[[index.html|
]]
Asylum
Finnerty Street, 1861
Designed by Richard Roach Jewell, the centre was constructed by convict labour as the colony’s Lunatic Asylum from 1861. Additions to the building designed by George Temple Poole were constructed in the 1880s and 1890s. The site has a history as:
Fremantle Lunatic Asylum (1861-1908)
Women’s Home + Maternity Training School (1909-1942)
US Naval Submarine Depot (1942-1945)
Fremantle Technical School (1946-1968)
Threat of demolition, Restoration (1958-1970)
Maritime Museum (1970-mid 1980s)
Fremantle History Museum (1970-2009)
Fremantle Arts Centre (1973-today) [FCC page]
Campbell:
Next came the Lunatic Asylum. The history of this event dates from 1958 when a group of people joined together in the single aim of saving the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum from demolition at a time when the last of a series of ‘temporary' users was moving out. That group was led by Sir Frederick Samson, the Mayor of Fremantle, supported by council officers Town Clerk Noel McCombe, City Engineer Ken Bott and Architect Ray Jones; with, amongst others, Marshall Clifton National Trust of Western Australia (NTWA) and President Royal Australian Institute of Architects (RAJA); George Seddon, geologist, historian and urban geographer etc., and Ray and John Oldham, journalist and landscape architects. Campbell 2019, citing himself, 1999.
[[img/asylum2.jpg|
]]
Fremantle Library:
Image #494, 1897, with this caption: Fremantle Asylum, Finnerty Street. Ten acres of land bounded by Skinner, Finnerty and Shuffrey Streets was selected as the site for the asylum. The building was designed by Lieutenant Colonel E.Y.W. Henderson and built with the help of convict labour. Work began in 1861. It was built of local limestone, the blocks being squared but not coursed. The windows were glazed in small diamond panes and the roof was made of hand split shingles of she-oak. W.A. hardwood jarrah was also used and imported iron oregon, redwood and cedar. This section was completed in 1865. The first patients were admitted July August 1864. In 1886-1867 an extra ward was added; designed by George Temple-Poole and built by Robert and Arthur Bunning. In 1890 a two-storey wing was added for extra ward space and accommodation for the matron. Architect G. Temple-Poole, builders Bunning Bros. In 1894 the two final sections were built, one facing south, the other east. Architect G. Temple-Poole. The south section was built by Bunning Bros. and provided more ward space for women patients and a dining room. The east section was three stories: ground floor - doctors and nurses quarters: first floor - four bed wards for private patients: top floor - further nurses' accommodation. Builder John Milne. By 1908 all the lunatics were removed from the Fremantle Asylum and moved to Claremont. From 1909 to 1942 the building was used as an Old Womens Home. The building served 1942-1945 as war-time headquarters for the American Forces stationed in Fremantle (Receiving Barracks U.S.N.) Post-war, it was a temporary venue for technical education classes. 1968/9-1970/2 Restored by architect Mr R McK Campbell. Museum section opened 1970. Fremantle Arts Centre (South wing) opened October 1972. Source: Beryl Porter Fremantle Lunatic Asylum 1865-1984. See also: 362.2 and 725.53 Miscellany File
[[img/asylum1.jpg|
]]
From a Council tour brochure which gives no source. Note the massive walls surrounding the grounds. The section on the left is the huge structure for a fives court. (Fives is an English handball game derived from jeu de paume, and similar to handball, pelota, and squash rackets.)
[[img/asylum3.jpg|
]]
Fremantle Library:
Image #168. Underneath the photograph is written: Built originally by convicts as an asylum in 1861, the Fremantle Museum Building has been described as the best example of Colonial Gothic in Australia today. After it ceased to be an asylum in 1909, the building was allowed to run down completely before being converted to a home for women. Then in 1958 the Fremantle City Council resolved to re-instate the building for use as a History Museum and Arts Centre. Government financial assistance was not given until 1965. Restoration of the part of the building housing the Museum began in 1968 and it was officially opened on October 17th 1970. From 1942 to 1945 the building was occupied as US Navy Receiving Barracks.
