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Freotopia > Arthur Head > Fort
Fort Arthur Buildings
ARTHUR HEAD RESERVE
Fort Quarters, Workshop & Laboratory
These are the only buildings remaining from the Fort Arthur Head battery complex. The quarters and toilet were built during the initial construction (1905-06). Other buildings, including the workshop (barracks) and laboratory, were added later.
Workshop (Barracks)
A memorandum written in 1906 discussed possible future works for the battery and stated: “There was at one time apparently a proposal to provide a barrack building on the parade space”. It is evident, from plans and documents, that a barracks building was constructed between 1907 and 1909 and that this is the corrugated iron shed situated between the quarters and the old toilet. The inadequacy of the building as a barracks was stressed in a memorandum written in 1909 which stated: “the O/C R.A.A. [Officer in Command Royal Australian Artillery] informed me that the men were in a miserable state at Arthur Head Fort owing to the severity of weather”. Arrangements were made soon afterwards for the old Post Office in Cliff Street to be used as a barracks.
Plans and files dating from 1916 to 1959 refer to the building as an ‘armary [armoury] room’, an ‘artificer’s shop’ and as a ‘workshop’. The name workshop has been chosen for the building as it served this function for the majority of its life. When Mrs Gerrard became the tenant of the quarters the workshop was described as a ‘garage’. From 1987-88 it was used as a workshop by the Arthur Head Bicentennial Project.
The building appears to have been re-roofed and the walls reclad. Double doors were replaced by a metal tilting door after 1965 and the floor was resurfaced at some stage.
The Arthur Head Collection
The Arthur Head Collection was a project coordinated by the City of Fremantle with funding from a grant available from the Federal Government to celebrate the Bicentennial year in 1988 [resulting in] a huge collection of materials in various formats including documents, reports, photographs, maps, bibliographies etc. to help research the site. ... Pam Harris, Librarian, Fremantle History Centre. May 2018.
The Arthur Head Collection 1990 Report
The City Council in 1990 published a folder containing a summary of the research Pam Harris mentions above, consisting of a page about each of these buildings. This is one of them.
References and Links
Wikipedia notes on Arthurs Battery – and Harbour Battery.
This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 25 May, 2018 and hosted at freotopia.org/arthurhead/workshop.html (it was last updated on 17 January, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.