60-66 Jennings Street
kyneton
VIC, 3444

Inspections by private appointment with Sue Wilson, PRD Kyneton.

Gainsborough asks something more of you. To love it, to look after it and to pass it on a little better than you found it. Built in 1862 by Captain O.G. Armstrong, this double storey brick Georgian is considered the 5th oldest home in Kyneton, and every family who has lived here has treated it less like a possession and more like a responsibility they were lucky enough to be given.

Armstrong sold it in 1863 to George W. Johnson, Kyneton's first elected member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly and the Johnsons held it close for nearly 40 years. The Ashby family came next, and it was they who named it Gainsborough, a name the house has carried proudly ever since. It has been a private hospital, a beloved guesthouse where generations of visitors woke to breakfast under its high ceilings, and always, eventually, someone's home again.

That's the feeling the current family leaves behind. Set on 2,132sqm with a home of 370sqm, Gainsborough carries 6 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms and a powder room, a rare, generous scale and the current owners have filled part of the upstairs with a second living zone for family life to spread into. Downstairs, one bedroom with its own ensuite waits for a parent, a grandparent or a guest who'd rather not climb the stairs. Formal and casual living zones sit apart, each with its own mood, so the house can hold a quiet Tuesday night and a full family Christmas with equal ease.

The care shows in the details. Timber floors have been relaid using recycled timber sourced from Myer in Melbourne, a small act of devotion most buyers will never think to ask about. The kitchen has been brought back to life, the plasterwork repaired by hand throughout. Mahogany fireplaces still warm the rooms they were built for. Wraparound iron lace verandahs still catch the afternoon light. Below, the cellar has been opened up and restored and holds a story locals still tell, of a discreet passage once used as an exit from a nearby hotel. Out front, the facade stops people mid step. Ask anyone in Kyneton and they'll tell you they've paused to admire this house at least once.

And then there's where it sits. Gainsborough backs onto the Campaspe River walk, in the early years it would have sat a quiet company of Kyneton's other grand old homes, St Agnes, The Rock House and The Lawns among them.

To buy this house is to become its next custodian, not its next owner. It calls for someone drawn to scale and privacy within easy reach of Melbourne (under 90 minutes up the Calder), someone who wants a home with a story already written into its walls and the patience to keep adding to it. Given its history as a guesthouse, its room count and its separate wings, it would also welcome someone dreaming of accommodation, agritourism or a retreat of their own. Whoever takes on Gainsborough next will inherit more than a house. They'll inherit a name and a 160 years of people who cared to keep it standing.