards, tanneries and other noxious trades that created a 'slimy, feculent soup that hit peak putrescence in summer, but stank and offended in all seasons.' The manner in which this was dealt with and the associated red tape was dry to read about due to its very nature.

What kept my interest through the somewhat dull topic of land sales, surveying reports and council happenings were the short character studies and social history. I can only imagine the research must have taken years.

"I've trawled through historical records to trace the existence, over the years, of around 320 distinct Melbourne laneways, known by almost five hundred names." Page 2

Ordering this content through the use of guided walks with accompanying maps was an inspired way to engage the reader and encourage urban exploration of the subject matter. Those reading from afar or unable to visit can track the route using the street view function on Google Maps and I particularly enjoyed checking out Melbourne's skinniest lanes. Corrs Lane and Langs Lane are more like a gap between buildings and the street view clearly shows pedestrians in the area freely moving through but I imagine it'd be another matter entirely after dark.

Apparently Melbourne had the highest number of lanes in the 1870s, after which time, improvements to sanitation and slum clearance saw that number reduced. In later years, more lanes were subsumed by sprawling developments and the introduction of skyscrapers. By Robyn Annear's reckoning, there are a tad fewer than 250 lanes left in Melbourne, and when you compare that to the low double-digit number of lanes in most other Australian capital city centres, it's quite extraordinary.

Thankfully the author uses humour to keep the subject matter light and I laughed when I read about the impermissible acts in public streets. In the 1820s and 1830s, this included kite-flying, beating carpets, furious riding, public urination and daylight bathing within sight of the town.

The history of various pubs and local businesses in Melbourne were covered but I didn't expect to discover the licentious effect of fiddle playing:

"In Melbourne, fiddle-playing in hotels had been outlawed in the early 1840s, 'as it leads to a congregation of the most abandoned of both sexes... and has the worst possible effect upon the morals of the lower orders'." Page 115

Lost Laneways of Melbourne by Robyn Annear is recommended for readers with an interest in urbanisation, urban morphology, social history, council planning and the history of Melbourne's inner city geography. Having grown to appreciate Melbourne's early history through Annear's earlier work*, I can only hope Sydney has an historian of her calibre to document its own early beginnings.

* For more, check out my reviews of the following: