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The Round House
Arthur Head, 1831
Opened 18 January 1831, the Round House was the first permanent public building to be constructed in the Swan River Colony. Originally built as a jail, its later uses included police lock-up, living quarters, and storage facility for Fremantle Ports, before being opened to the public as a tourist attraction.
The Round House accommodated both colonial and Aboriginal prisoners, including Nyoongar leader Yagan, and was the site of the colony’s first public execution of a European settler – 15-year-old John Gavin.
It was also used as a lock-up for Aboriginal prisoners from all over the state being transported to Rottnest Island.
The prominent site at Arthur Head was chosen to emphasise the role of law and order in the colony and was intended to physically and psychologically dominate the community.
In 1837 the Fremantle Whaling Company requested a tunnel be cut through Arthur Head to connect Bathers Beach with High Street.
Following the arrival of convicts in 1851 and the completion of the Fremantle Prison in 1857, the Round House ceased to be used as a jail and was used as a police lock-up until 1900.
GG:
The Round House, on Arthur Head, is neither a house nor round. It is dodecagonal, having twelve sides, and was built as a jail in 1830-1 (twenty years before transported convicts arrived), being therefore the oldest public building in the State. It was designed by civil engineer Henry Willey Reveley, whose father Willey Reveley was an architect who assisted Jeremy Bentham in the design of his Panopticon prison, and there is a discernible influence, in that a warder near the centre of the building would have been able to see into any open cell from that point. Reveley (who saved Percy Bysshe Shelley from drowning in the Arno in 1821) also supervised the construction of the Whalers Tunnel (1838) which runs underneath the prison. Photo above: Wikipedia.
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Arthur Head, 1860s. Almost certainly the earliest photograph of the site in existence. The first courthouse (1835), top left, was renovated and expanded after 1851 and was the harbour master's house from 1869. The building in the middle with the flagstaff behind is the Round House, with the first lighthouse to the right rear. The second courthouse (1851) is top right. The Whalers Tunnel beneath Arthur Head was completed in 1838, paid for by Daniel Scott and under the supervision of Henry Reveley, who also designed the Round House. Photograph by Stephen Stout, c. 1864, Battye 88278P.
P.E.C. de Mouncey (1930):
The building was not erected by convicts, or by prison labour of any sort. Early Days, 1, 10: 57.
On August 11, 1830, Mr. Richard Lewis, of R. Lewis & Co., put in a tender from Fremantle to the Colonial Secretary, agreeing to erect a prison or building according to certain plans drawn by Mr. Henry Willey Reveley, the Civil Engineer ... Early Days, 1, 10: 56.
Jane Currie records in her diary that the first stone of the building was laid 30 July 1830.
Hutchison:
The Round House, the first prison in the colony, is the oldest surviving public building in Western Australia. [In 2011] we celebrate its 180th anniversary. It was designed by Henry Reveley, whose father was an influential English architect. He lived and practised for some time in Italy. It is possible that his design of the Round House was influenced by coastal fort buildings in a part of Italy. It is built of local limestone, possibly quarried from Arthur Head.
In Italy, Reveley befriended the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, whom he saved from drowning. However, after Reveley left Italy, Shelley was drowned. Perhaps the colony gained a prison at the expense of the life of a poet.
The cells were arranged radially around a central courtyard, in the centre of which was a well. One cell, to the right of the entrance, was used as a kitchen and the one to the left as a warders’ dining room. Two of the cells were fitted for use as privies and one, specially lined with wooden planking, was used for housing refractory prisoners. The teenage Pankhurst boy John Gavin, one of the ‘juvenile immigrants’ brought to the colony during the 1840s, was held there pending his hanging, on a gallows erected to the north of the steps, on Easter Saturday 1844. He was the first European and the only juvenile to be hanged in Western Australia.
The Round House’s primary function was taken over by the Prison built for the Imperial Convict Establishment in the 1850s; it was then used as a lock up. The curfew bell was rung at the Round House every night at 9.50pm as a warning to ‘ticket-of-leave’ convicts to return to their lodging. Any ‘bondsman’ found outside after the curfew was locked up.
