Barkers Road was the north boundary of the first 50 Crown Allotments surveyed for sale in Boroondara in 1843. It was during a depression, and on the wrong side of the Yarra River, with access only by a punt (near the present Burwood Road Bridge), so blocks were slow to sell. Most traffic then headed north-east along the river, increasing dramatically with the discovery of gold in 1851.
One purchaser was James Colvin, paying just under (pound sign) 3 per acre for Crown Allotment 29 of 10 acres (4 hectares) along the south side of Barkers Road to Power Street, in December 1847. Land south by the creek had been bought by brickmakers – their claypits years later used as tips then becoming parkland. Blocks by the river were bought for gentlemen’s estates, others for farms or market gardens, with land cleared and fenced and homes built. The population and passing traffic was increasing, and Colvin decided to build a hotel, advertising for tenders for a brick house near the Red Lion in August 1854.
The Red Lion Inn was by the present Simpson Place by March 1853, but then mortgaged and perhaps for sale, before Colvin’s new hotel was licensed as the ‘Bee-hive Hotel’ in April 1855. Although facing Church Street, it was close to Barkers Road and provided a name for that east-west road – which remained Beehive Road for years to local residents. Ironically it was officially Barkers Road in 1863, from the so-called ‘Barkers Track to the Mountains’ used as a boundary of squatters runs further east, following the pioneer Barker brothers’ route to their station (with relations still then in Town and Kew).
In 1870 the Beehive Hotel was 10 rooms as Church Street, with three other 4-roomed cottages along Barkers Road. In 1879 Mrs Colvin was publican (with a carter, horse trainer, blacksmith, joiner and coach painter also in the family). By 1884 the property had been subdivided (with other properties nearby) with a new Colvin Grove, George and Margaret Streets (later Edgerton and Elgin Streets). The hotel had grown to 12 rooms around the corner, with a new beehive decoration to face the traffic from a new river bridge planned at Barkers Road. Architect James Wood called tenders in April 1881 for the new hotel, buzzing with activity for the new owner William Colvin.
Hotels have always been popular – not only for food, drinks, accommodation and entertainment, but once for public meetings about schools, churches or public problems. Camberwell and Box Hill became ‘dry’ and some of the dozen Hawthorn hotels closed, in the 1920′s. One of the oldest hotels has remained, and now renovated and re-named still welcomes people, with a beehive above.
