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Cumberland Place

Cumberland Place once ran east-west, parallel to La Trobe and Little Lonsdale streets, in the north-east corner of the city. It was part of the complex of laneways that diverged from McGrath's Place (now Burton Street), off Little Lonsdale Street. Traffic dissipated in the laneway in the early twentieth-century with the extension of McGrath Street to La Trobe Street, following a petition by the residents of Cumberland, McCormac, Merritt and Sherwood Places.

Originally residential, it had its first taste of industry in 1915, when Carlo's Ice Cream factory opened at number 3. Carlo was one of several Italians, a few Chinese and some Britons in the street. He had been selling ice-cream since the 1890s, principally from a stall in the Eastern Market. Almost certainly home-made, his product must have become well known because by 1918 the factory occupied numbers 1-7, and butter making had been added. This continued until 1941, when, under wartime restrictions perhaps, butter alone was made. The factory closed in 1942. [Weston Bate, Essential but unplanned, p. 102]

In 1978, Cumberland Place and its surrounds were demolished for the construction of the Telstra Exhibition Exchange.

Edwina Byrne

References
Bate, Weston, Essential but unplanned: The story of Melbourne's lanes, State Library of Victoria and the City of Melbourne, Melbourne, 1994. Details
Unit 857, no. 1968, 1891; VPRS 3181/P000, City of Melbourne Town Clerk's Files Series 1; Public Record Office Victoria, Victorian Archives Centre. Details