The Round House was later used as a women’s prison and, from the late 1860s, as a transit prison for Aboriginal prisoners on their way to incarceration on Rottnest Island. Relatives of these prisoners gathered outside it during the night to talk, through the wall, to the prisoners. Colonial officials did not understand the psychological stress experienced by Aboriginals separated from their own lands and people.
In 1922 harbour works were planned and demolition of the Round House would have resulted. The Harbour Master argued for its retention as it sheltered his house - one of those on Arthur Head - from strong winds. When this house was demolished in 1928, the Round House was threatened again. Dr J S Battye, the Public Librarian, was chairman of the 1929 Centenary Committee and largely due to his efforts the building was saved again, but began to fall into disrepair.
During 1966 the standard gauge railway was extended past the end of High Street and the original steps were partly demolished and rebuilt in their present form. In 1973 the building was severely damaged by nearby quarrying.
In 1975 a grant from the recently established Australian Heritage Commission enabled conservation and restoration work. In 1983 the Round House and its surrounding reserve were transferred from the Fremantle Port Authority (now Fremantle Ports) to the City of Fremantle. David Hutchison, FHS Newsletter, Summer 2011, 1-2.
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The Round House in 1926 (from Facebook 14 December 2014, put up by 'Fremantle As it was, As we were' [sic] - Peter Vinci, who gives no source)
Dianne Davidson:
Additional information: By 1900 the Round House had been converted into a home for a constable and his very large family (10 children). They lived there for some twelve years, using the cells as bedrooms and as homes for ducks as well as for smoking fish! And there was another attempt at demolition by the Fremantle Harbour Trust (now Fremantle Ports) in 1955 when it issued a report claiming the place was too damp for a museum and urging demolition. It was saved by then Mayor W.F. Samson who declared in the West Australian (19 July 1955) that ‘Fremantle would not be Fremantle without the Round House. The Round House is part of our heritage.’ There was a further attempt to at least remove it from its original location by the Fremantle Harbour Trust; in 1966 it proposed that it be moved to the grounds of the Fremantle Arts Museum which was then in its planning stages. Dianne Davidson, FHS Newsletter, Summer 2011: 2.
This early photograph is from Wikipedia, no date, but 19C. The building on the right is the second courthouse, 1851 - converted 1881 - demolished 1904. The building on the left, the first courthouse, had probably become the harbour master's house by the time this photo was taken.
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The photo of the Round House on Arthur Head used by Hitchcock in 1929, so presumably taken at that time, and if so probably by Nixon, of Nixon & Merilees. Note that the stairs on the left are the ones in use; now it is the other way around.
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This photo of the Round House was taken by George Davidson, an amateur photographer who worked for shipping company McIlwraith McEachern 1910-60. Here the RHS stairs are unblocked but apparently not those most in use. Photo from the 1950s? Thanks to the Fremantle Library for photo #2390 with this caption:
Library:
The Harbour Master's house on the left was built 1870/1880s and demolished c1928. The Round House was constructed 1830/1831. The Pilot cottage on the right is No 9, built c1904 as part of the Light House compound. The original Round House steps were built 1836 and rebuilt to straddle the Whaler's Tunnel in 1838. They were truncated in 1966 because of the railway line.
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In this photo from 1960, the stairs on both sides of the Whalers Tunnel are in use. W.F. Samson's house is gone (the vacant block is behind the fence on the left), and neither the Tramways building on the left nor the Samson warehouse on the right have been rebuilt as accommodation.
The Arthur Head Collection
Pam Harris:
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 the contents of one of them.
David Wood:
'Swan River' was established as a colony for free settlers in 1829. Convicts did not arrive until 1850. Nevertheless, the first permanent building was a gaol. Early in 1830 Henry Willey Reveley, the colony's civil engineer, was instructed to prepare drawings for it.
His design for a twelve sided building may have been influenced by Jeremy Bentham, an English philosopher interested in prison reform. Bentham devised a plan for a model prison, the 'Panopticon' in which all prisoners could be observed from a central point.
Tenders were called for construction and a contract was awarded to Richard Lewis in August 1830. The Round House, as it came to be known, was completed in January 1831. There were eight cells, toilets and a two storey section accommodating the entrance and warder's quarters. A bakehouse and laundry were built under the landing at the front and a well dug inside.
