Town Lot 423

High Street, south side, between Market and Pakenham Streets.
2022: commercial building: Amé Bel (73), Design Theory (1/71)

The earliest owner of Lot 423 known to Hitchcock (1929) was Sarah M. Helms. Thomas Helms, arr. 1830, had a wife called Sarah (who arr. 1834) and a daughter called Sarah Maria b. 1811.

Hitchcock 1919, describing the situation as he recalled it was in 1869:
... Next came a space of vacant land with the usual accumulation of empty bottles, tins, and other rubbish; then the business premises of Mr D.K. Congdon, who combined the businesses of chemist and general storekeeper, the upstairs portion being used for residential purposes. In those days our business people did not have suburban residences as is now the vogue; there were no trains or trams by which to reach them, and land was not so valuable, so every business place had its residential portion either overhead or attached.
Next to Mr. Congdon’s was Mr. W.S. Pearse’s private house, and adjoining it on the corner of High and Packenham-streets was the butcher’s shop of Messrs. W.S. and G. Pearse.

The premises on Lot 423 were occupied by druggist Richard Birch and his family 1882-1888:
Garrick & Jeffery 1987:
Information on the location of Birch’s shop was provided by Larraine Stevens from Rate Books at Fremantle City Library. Between 1880 and 1881 the druggist occupied Lot 409 (presently No. 66 High Street) on which was a shop and dwelling. Between 1882 and 1889 his family moved to Lot 423 High Street and then back to Lot 409 between 1890 and 1899. [footnote, p. 28]

References and Links

Birch, Susan 2015, A Birch Tree: The Life and Times of Richard and Eliza Birch, privately published. See also: [[../organisations/firebrigade.html|fire brigade]].

Garrick, Phyl & Chris Jeffery 1987, Fremantle Hospital: A Social History to 1987, Fremantle Hospital.

Hitchcock, J.K. 1919, [[../books/hitchcock1919.html|'Early Days of Fremantle: High Street 50 Years Ago']], Fremantle Times, one of a series of articles on 'Early Days of Fremantle' publ. 21 March - 20 June 1919.

[[../hitchcock/index.html|Hitchcock]] (1929).

Fremantle History Centre. Look for the PDFs called:
Purchasers of Fremantle Town Lots 1829-1837
Purchasers of Fremantle Town Lots 1855-1879

Freotopia

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 2 December, 2022 and hosted at freotopia.org/lots/423.html (it was last updated on 30 July, 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.