[[img/fac.jpg|
]]
Wikipedia:
Fremantle Arts Centre is a multi-arts organisation, offering a program of exhibitions, residencies, art courses and music in a historic building in the heart of Fremantle, Western Australia. The building was built using convict labour between 1861 and 1868 and was used as a psychiatric hospital, initially called the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, and later known as the Asylum for the Criminally Insane. It is located opposite the Fremantle Leisure and Aquatic Centre and also near two schools: John Curtin ... and CBC Fremantle.
Text and photograph (cropped) thanks to Gnangarra, Wikipedia. (Since he took the photo the finials have been restored to the gables, in the renovation shown below.)
[[img/asylumwomen.jpg|
]]
Group of inhabitants from the period when the building served as the Old Women's Home (Fremantle Library image #2819, 1924.
Xmas at the Women's Home, 1915
The West Australian, Wednesday 29 December 1915: p. 5
WOMEN'S HOME, Fremantle, CHRISTMAS DAY.
(By an Inmate.)
A most enjoyable Christmas-day was spent by the inmates of the Women's home, Fremantle. It is too fresh an event at the time of writing, to do more than lightly touch upon it, as it is a confused vision of plum puddings, ham and eggs, turkeys. ducks, fowls, and stuffing; of green peas and other vegetables; of soup, cakes, jam tarts, lollies, bottled beer, soft drinks, pipes, tobacco, Chinese lanterns, gramophones, songs, speeches, and good fellowship.
As I sat, at the close of the day, in the large summer house on the lawn, which was lighted with Chinese lanterns, and sur rounded by the inmates, listening to the institution's gramophone, rendering the "Little Grey Home in the West," out of the dim light, "in fancy," I saw the spirit of Charles Dickens, his kindly face, as I knew it, when a child in London. "No ignorant Bumble here," I said. "No spiteful Mrs. Cornish here, to-night; no Stiggens, or no bullying snob, from the board, to breed mischief here, but just a strong, guiding hand; a kindly motherly influence surrounding the aged. the unfit, and the young mothers of the maternity section alike. You will look, spirit, in vain, for the sad and hopeless faces the gloomy surroundings, the dresses of rags, that the jaundiced imagination of an amateur Mrs. Jellaby has informed the world through the Press can be seen here."
One who knows the working of the home, day by day, spoke of the kindly rule of the matron (Mrs. Fraser) and her popular assistant. Nurse Knight. It was unmistakable, the eager response of the women, and the hearty singing, upstanding, of "They Are Jelly Good Fellows."
Hero in this harbour of refuge, the days pass without friction. The guiding idea is rest for the aged, protection for the unfit, and a fresh start for the rested mothers. All this my spirit visiter I think, saw, and approved, ere he faded away. The evening closed by the singing of the National Anthem. The words "Send him victorious" came forth as a prayer from many an aged mother, with her boy at the front, and from many a young mother with a soldier's child at her breast. God grant Christmas, 1916, may be a time of peace abroad, as it has been of peace and good will this Christmas-day at the Women's Home in Fremantle.
[[img/womenshome.jpg|
]]
Residents of the Women's Home c. 1924, source: ABC
Shingle Dingle
[sic: should be Bingle]
Steve Grant, Fremantle Herald, 29 January 2016:
FREMANTLE council's decision to replace faux shingles on the Fremantle Arts Centre with corrugated iron has heritage experts howling.
Long-retired council architect Rob Campbell, who in the late 1960s convinced then-mayor Sir Frederick Samson to save the centre from demolition and then worked on its restoration, says he’s sorry to see the council’s latest 'essay in maintenance'.
'The material that it replaces was, in 1970, a compromise as it was then not possible to obtain shingles in the quantities required, but the compromise did at least attempt to replicate the colour and texture of the original to maintain the architectural integrity of the whole,' Mr Campbell told the Herald.
