Moruya Heritage Restoration

Rarely does a project such as this one present itself!

A landmark building with unique history and character: partially heritage listed, partially inhabited, partially disused, layered with dust and mystery.

A resourceful new owner with a passionate vision and the determination and grit to nurture and wrestle it to life over several years.

Built in 1930, Cheddar House was a cheese production facility until the early 1970s. Various additions - small residences mainly - cling to its skirts but do little to detract from the magnificent central manufacturing hall and adjacent storage halls. Imposing hardwood trusses rest atop 400mm thick masonry walls; gutters edge the gently sloping concrete floor, ready for washing down the dairy-based industry within. Filtered light scatters through internal clerestory windows, illuminating overly steep stairs to quirky mezzanine platforms and original timber cool-room doors still airtight. All surrounded by B’n’B attic rooms and self-contained flats, inground concrete tanks and colonial tractor engines on public display… perhaps you begin to get the picture…

The Old Cheese Factory has been reborn as Moruya Artisan Factory, home of Granite Town CaféBar and Quantum Brewery. Arriving through a front yard come beer-garden sheltered by the feature fence-wall, a delicate redesign of the Hawdon Street frontage has retained and enhanced the original aesthetic. Foldaway glazing transects a veranda, an indoor-outdoor space which gives way to a comfortable and somewhat grand seating lounge complete with fireplace. This space was formerly part of the main residence but has been knocked through at both front and back to create the main reception lounge to the new business.

The space has the quality of a stage set thanks to the period styling and missing front wall, an experience enhanced by the wide opening through the rear wall where the original structure is framed for view and a short stairway invites you to travel a half-level up, into the vast, original main hall. Here visitors find themselves at the new bar, constructed on a steel mezzanine overlooking the micro-brewery now housed within the main production hall.

This project involved an extensive site surveys and research to accurately model the existing complex and understand its historical evolution. The Heritage context necessitated a somewhat lengthy negotiation process with Council for the development proposal to be approved.