Hotels/crownandthistle.html
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Crown and Thistle
There were two hotels given this name by Alexander Francisco: the first one on Lot 45, 25 High Street (Mrs Pace's hotel/boarding-house, the site of the later P&O Hotel); and the second on Lot 61 High Street (site of the later Cleopatra Hotel).
Elizabeth Fennie (1792-1874) married Captain Walter Pace of the East India Company. He had arrived as the master of the immigrant ship Medina in 1830, and probably returned to England with her, as he arrived again, apparently as an immigrant himself, on the Ann, in 1832. His wife travelled here independently, arriving in 1834 on the Quebec Trader.
Walter Pace was granted Lot 45 & 46, High Street & Mouat Street, probably in 1832, and built a stone house on Lot 45 (see the map below). In 1835 Mrs Pace was granted a licence to trade there as a hotel. The site has had a hotel on it ever since, making it the oldest hotel site in Fremantle.
Clip from an 1844 Chauncy map redrawn 1983 by Campbell shows the Paces' stone building at the corner of High and Mouat Streets.
Mrs Pace's premises was known by her name, until it was called the Crown and Thistle by Alexander Francisco when he leased it from her, 1840-44.
Francisco took the Crown and Thistle name with him to Lot 61 in High Street, as the first hotel on that site. It was known as Wellard's Hotel during the brief period that James Wellard was the lessee, as the Auld Mug Tavern during the defence of the America's Cup, and also the West End Hotel and Coakley's Hotel. The extant building there is the Cleopatra Hotel, which now functions as the Edmund Rice Centre, a Catholic Church agency.
References and Links
as above
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 15 June, 2023 and hosted at freotopia.org/hotels/crownandthistle.html (it was last updated on 28 November, 2023). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.