Town Lots 417-424
High Street, south side, from Market Street to Pakenham Street.
The first grantees of these lots were – 417: Marshall McDermott; 418: Mary Ann Bateman; 420-421: James A. Moulton; 423: Sarah M. Helms; 424: John Hancock; (419 and 422 unknown).
At the end of 2022, by my own crude estimation, using Google Maps and streetview, the eight lots are named or occupied roughly as follows.
Lot 417: [[../buildings/higham.html|Higham Buildings]], 101 High Street
Lot 418: adultshop.com., Bousfields (rumoured to be closing).
Lot 419: Bank of Australasia/Economic Stores/remedy.
Lot 420: [[../buildings/davies.html|Davies Building]] (eastern half demolished).
Lot 421: [[../buildings/hicks.html|Hicks building]] (Wyola Club)
Lot 422: [[../buildings/jenkins.html|Jenkins building]], 75-79, was Port Stationery
Lot 423: commercial building: Amé Bel, Design Theory
Lot 424: [[../buildings/centralchambers.html|Central Chambers]]/Economic Stores/Bateman's: Kartique/Djurra
Hitchcock 1919, describing the situation as he recalled it was in 1869:
Crossing Market-street to the other corner we come to what was one of the most extensive buildings of the time, though it has long since had to make way for the more modern structures known as ‘Higham’s Buildings’. I refer to the store with residence attached of Mrs M. Higham. Here a large retail business was done ...
Next to Higham’s was the jeweller’s shop of a Russian Jew named Rosenberg. He was one of those implicated in the great Russian note forgery, for his complicity in which he was transported to this Colony. He amassed a fair amount of wealth here, and then foolishly returned to Russia, where it is said he was again punished under the laws of that country for the same office for which in England he had been sentenced to transportation, and was sent to Siberia, where he ended his days.
Next door was a baker’s shop, kept by a Mr. Downs; and then a sailors’ boarding house, kept by James Freeman.
Then came the pawnbroker’s shop of Mr. Alfred Davies, whose penny tokens were always accepted as current coin, and some of which may still be occasionally seen. On the next allotment standing back from the street, was a neat two-storied dwelling house, occupied by Mr (now Major) G.B. Humble, who held the position of headmaster of the Government school from 1864 to 1889, and that of Town Clerk for many years afterwards, filling both offices concurrently for a lengthy period. He is still hale and active at the age of 80.
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.
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
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/417-424.html (it was last updated on 10 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.