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"Mortlake" (named after a district in the London Borough of Richmond on Thames) is a large Reformist (Arts and Crafts) style villa. It may be found at the far, Merri Creek end of The Grove, the elm lined and most prestigious street in the inner Melbourne suburb of Coburg.

Built in the years just before the Great War (1914), you can just start to see the transition from Edwardian villa to the popular Californian Bungalow of the early 1920s. The choice of rough cast stuccoed brick as a facade treatment is very in keeping with the Arts and Crafts Movement, as is the shingling on the barge boards underneath the central gable. "Mortlake" has an unusual hipped roof and an attic window, which is more American influenced than English. The leadlight stained glass vestibule window beneath the house's name features a Dutch scene of a windmill by the ocean.

Arts and Crafts houses challenged the formality of the mid and high Victorian styles that preceded it, and were often designed with uniquely angular floor plans. This house appears to be no exception to the rule as it has a side entry rather than a front one, which suggest a less traditional layout.

The Grove, was part of the Moreland Park Estate. This was Coburg's most prestigious subdivision in the 1880s. In 1882 Charles Moreland Montague Dare, a St Kilda businessman, bought Jean Rennie's forty acre farm and, with his architect, T. J. Crouch, subdivided thirty acres of it into 147 allotments. The Grove was originally christened Moreland Grove after its owner. A covenant was placed on the subdivision prohibiting the building of hotels or shops, or any house under the value of 400 pounds. By 1890 there were twenty-four brick houses on the estate, twenty one of them owned by Charles Moreland Montague Dare himself. There was a caretaker to tend the streets, the wooden pavilion and the tennis courts, which soon became a bowling rink to suit the more sedate interests of the residents. Men of substance, including a banker, a merchant, a manufacturer and several civil servants and accountants lived on the estate and the Moreland Park Ladies' College in The Grove offered a genteel education. By the 1890s the Melbourne property boom had burst and by 1900 there were still only twenty seven houses in The Grove and many vacant allotments; Charles Moreland Montague Dare's own place at "Moreland Park", a ten acre property on Merri Creek, added to the rural atmosphere. In 1896 Dare fell into financial difficulties and had to transfer many of his properties to the Australian Widows' Fund Life Assurance Society. In 1900 he owned only seven houses, a few allotments and Moreland Park. He died in 1919.

G-ACSS named Grosvenor House after the hotel of the owner of the plane A.O. Edwards. The plane was flown by C.W.A. Scott and Tom Campbell Black in the London to Melbourne race and arrived first in Melbourne, winning the speed contest. It would have won the handicap race too but for the rule that only one title could be one by any one plane. The first place in the handicap race thereby went to the Douglas DC-2 "De Uiver" owned by the Dutch airline KLM.