Buildings/walls.html
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Freopedia > buildings > walls.
See also: Convict Establishment.
See also: proposed Police Complex.
Walls
There was a wall of one kind or another around the entire Convict Establishment, including the Prison, and along the boundary streets: Alma Street, South Terrace, Henderson and Holdsworth Streets – as well of course as Hampton Road and Knutsford Streets, where the Prison's walls form the boundary. (Except where there are openings for entrances, such as the one for the drive up to Edmund Henderson's residence, The Knowle.)
In contention in September 2023 is what remains of walls which in the 1850s would have run almost continuously along South Terrace from Henderson to Alma Streets. It is under threat from the development of the proposed Police Complex. The plan will remove twenty metres (20m!) of convict-built wall. Work on the site has already begun—before the permission procedure is complete!
And there is a heritage 1850s wall running northeast from South Terrace on the boundary between the Oval and the Hospital. Originally, in about 1853, it would have been the boundary between the Barracks and Henry Wray's residence near the corner of South Terrace and Alma Street. This wall is probably also under threat from disappearing under the southern end of the Police Complex.
In these pages I have tried to show images of all of the wall portions remaining. There are none at all in Alma Street, nor in Hampton Road from Alma Street to the prison.
There is a another sigificant heritage probably-convict-built wall on the western side of Fothergill Street along the top of Fremantle Oval (formerly the Barracks Square), from somewhere inside the hospital to Fairbairn Street – as seen complete and intact in this 1896 photo below:
[[Buildings/parks/img/oval2056(1896).jpg|.jpg)
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Fremantle Library image no. 2056, 1896.
Those two (non-boundary) walls may once have met near the top of the hill.
Convict-built walls on South Terrace.
Convict-built walls on Holdsworth Street.
Convict-built walls on Henderson Street.
Convict-built walls on Alma Street.
Convict-built walls on Attfield Street.
Convict-built walls on Fothergill Street.
Convict-built walls on Hampton Road.
References and Links
See also the page for the Asylum and look at the images showing the walls which completely surrounded its grounds.
See also: demolished William Street wall.
Grant, Steve 2023, 'Convict wall to be cut', Fremantle Herald, 8 July: pp. 1, 3. Thanks to Steve for bringing this topic to everyone's attention, including mine.
Grant, Steve 2023, 'Architect jacked with ruined walls', Fremantle Herald, 15 July: 5.
Grassadonia, Silvana 1986, 'Nineteenth century limestone walls and steps in Fremantle', City of Fremantle, August, 44 pp. Lacks maps and an index to images. Page 10 is repeated.
Fremantle Hospital, (part of?) Development and Land Use Policy Manual, 1988 (pdf).
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 7 July, 2023 and hosted at freotopia.org (it was last updated on 15 December, 2023). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.