[[St Helens Hospital/index.html|]]
Freotopia > hospitals > St Helens/Illawarra
St Helens Hospital/Sydenham
St Helens Hospital was at 33 Moss Street, East Fremantle. The building was designed by John McNeece and built by F.W. Spurr for John Wesley Bateman (1852-1907) and his wife Mary. Tho at first called Sydenham, it was better known as The Lodge. After the Batemans, 1909-1917, it was used 1922-1923 as Illawarra Private Hospital, after which it was a private house for Richard James Bates, with Rhoda, Len, and Eric, and then became again a private hospital, as St Helen's, 1929-1959. It was a training hospital for nurses 1959-1962, and then a geriatric rehab centre, now managed by the WA Health Dept. Vacant since 2015, it was reopened August 2020 as a mental health transitional facility to replace Hampton House, and so with that name.
The matron of Illawarra Private Hospital 1922-23 was Mrs Carlton. Nurse Stradwick was in charge of St Helens Hospital 1929-32, Sr Isabel Walter 1933-44, and Srs Lila Kidston-Hunter and Phyllis McKim 1945-49.
The Lodge is a single storey tuck pointed and tiled building with front and side verandahs together with brick and iron stables and separate accommodation over at the rear. It is a very fine expression of the Federation Queen Anne style.
References and Links
Charlesworth, Helene 1997, Small but Strong: a Pictorial History of the Town of East Fremantle 1897-1997, Town of East Fremantle: 30-31.
Garrick, Phyl & Chris Jeffery1987, Fremantle Hospital: A Social History to 1987, Fremantle Hospital.
Lee, Jack 1979, This is East Fremantle (The story of a town and its people), East Fremantle Town Council.
Woodside Facebook page.
Streets of East Freo page for this building, from which most of the above data come.
Article in the online Fremantle Shipping News magazine.
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 29 November, 2014 and hosted at freotopia.org/hospitals/sthelens.html (it was last updated on 18 November, 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.