Pallister, Greenwich, Heritage site in Greenwich, Australia
Pallister is a two-storey Late Victorian house at 95 River Road, Greenwich, with a two-storey verandah wrapping three sides on cast iron columns and balustrade panels. The main entrance sits centrally below a gable in the eastern facade. The original load-bearing brick house has substantial 1937–38 additions to the west, with slate roofs and terracotta hips and ridges.
John St Vincent Welch designed and built this Victorian manor after arriving from Devonshire in 1876. The building went through several transformations, first becoming a school, then a children's home, and later a hospital.
The name Pallister was adopted in 1946, when the Church of England Deaconess' Institute acquired the villa and turned it into a girls' home; before that it was called Standish. The house later housed an Adolescent Counselling Service and a Health Media and Education Centre, and now holds offices for Greenwich Hospital departments.
Pallister stands at 95 River Road, Greenwich, set back from the road on the grounds it shares with Greenwich Hospital. The house itself now holds hospital offices, so it is seen from outside rather than toured. The 1937-38 school wing extends the western side, and the two-storey verandah with cast iron columns wraps around three sides.
The telescope in the grounds observatory was brought from England in 1860, decades before the observatory itself was built around 1900. It had been acquired to observe the transit of Venus, and John St Vincent Welch later housed it in a purpose-built structure on his estate.
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