Blundells Cottage
Heritage Management Plan
Community Consultation
Social Values Analysis and Curtilage Study
Cultural Landscape Assessment
National Capital Authority
Canberra
Blundells Cottage is a significant heritage place, included on the Commonwealth Heritage List for its early colonial tenant farming history, associations with the early development of the federal capital and role as a folk museum since the 1960s.
Initially an outpost of the Duntroon estate, Blundells Cottage is now situated in the mature landscape of Kings Park and set in a cottage garden. GML was engaged by the National Capital Authority (NCA) to deliver a Heritage Management Plan (HMP) and consider the changing landscape of the cottage.
The HMP was developed in consultation with key stakeholders including site managers, heritage interest groups and education representatives. Consultation with the local Aboriginal community was also conducted to assess Indigenous heritage values under the Commonwealth’s Environment Protection and Biodiversity Act 1999 (EPBC Act), and a social value investigation conducted.
GML delivered an HMP that captures stories of the place integral to Canberra’s history—Aboriginal occupation, the earliest European settlement on the Limestone Plains, the building of a national capital, and the changing lives of the families who called Blundells Cottage home.
The HMP includes a new interpretation framework that extends the story of the cottage, farm outbuildings and landscape (and the activities that took place within them), from one with a primary focus on the rural colonial period to one that encompasses the more recent development of Canberra as a planned city.
The HMP also provides the NCA with a practical and philosophical framework which enables Blundells Cottage (including its collection of folk memorabilia) and its landscape setting to be conserved, managed and re-interpreted now and into the future. Crucially, the HMP addresses the requirements of Schedules 7A and 7B of the EPBC Act, ensuring a compliant document for NCA management.
The Blundells Cottage HMP received an award for outstanding quality in the inaugural ACT National Trust Heritage Awards.