The walls were made of white capstone (hard surface stone) quarried from the headland and the roof was weatherboard. Soon after, the stone was whitewashed. Ten weeks after completion, the Harbour Master complained that the roof leaked. It was replaced with a flat roof consisting of a crushed limestone and lime mortar slab on boards. Although this also leaked, the problems were solved by 1837 when Reveley reported it to be in good condition. Part of the building was probably used for storage in its early years as one complaint about the roof referred to wheat stored in a cell getting wet.
Conditions in the small cells were cramped. One author claims that in 1837 forty-three men were being held in the Round House. An official return of 1839 noted that in that year the "greatest number of prisoners at one time" was twenty-five.
The role of the headland for law enforcement was strengthened in 1835 when a courthouse was built beside the Round House. Stocks were installed in the 1840s and in 1844 John Gavin, a 15-year-old convicted murderer, was hanged nearby. In the 1850s a second courthouse was built on the other side of the Round House and police barracks were constructed at the bottom end of High Street.
Aborigines were imprisoned in the Round House throughout its life as a gaol. They were also held there for short terms before being sent to the Rottnest Native Penal Establishment, founded in 1840. When Governor Robinson visited the gaol in 1882, he "found seventeen Natives chained by the neck the one to the other, and consequently obliged to sit in cramped and irksome positions". An inquiry was held and the practice of chaining prisoners by the neck in gaols was discontinued. At one stage the Round House was divided into two sections by a wall. It is not known whether this was to separate whites from blacks, men from women or for other reasons.
The first convicts arrived in 1850 to boost the colony's labour force. The Round House was inadequate to house them so one of the convicts' first tasks was to build another prison. This new prison was completed in the mid 1850s and was still in use as Fremantle prison in 1990.
The Round House continued to be used as a gaol for short term prisoners and as a lock up for ticket of leave men who broke curfew. A bell was rung, outside the Round House, at 9.50pm and ticket of leave men caught away from their dwellings after 10pm were locked up.
In 1886 the Round House became the responsibility of the police who used it as a lock up until 1900. It then became living quarters for a chief constable, his wife and ten children.
The headland was always in demand by port authorities, and for defences, due to its prominent position and its proximity to the port. Since the Round House ceased functioning as a gaol, there have been numerous proposals to demolish it. The most recent was in the mid 1960s when the Fremantle Harbour Trust suggested rebuilding it on another site. It was during this period that the steps from High Street to the Round House were modified. The construction of the whaler's tunnel in 1837 led to the demolition of steps running up to the headland. A new stairway was built soon after. It had two flights which ran down from landings either side of the tunnel. The flights were removed in the 1960s to provide space for a new railway line.
The building was repaired throughout the twentieth century; on at least one occasion after partial demolition. Work on the Round House and environs in 1937-38 was paid for by the State Government, Fremantle Harbour Trust, Railways Department and Fremantle Council, following pressure from the Royal Western Australian Historical Society. In 1975-76 the Fremantle Council, funded by a National Estate grant, undertook extensive conservation. Robin McK Campbell, who directed the later work, stated that it "included underpinning and buttressing sections of the external walls which were in danger of collapse, grouting and pointing of the limestone generally: reroofing; joinery repairs; new drainage; wiring and lighting; painting". Recent research by Jack Kent, architect for the Arthur Head Bicentennial project, and consultants, has revealed that a major cause of deterioration is salt accumulation in the stone. When the salt has been removed by washing, further conservation work will commence.
The Fremantle City Council became responsible for the Round House in 1982 when the headland was vested in the City. The building was opened to the public soon afterwards and can now be viewed seven days a week between 10am and 5pm.
City of Fremantle
February 1990
This information sheet was compiled by David Wood from reports by Debby Cramer and Jack Kent. The reports are available for inspection at the Fremantle Library.
The Round House is now looked after on a daily basis by volunteer Round House Guides, who open the building to tourists every day 1030-1530. The cannon is 'fired' every day at 1300, when at the same moment the time-ball is dropped. This is a reenactment of a time when ships needed to set the chronometers by which they navigated.
Audrey Fowler wrote the following piece for the Fremantle Society Newsletter of June 1973, the third number of the first volume.
