Photograph by John Gollings
About The Lennox
A veritable Who’s Who of Melbourne’s cultural characters have collected, at one time or another, at a former pub, now dubbed The Lennox, at Richmond’s 208 Lennox Street.
The Lennox looms, somewhat imperiously, over its more domestic neighbours towards the top of Lennox Hill[i]. From its rear balcony it takes in the vistas of the Melbourne Cricket Ground and the skyline of Melbourne’s CBD, while the view from the front room is dominated by the Jesuit-run St. Ignatius Church on its commanding site at the summit of Richmond Hill in Church Street.
But well before there was a Lennox, this was the realm of the on the Wurundjeri-willam people of the Kulin Nation. Not far from the banks of Birrarung (the Yarra River) it was a place of traditional ritual, hunting and day-day-life. The settlement and development of Melbourne by Balanda (outsiders) impacted heavily on the Wurundjeri-willam people and from the 1830s dispossession of land, dislocation, frontier clashes and introduced diseases led to a dramatic decline in the population. But the Wurundjeri survived and live in the region to this day.