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Cold Stores
Queen Victoria Street (formerly Cantonment Road) - site of Plympton House, c. 1880-
SLWA img 017557{D of the Fremantle Railway Yards 1905, detail showing the Ice Works with the Town Hall behind (tower with flag)
Dr John J. Taylor's biography of William Adams Drake notes that by June of 1896 Drake was listed as the architect and engineer in a prospectus for the WA Ice, Cold Storage and Fresh Fish Supply Company. Drake's work included plans for the building of the Fremantle cold store and ice-making depot between Cantonment and Beach Streets. The depot's construction was slow but by 1904 that plant was one of the largest and most up-to-date in Australasia.
This building complex has had multiple identities and various names, and I'm using the one that seems to be most common, tho it's not 'official'. The snap below shows a plaque on one of the walls in Queen Victoria Street (as seen in the photo above), giving quite comprehensive information about the complex.
Fletcher Mews (also known as the Fremantle Cold Stores)
Wording engraved on the plaque above:
This site has a rich background. Initially home for early settlers, the Pearses and their North West station connections; and the last for pioneer civil engineer Charles Yelverton O'Connor who had an office on the wharf nearby. The legendary figure rode out from here on his horse on the morning of March 10, 1902, to South Beach, where he took his own life.
Remnants of a tram depot shed, a foundry, powerhouse, and the Fremantle Cold Storage Company can all be linked to the development and growth of Fremantle Inner Harbour.
The final industrial use of this site was for the Fremantle Sardine Company's fish processing, canning and distribution. This office building facade [on which the plaque is fixed, as can be seen in the top photo] pre-dates 1914 in part and has World War 1 associations.
References and Links
Government media statement, 1999
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 23 December, 2018 and hosted at freotopia.org/buildings/coldstores.html (it was last updated on 17 August, 2021), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.