Fremantle's Oldest Building
I'm convinced that the best time to visit the Round House is on a cold, winter day, with a grey curtain of rain sweeping in from the sea, the gulls piping and wheeling overhead and the wind laced with the tang of salt and seaweed.
On such a day the imagination can play tricks ......The year is 1831 and the sea is breaking on the ragged cliffs of Arthur Head, flinging the spray high, and the sailing ships at anchor in Bather's Bay toss and groan at their moorings.
From the new gaol on the cliff top, from the upper cells and through the narrow, iron-barred windows, can be seen the tops of the tall masts dipping and swaying, and the wind carries the echo of a sailor's shout, and the gulls rise from the wall in a white cloud.
In the lower cells, the men and perhaps also a woman or two, see nothing. The heavy wooden doors are bolted, the tiny, barred air-holes high on the walls admit only a glimmer of light. The rough-hewn capstone of the walls is strong, yet enmeshes delicate seashells and exudes a crusting of fine, white salt.
The prisoners are cold and hungry, sullen. The warm, sweet smell of freshly-baked bread is a tantalising wraith: beneath the prison the bread is being taken from the bakehouse, a kiln of smoke-blackened bricks, a cubby-hole where a man, doubled-up, may enter.
Three times a day, six days a week, each prisoner receives 0.5 lb of bread, nothing more until Sunday, when he is given, in addition, 0.5 lb of salt meat, or fish and vinegar, if on good behaviour. The bread is wolfed to the last crumb, and the waiting begins once more, till the next 0.5 lb is issued ...Available records reveal little of the building's history, and such as may be gleaned from the Blue Books (Statistical Returns of the Colony) make bleak reading.
Yet the Round House is unique as Fremantle's and the State's oldest building. It is described as a dodecagon (having 12 sides), and was designed by the Civil Engineer Mr H.W. Reveley, its construction being carried out by a contractor named Lewis, who completed the work on January 18th, 1831, at a cost of £1603/10/0.
The building contains 12 cells of irregular dimensions, measuring approximately 13'3" x 6'3", one of which is lined with solid planking, where were confined refractory and dangerous prisoners, but none of the cells was underground.
One of the cells served as the gaoler's quarters, one as the kitchen, two were privies and one the entrance. The remaining 7 cells housed 14 permanent prisoners, or 21 in an emergency. By 1841 an eighth cell had to be brought into use and the gaol's capacity increased to 16, or 32 (4 per cell) for temporary confinement.
The centre of the building, measuring 37 feet in diameter and containing a well of good water, was used as an exercise and washing yard for the prisoners, both white and native, of both sexes. A high, wooden fence divided yard from east to west, probably for the purpose of segregation.
The gaolers were not military personnel, but civil employees. When required, a woman was employed to attend the female prisoners, and this was the only concession made to the ’’weaker sex" who were confined in the gaol.
It is recorded that some prisoners put themselves on to hard labour whether sentenced to it or not, as those at work received 0.5 lb of salt meat daily in addition to the 1.5 lbs of bread, the work being listed as "works of improvement in the neighbourhood of the gaol".
The Fremantle Whaling Company excavated a tunnel under the Round House in 1837, connecting High Street with the jetty at Bather’s Bay and so providing direct access to the town, and facilitating the to-and-fro passage of provisions and merchandise.
In 1850 the first convicts arrived in the Colony and were immediately put to work to build themselves a prison, the present Department of Corrections. In 1852 Fremantle's first Police Station was built adjacent to the Round House which had become totally inadequate to meet the demands of the growing town, and the facilities at the Convict Establishment were soon taken advantage of. The old gaol was then used as a lock-up for the Police Station, but in 1888 it too was transferred to a site nearer to the Establishment, at what was then the immigration centre in Henderson Street.
The Round House was still in use in 1865 as a transit lock-up for natives being taken to and from the penal settlement on Rottnest Island, but historical records fail to reveal any further information as to its use after this date. On July 15th, 1936, the Round House and the adjacent land was vested in the Fremantle Port Authority. I understand consideration has been given to the old building's restoration, but the matter of finance has yet to be arranged.
Audrey Fowler.
