Grantville History

The first school at Grantville was a non-government one. Classes were held in a single-roomed structure close to Deep Creek with William Brandrick as teacher. It is uncertain when classes started, with June 1872 the probable date. The school closed with the resignation of Brandrick on 14 February 1873.

Rural School No.20 re-opened in a new building on Lot 10, probably in January 1874, with Ebenezer McKay as teacher. This structure was simple but probably “good enough” if ill-furnished and supplied.  

Eventually it was replaced and a new one-room building erected in its place. Sometime in 1876 the school was designated as Grantville State School No.1414.

Falling enrolments saw the merger of the Grantville and Queensferry schools and the building was moved to a site approximately mid-way between the two towns.

In 1940, it was returned to Grantville and re-located to the corner of the Bass Highway and Pier Road, the site of the current Transaction Centre. In 1966, the now over 90 year old school was condemned and replaced by a new building which was officially opened on 29 March 1968.

It enjoyed a short life, the Grantville Primary School No.1414 being closed in 1979 as part of an amalgamation of local schools into one: the current Bass Valley Primary School is on the Corinella Road.

The first recorded general store was that of James Stewart in 1870, when Grantville was still known as Deep Creek. John Dickins and his brother Stephen established the next store around June 1875. Stephen was probably also Grantville’s first postmaster.

John Thomas Paul, a farmer at Almurta, set up a general store in 1880, but struggled until the death of John Dickins in January 1883, when Paul took over as postmaster and soon found himself owning the sole general store.

Paul maintained the store until his retirement in 1905 when he sold the business to Francis McOwan. It remained in McOwan hands until 1926, though often leased to a third party.

The store passed to John and William Orgill in 1927. Other notable owners were Len and Frank Tilley in the 1930s and the Wheatley family in the 1960s and 1970s.

Sometime in 1876 the owner of the general store at Grantville, John Dickins, converted the building into a hotel and was open for business when on 9 December 1876 the first coach on the newly established Dandenong to Grantville route arrived at the township.

Dickins died in January 1883. A number of licensees followed until October 1893 when the publican’s license passed to William Baker Lang, who bought the hotel in 1895. In March 1925, Dr. Robert H. Cole, Melbourne coroner, now retired, purchased the hotel from Lang.

His plans to modernise it came to nought when the main building of the hotel burnt down around 3am on the 25th January 1934. It was never rebuilt.  

In March 1885 Grantville held it first agricultural and pastoral show. About 300 people attended, this number doubling at the 1886 event. The show continued throughout the 1890s and into the next century with the last show taking place in March 1911 due to the decline of Grantville and falling attendances.

Construction of the Grantville Mechanics’ Institute and Free Library was completed and the building opened in April 1888. It was used for religious services, political meetings, social events, for educational purposes, and even as a gymnasium.  

Bushfires threatened the hall (and much of Grantville) more than once, with the January 1939 blaze reaching the hall, which was saved with difficulty.

The hall becoming increasingly dilapidated as the decades passed and the population of Grantville dwindled. One account has it being held up by a large pole on either side and another has blackberries growing up through the floorboards.

The hall was renovated, repaired and restumped, and electricity connected, in 1955. A septic tank toilet system wasn’t installed until around 1965 and was attached to the main building.

Despite protests, in late April 1993 the 105 year hall was demolished.

The Grantville Cemetery started as an informal burial ground in the Hurdy Gurdy cattle run used by the growing population of the area in preference to an equally informal cemetery site near Corinella. In the 1860s, the area was thickly wooded with few roads, most of which turned to mud in heavy rain, and the region lacked any doctor to issue death certificates.

By the time Grantville was declared a township in September 1872, the situation had eased somewhat with the appointment of David B. Kennedy as the Deputy Registrar of Births Deaths and Marriages for Bass. Among his first tasks was to record the death of George Edwards, a two year old who died from accidental drowning. This is the oldest officially recorded location-known burial in the region.

From the 1860s, Grantville was one of the main entry points for pioneers arriving in the district, whether by road or by ship. Supplies also came in the same way.  

Because of its importance as a supply and service centre Grantville survived the end of the timber industry with the closure of Brazier’s Mill at the end of 1880, and the opening of the Great Southern Railway as far as Korumburra in June 1891.

The end came with the building of the Nyora-Wonthaggi branch line down the middle of the Bass Valley, roughly following the river, in 1910. It quickly destroyed the seaborne trade in Western Port Bay, ended the need for the farmers on both sides of the Bass River to come to Grantville, and effectively rendered the town obsolete.

Businesses shut down or moved away and by the mid-1930s it was reduced to the role of a small quiet country town with a general store and (for a time) a bakery and nothing else to stop for. So people didn’t.

Grantville’s long slumber had begun.

With Phillip Island increasingly becoming a tourist attraction of international repute, the duplication of the Bass Highway making travel into the region easier, and the “baby boomers” beginning to retire and seeking a rural coastal lifestyle, Grantville grew again in the 1990s. Today it is the “first stop on the Bass Coast” for many coming into the area.