Insights

This weekend, The Age featured a piece on iconic Australian homes. Since the publication of Karen McCartney’s renowned books, 50/60/70 Iconic Australian Houses, and its sequel, 70/80/90 Iconic Australian Houses, such properties have become a major point of fascination and highly sought after.

Some of the homes featured in McCartney’s books were recently included in an exhibition at the Museum of Sydney. The iconic houses featured in this exhibition included many famous properties from the 1950s, but there were also more recent homes, such as Sean Godsell’s Kew house from 1996 and Wood Marsh’s Gottlieb house in Caulfield, built in 1996.

Cardiologist Martin Hiscock has purchased a number of iconic homes throughout Melbourne. The first was the Hill Street house in Toorak designed by Sir Roy Grounds, the Pavilion house in South Yarra, another Grounds design, followed by a larger home in South Yarra, this time designed by architect Nic Bochsler.

Hiscock has recently added to this list of iconic homes he has owned, having bought the Seccull house in Brighton, designed by the late Guilford Bell in 1972. The home is framed by landscape gardens and features interior courtyards and grand rooms for entertaining.

“I wasn’t planning to move to another iconic home. But a friend knew an agent and the next thing I was inspecting the house to buy rather than visiting it for curiosity,” says Hiscock.

A special mention to Simone Chin of Hodges Brighton who arranged the off market deal between Martin Hiscock and the vendor of the Seccull house.

Martin Hiscock outside the Seccull house in Brighton