Council heritage co-ordinator Alan Kelsall says the old roofing contained asbestos and required replacement to protect public health. The new galvanised iron sheets will also make the roof watertight.
'The use of galvanised corrugated iron sheeting is in keeping with the early practice of using it on buildings, including the arts centre, to provide additional water tightness to timber shingled roofs,' Mr Kelsall says.
'The new roof sheeting will have minimal impact on the existing timber structure and will also allow for the reinstatement of timber shingles in the future if the opportunity arises.'
[[img/artscentrescaffolding.jpg|
]]
The Fremantle Arts Centre’s new tin roof (on the right) hasn’t impressed some heritage advocates who say it’s too far a departure from the shingles (still seen on the left). Photo not credited by the paper, so perhaps Steve Grant.
Mr Kelsall says there’s certainty with tin the roof won’t leak, which is not the case with replications.
'It is considered that the predicted overall benefits of the use of galvanised roof sheeting will substantially outweigh any perceived loss of heritage values.'
Fremantle Society president John Dowson sides with Mr Campbell, labelling the re-roofing 'damaging'.
'The roof being replaced was put there by Rob Campbell when he did the restoration of the arts centre in 1972,' Mr Dowson says.
'He spent a year engineering a copy of the original shingles, genuine shingles then being too expensive.
'Now genuine shingles are easier to get, but if they are too expensive then facsimiles should be used, not glaring large sheets of tin, the cheap and lazy way out.
'Many people regard the Fremantle Arts Centre as their favourite building in Fremantle; it has soul, tranquility and a brooding atmosphere, despite its grim early history.'
Mr Dowson says he and former council heritage architect Agnieshka Kiera were devastated to learn this week the Turnbull government had rejected an application to have the centre included on the national heritage list. Ms Kiera had lodged the application when employed by the council.
[[img/asylum1723.jpg|
]]
Fremantle Library:
Image #1723, taken by I.N. Branson from the Bushells building c. 1940, with this caption: The Bushells Building was on the corner of Quarry and Queen Victoria Street. Quarry Street is in front to the left. The Dux Building (front) was erected in 1898 for Frederick William Ross as a bottling factory. In the left background is Skinner Street Cemetery, behind the Lunatic Asylum and its grounds. Note the fives court in the front. [Note that Quarry and QV Streets are parallel and do not meet - except of course at infinity - but they both terminate at a triple junction, or 'corner', with Parry Street. The fives court is that stone edifice in the Asylum grounds against the western wall.]
Fremantle Museum pamphlet (c. 1990?):
History of the Fremantle Museum Building
Fremantle Museum occupies part of a historic limestone building set on a hill overlooking the city and ocean. It was built in the 1860s by prisoners from the Imperial Convict Establishment as an asylum for the mentally ill, and during the following 100 years the building served the community of Fremantle in a number of very different ways.
In the mid 19th century convicts were transported to the new colony of Western Australia at the request of settlers requiring cheap labour to develop urgently-needed public works, the first contingent of prisoners arriving in 1850. Within five years it had become apparent to the Superintendent of the Convict Establishment, Mr Thomas Dixon, that an asylum was needed to house those prisoners who had become a danger to their fellow convicts and those who guarded them.
A formal request was sent to the British Home Secretary from Governor Fitzgerald accompanied by the comment, ‘I regret to think the proportion of lunatics among the prisoners is numerically greater than among the same amount of free men.’
Plans were produced for a small group of buildings to be built next to the Prison Hospital, but this location was considered unsuitable, and while letters and opinions were exchanged over the next two years, the Superintendent grew increasingly impatient and continued to stress the urgent need to isolate the insane from all contact with other prisoners. He stated at this time that ten patients needed accommodation, and that ten more were expected to develop symptoms very shortly, and he warned in his report, ‘In all probability the number of insane shall have considerably increased by the time the Asylum intended to be built near the prison is completed i.e. unless a stop is forthwith put to the transportation to this Colony of Prisoners afflicted with mental disease.
