“Most significant” Melbourne estate, Blair Athol, for sale
One of “Melbourne most significant estates” – Blair Athol – is being offered for the fourth time in nine years.
Now without its trademark creepers in bloom – they scaled the width and height of the estate’s main double-storey Victorian Gothic mansion – the Brighton property is expected to sell for between $13 million – $14 million.
Blair Athol was built in 1872 for Archibald Menzies – owner of the city’s Menzies Hotel which had been developed four 
years earlier (interestingly, by David Mitchell, also known as Dame Nellie Melba’s father).
Just Jeans founder Craig Kimberley once called Blair Athol at 5 Leslie Grove, home. Kimberley sold it in 1994 for $2.85 million to former Tabcorp and Southcorp chief executive Ross Wilson who had shortly beforehand relocated to Melbourne from Adelaide.
The estate last sold for $7.52 million in April 2013. 
The sale prior to that, in February 2010, saw Blair Athol exchange hands for $8 million. It failed to sell after more than four months on the market following a 2008 campaign.
Covering 3358 square metres, the offering includes an established Edna Walling designed garden, tennis court, pool, spa and guest house – created out of what was once a carriage and stables building.
It also includes seven bedrooms, five bathrooms, a study/library, conservatory, and formal and informal living rooms – many which enjoy views of the water a couple of hundred metres away. The main home was penned by 
Lloyd Taylor, who was also behind grand Brighton mansions Kamesburgh House and Chevy Chase.
A listing about this property on website oldestatesforsale shows the Blair Athol estate once extended Menzies Avenue its full width, from the Brighton Beach train station to Hartley Street. An undated plan of subdivision created five blocks to the west of the home, and three blocks to the east.
A contemporary house built on one of these blocks sold for $2.52 million in May 2015.
JP Dixon marketing agents Jonathan Dixon and Jacqueline Maggs, who launched a private sale campaign yesterday, describes Blair Athol as one of Melbourne’s most significant Victorian estates.
