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Plympton House
Queen Victoria Street (formerly Cantonment Road) c. 1880-
Plympton House was one a number of substantial houses - like Villa Maria and Salopia - built along Cantonment Road.
Probably built for William Silas Pearse, whose wife Johanna died there. Plympton is also the name of the first area of East Fremantle to be settled - by the Pearse family - and the first William Pearse probably brought the name from Devon.
There is no graphic memorial that I know of other than the images of the Cold Stores building that was later built on the site, and the plaque now on its front wall, as seen below.
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
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 17 August, 2021 and hosted at freotopia.org/buildings/plymptonhouse.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.