In the meantime a temporary asylum had been established in a warehouse. It was described by the Surgeon Superintendent: ‘The temporary Asylum has a low damp site, ill ventilated and overcrowded wards, and has the frequent presence of an overpowering stench from the beach immediately contiguous, consequent upon putrescent jellyfish, seaweed and other decay.’
The quarters were condemned and Captain (later Colonel) E.Y.W. Henderson, Controller General of the Convict Establishment, was asked to prepare new plans and a new site.
This he did and building commenced in 1861, using convict labour and local materials. The finished building reflected the changing size and competence of the workforce in that some sections displayed a high standard of craftsmanship, while others were crudely finished.
The design was a romantic version of the Gothic revival style, having two wings with steeply pitched roofs, Dutch gables, and a central section linked by two Gothic arcades. It was built in local limestone quarried on the prison site; the floor and roof structures were made from local jarrah; oregon, redwood and cedar were used for joinery and mouldings (bought or scrounged from convict ships). The windows were glazed in small diamond panes, and the roof made of handsplit she-oak shingles. Ironmongery, hardware and even nails were made in the prison workshop.
In 1864 the Surgeon General wrote:
‘In July of the past year the lunatics, both Male and Female, were removed from the old make-shift building to the present well-built Asylum, a change from a low swampy ground, to a high, dry and airy site, from small ill-ventilated wards, from whence there was not the slightest glimpse obtainable of the outside world, to the spacious lofty well-ventilated rooms with a pleasant outlook over land and sea. The gardens attached, as well as the aiding yards are amply spacious and were workshops erected and a greater number of intelligent attendants engaged to perform the work done at present by prison orderlies, little more would be wanted.’
By 1866, the large grounds surrounding the building were under cultivation, and the Superintendent sounded more than content with the accommodation, as he reported:
‘Both Male and Female lunatics have large dining rooms, separate from the sleeping apartments, these latter wards are also spacious and lofty and well ventilated. There is a large exercising yard at the back of the building, with a covered shed to protect from the sun.
In this yard also there is a large wash house in which the female lunatics do a great deal of the prison washing (500 pieces per week average); and also an arranged kitchen, in which the whole cooking for the Asylum is done. In front there are two very spacious enclosures for exercise and amusement, the one of about an acre and a half, the other of about three acres and a half. The former is meant chiefly as a garden and is laid out with fruit trees, vines, flowers and shrubs; the latter contains also some vines and flowers has also a large piece of turf laid down with a view to making a cricket and football ground. A fives court also is now in the course of erection which must I think be eventually a great source of amusement, and a vent for the super abundant energy of many of the patients.’
The cricket ground and fives court were duly completed, but by the early 1870s the buildings were becoming over-crowded and a series of alterations and additions were begun.
In 1886 the Asylum was transferred from Imperial to Colonial control, and for the next 20 years became the responsibility of the Superintendent of Public Works, George Temple-Poole. His first task was the addition of a new dormitory on the first floor over the ‘Reception Wing’ but the new Surgeon Superintendent, H. Calvert Barnett was not satisfied:
‘The enlargement of the Asylum and increase of staff for which during many years I have made urgent appeal in my Annual Report cannot now be postponed; and I have to thank the Government for ordering at my request the construction of an additional Dormitory on the Male side, the building of which is rapidly progressing . . . Increase of population brings with it an increase in lunacy and it is almost impossible to admit any more patients until the accommodation is increased.’
In 1890 a new wing was added, and in 1894 the last addition designed by George Temple-Poole was built. Both these additions were in a less formal style than the earlier architecture, a trend which may well have been a reflection of the more sympathetic approach to the treatment of the insane which gradually developed over the years.
