Town Lot 45

SE corner of High and Mouat Streets: [[../hotels/p&o.html|P&O Hotel]] (1901).

The earliest owner of Lot 45 (and Lot 46) recorded by [[../hitchcock.html|Hitchcock]] (1929) was [[../people/pace.html|Walter Pace]], who was master of the [[../ships/medina.html|Medina]], which arrived 6 July 1830. His wife kept a hotel on this site from perhaps as early as 1834, when she arrived. The captain may already have had a store on the lot. The hotel's grand title was the Crown and Thistle, but it was also known as 'Mrs Pace's hotel'.
It was followed on the same site in the 1870s by another hotel, the Victoria, kept by Mrs Scott, the widow of another sea-captain (not Daniel Scott), and then by the current P&O Hotel.

Hitchcock (1919, describing 1869):
[Next to the Emerald Isle Hotel was a little shop where a tailor named John Cecil carried on business,] ... then on the corner of Mouatt-street, but standing a little back from the road, was the Victoria Hotel, on the site of which the [[../hotels/p&o.html|P. and O. Hotel]] now rears its stately proportions. The Victoria was kept by Mrs. [[../people/scott.html|Scott]], the widow of a sea-captain, and was the favourite resort of deep-sea skippers who foregathered to drink their gin and bitters in the little parlour known as the ‘Cockpit’. This room was fitted up in true nautical fashion after an idea of old Captain Scott’s and seated among a company of old salts once could almost fancy oneself aboard an old time windjammer. On the death of Mrs. Scott the hostelry was taken over by the genial [[../people/hagan.html|Patsy Hogan]] [Hagan], who had been her faithful servant for many years, under whose management the best traditions of the old inn were well maintained.

References and Links

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.

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 8 December, 2022 and hosted at freotopia.org/lots/45.html (it was last updated on 19 December, 2022), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.