The first Fremantle Club was housed in what had been Lodge's Hotel, at 1 Henry Street. Lodge's Castle Hotel had been built in 1876, but lost its licence in the 1890s. It then became a seminary, a school for young ladies, and then the Fremantle Club, an organisation serving the needs of Fremantle businessmen. After the Fremantle Club moved on, the building was available for the use of the Fremantle Workers Social and Leisure Club, which purchased it in 1914 from the AMP Society for £2000.
Ron Davidson:
By the 1880s Fremantle was controlled by fifteen self-made and self-satisfied merchants who believed their hegemony should be complete and extend over both the colony's economy and the social and sporting lives of its lower orders. They moved into what was by then a coffee palace and made it into a grand display of leather chairs, cigars and fine imported furniture. Here they could ponder their own importance and wonder that their shops were trading at ports as far away as China. The exclusivity of Perth's Weld Club had come to Henry Street and was called the (first) Fremantle Club. Members were waited on at elaborate dinners by Chinese servants wearing immaculately pressed white linen outfits. No women were allowed in ... Ron Davidson, The Clubs: 99.
References and Links
Parker, David Dare & Ron Davidson 2010, The Clubs, FotoFreo, Fremantle.
Application for club (liquor) licence granted 1893, Inquirer and Commercial News.
Brief memories of the first club as recalled and printed in a 1956 booklet published by the Workers Club.
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 1 October, 2014 and hosted at freotopia.org/clubs/fremantleclub1.html (it was last updated on 8 December, 2023), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.