By 1897.,the number of patients had risen to 186, and overcrowding was still a problem.
It was also suggested that the existing buildings be used for chronic and violent cases and that new accommodation on the ‘cottage principle’ be built ‘at a moderate distance from the capital’, incorporating the ‘great improvements which experience and modern science’ had developed. A farm at Whitby Falls was used to cater for the overflow of non-violent patients.
In 1900 the Asylum was condemned after two deaths in questionable circumstances had provoked strong criticism in the local press.
New premises were built at Claremont and in 1904 the first 85 patients were moved there, but the new building proceeded so slowly that in 1905 there were 350 patients in Fremantle, and it was 1909 before the move was completed.
The buildings had been allowed to run down during this period on the assumption that they were to be abolished, but at the last moment it was decided to use the newer wings as a shelter for elderly women. It was not long before the whole building was back in use, and it served as the Old Women’s Home until 1942.
During the War the buildings were occupied by the US Navy as a headquarters, and considerable alterations were carried out, but once the War was over the buildings were allowed to deteriorate even further. Rain and weather caused much damage to the shingle roofs, walls and wooden floors, but when demolition seemed once again imminent, another reprieve was granted when the South Wing was taken over by the Fremantle Technical College for use as classrooms.
In 1957, the Mayor of Fremantle, Sir Frederick Samson, who had lived all his life a few hundred metres away, formed a group of interested citizens who proposed to the State Government and the City of Fremantle that the building should be converted into a Mariners Museum and Arts Centre. Although the Historical Society and National Trust supported the idea, the Government of the day was not prepared to make any financial contribution to the project.
The building continued to deteriorate in the meanwhile, until in 1963 the Chairman of the National Trust of Great Britain, the Early of Euston, inspected the premises and told Sir Frederick, 'Don’t you let them demolish this building ... it is the best example of Colonial Gothic architecture in Australia today.'
New approaches were made by the Fremantle City Council on the basis that the building be used as a branch of the WA Museum, with emphasis on the display of historical items.
The WA Museum Board supported the proposal, and finally in June 1965 Government assistance was assured.
The debris of 100 years was cleared out, an intensive search through the National Archives unearthed original drawings and documents and a history of the building was pieced together. Then began the work of converting the building into a Museum and Arts Centre.
The Museum was opened to the public in 1970 and the Arts Centre in 1972. The cost of the building restoration and alteration, including a new block of public toilets and a caretaker’s cottage, was $306,964 on a floor area of some 30,000 square feet. The architect was Mr Rob McK. Campbell.
(Acknowledgements to Mr R. McK. Campbell, M. Arch., A.R.A.I.A., A.R.I.B.A.)
References and Links
Campbell, Robin McK. 1999, Fremantle Museum and Arts Centre Conservation Plan.
Campbell, Robin McK. 2019, 'The Prehistory of Conservation in Fremantle, Revisited', Fremantle Studies, 10: 31-44.
Ewers, John K. 1971, The Western Gateway: A History of Fremantle, Fremantle City Council, with UWAP, rev. ed. [1st ed. 1948]: 192-4.
Hall, Jane 2013, 'May They Rest in Peace': The History and Ghosts of the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, Hesperian Press.
Lipscombe, André 2008, Fertile Ground: Fifty Years of the Fremantle Art Collection, Fremantle Press.
Fremantle Arts Centre website: history
Wikipedia page
Top photo courtesy of Roel Loopers 2022 (edited). The second photo above is from a Council tour brochure which gives no source.
Old Lunatic Asylum during restoration (FHC photos)
The Asylum was a venue for performances of various kinds 1885-1906, in its 'concert hall', and also its 'large dining room'. See the ausstage dabase entry for details.
Council's 'mysay' page re the FAC Conservation Management Plan. The 32.5Mb file of that plan may be accessed from that page (probably not indefinitely).
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 June, 2015 and hosted at freotopia.org/buildings/asylum.html (it was last updated on 19 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.