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See also: [[../courthouses/index.html|courthouses]].
'The Old Courthouse', Fremantle
45 Henderson Street
2021 renovation in progress. New building on the left.
Photo by Gnangarra, from Wikipedia.
From the 'Old Courthouse website (edited):
The Henderson Street courthouse and police station were originally [parts of] a series of buildings designed and constructed in the 1850s by the first captain of convict labourers [Comptroller of Convicts], [[../people/henderson.html|Edmund Yeamans Walcott Henderson]] (for whom the street is named for) and [[../people/manningjames.html|J[ames] Manning]] (Clerk of Works). The buildings were renovated by John Grainger, Chief Architect with the Public Works Department, from 1897, and were opened for use in 1899.
[[img/courthouseplan.jpg|
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The area included the courthouse, the police station, accommodation buildings, the artillery drill hall, and the lock-up. The economic boom, related to the gold rush of the late 1890s in Western Australia allowed for Grainger’s architectural designs of the Federation Academic Classical style along with the distinctive Fremantle limestone and Cottesloe stone walls. The contractor who carried out the work was Thomas Bates.
The courthouse was again renovated and updated in the 1970s by architect R.J. Ferguson; he also designed the 1978 police station.
The courthouse was part of the original land grant for the Fremantle Convict Establishment in 1851, with the barracks and warders’ cottages located nearby. As such, it is linked to the Fremantle Prison visually through land and similar building materials.
The courthouse is a significant part of Fremantle’s history, originally built by convicts, to enforce the laws of the land until the current Fremantle Justice Complex was completed in 2001.
The Henderson Street Courthouse was officially registered as a permanent heritage building in 2003.
GG:
The fourth courthouse, from 1899, had recently fallen into disuse. The buildings were renovated, and then sold to [[../commerce/silverleaf.html|Silverleaf]] in 2016. Karl Bullers, co-owner of the National Hotel, will be the publican of the new facility. Photo by Gnangarra, from Wikipedia.
Slavin Architects designed the renovation and the new sections of the complex, which is now (2022) a hospitality venue called 'The Old Courthouse'.
Part of the former Fremantle police complex with the courthouse on the left. Taken from the Henderson St carpark by Derek Graham for Google.
References and Links
The 'Old Courthouse' website, and the History page on that site.
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 7 June, 2018 and hosted at freotopia.org/buildings/oldcourthouse.html (it was last updated on 3 April, 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.