Como House & Garden

This guide to Como House in Melbourne centres on Leila Armytage, who by the 1950s was the last of four sisters still living alone inside the family mansion as the suburbs closed in around her garden. It traces the house back to 1847, through a lawyer's ownership, a wine merchant's ballroom addition and financial ruin, to the pastoralist Charles Armytage, who bought Como in 1864 with no idea his family would hold it for ninety-five years. Step into the upstairs ballroom the wine merchant added while chasing Melbourne's high society.