Office, the hotels, the Courthouse and Lockup, the Gold Commissioner's residence and Police Barracks, and the churches, gave way to a slump which lasted until the advent of railways in the 1880s. Mineral water was, from the 1860s, of great interest to the Swiss Italian and English inhabitants and this led to the establishment of a bottling plant and a bathhouse.
Through the endeavours of Donald McLeod, a self-educated man, who rose from being a miner to Town Clerk and in 1903 Minister for Mines in the Victorian Government, the Cornish Hill mines were deepened in the early 1900s and another boom period took place, which saw further development of the town. The Royal Hotel, the Commercial Hotel, the Belvedere, and other buildings in Vincent Street attest to this boom period, which was brought to a halt by the First World War.
The railways which brought tourists to the town was superseded by the car in the 1950s, and Daylesford once again entered a period of decline only truncated by a new interest in health and alternative lifestyle in the 1970s and 1980s.
Many groups from differing countries contributed to the early rise of Daylesford and Hepburn. The Irish at Eganstown were prominent in many fields, and also the French vintners at Glenlyon, the Germans at Rocky Lead the Italians at Old Racecourse, and the English, Scots, Welsh and Cornish in Daylesford itself. The now non-existent town of Dry Diggings was home to one of the largest groups of Welsh in Victoria and the congregation was large enough for them to have their own chapel, and for those who lived on the south side of Wombat Hill, a postal address of St Just would be enough to have mail delivered. St Just was a large town in Cornwall.
The Court House was a home away from home for the Irish as many of the early magistrates and lawyers were from the Emerald Isle. Joseph Henry Dunne, a lawyer, was one of the defense team at the Eureka riots trials, and magistrate James Daly, an