Request for repairs to the steps, 1885
Western Australia
From the harbour master, Fremantle
to
the Honourable the Colonial Secretary
17th March 1885
Sir
I beg to draw your attention to the state of the steps leading from High Street over the tunnel to the Gaol Hill.
They are now very much worse and are becoming dangerous.
There are now five families resident on the Gaol Hill and a good deal of traffic takes place up and down them; I leave the general public a-oneside; And I think they should be put in thorough order.
A handrail is also badly wanted, for on a dark dirty night should anyone slip in coming down, there is nothing whatever to save them from rolling from top to bottom, a considerable height.
The late gaol keeper, Mr Parks slipt, and fell, one dirty night, down the steps and broke his collar-bone. The cost of repairing steps and putting the handrails would not be much.
If something is not soon done, we shall be having some day a serious accident.
There are now resident upon the hill in government quarters, 13 adults, 19 children, total, 32.
This is not counting the people of the Government Cottage and the prisoners in the Gaol.
The other traffic consists of the pensioners on the magazine guard, the police up-and-down with prisoners, and the general public, who are up and down by scores on Sunday. Etc –
Geo. A. Forsyth
Harbor Master.
Minute Paper no. 1096/85
From the Harbour Master, Fremantle
no. 25/85
Dated 14th of March 1885
Subject: Steps over Tunnel to Gaol Hill Fremantle ...
Repairs to ...
The honourable director of public works
Referred to you for report 19 3 85
[illegible sig - Malcolm Hall?]
The honourable colonial secretary
These steps are much out of order and should be repaired at once. The estimated cost is £10/4/0. I enclose requisition for approval to be paid for from the Sundries Minor Works. When this work is done I do not think the handrailing necessary.
Charles [?] Mason
Director of Public Works
24 3 85
Approved requisition [sig] 25 3 85
I asked ChatGPT to write a page about the Round House: here is what it wrote. (I supplied the image.)
References and Links
Bean, Henrietta 1975, Interview conducted for the State Library about the residence of family in the Round House c. 1900, SLWA in Facebook.
de Mouncey, P. E.C. 1930, 'Whaling in the early days', Early Days, vol. 1, part 8: 58-60.
de Mouncey, P. E.C. 1930, 'Historical notes', Early Days, vol. 1, part 10: 52-62 [includes a note about the Round House].
Errington, Steve 2020, 'Bright future for Round House', RWAHS Newsletter, December: 3.
Errington, Steve 2022, The Round House 1831-1856, Hesperian.
Errington Steve 2023, Locked Up In Fremantle 1829-1856: Prisoners and Patients on the Marquis of Anglesea and in the Round House, Hesperian. 'A companion volume to The Round House 1831-1856'.
Fowler, Audrey 1973, 'Fremantle's oldest building', Fremantle Society Newsletter, 1, 3, June.
Hitchcock, JK 1929, The History of Fremantle, The Front Gate of Australia 1829-1929, Fremantle City Council.
Hutchison, David 2011, 'The Round House', FHS Newsletter, Summer, 1-2.
Oldham, Ray 1967, bio of Henry Reveley in the ADB.
Reece, Bob 2013, 'Henry Willey Reveley: Swan River Colony's first architect', Early Days, Vol. 14, Part 2: 195-219.
Reece, Bob 2014, 'Too much for round here', Fremantle Herald, 21 Feb 2014.
Webb, David & David Warren 2005, 'Why the Round House has a poetic touch', Fremantle: Beyond the Round House, Longley, Fremantle; 54-55.
White, John 1976, 'Henry Reveley, architect and engineer', Early Days, Volume 7, Part 8: 24-42.
City of Fremantle 2020, Round House Conservation Management Plan, prepared by Hocking Planning & Architecture Pty Ltd, temporarily available online at https://mysay.fremantle.wa.gov.au/roundhouse
Notes in Fremantle, the newsletter of the Fremantle Society: Vol 1 No 3 1973, Vol 2 No 1 1974, July 2012, Vol 9 No 2 1981.
Round House Draft Interpretation Design Plan.
Wikipedia page, from whence the top photo, courtesy of Gnangarra.
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 June, 2015 and hosted at freotopia.org/buildings/roundhouse.html (it was last updated on 14 March, 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.