Architecture of Fremantle Prison
Limestone was quarried on-site during construction, and the south-western corner (the South Knoll) and eastern portion of the site are at a considerably higher ground level.
Other elements of the site include the hospital building, prisoner workshops, open spaces, and a limestone ramp on the axis of the gatehouse, heading down towards the port area of Fremantle.
Fremantle Prison dates from the early years of European settlement, when it was constructed as the centre of the British Imperial Convict Establishment in Western Australia.
There was also no prepared accommodation for the warders, pensioner guards, Captain Edward Walcott Henderson, Comptroller General of Convicts, or his clerk, James Manning.
Whilst he favoured Mount Eliza (now known as Kings Park[1]) due to its height, which gave it pleasing vistas and supposedly healthier air, Governor Charles Fitzgerald rejected that proposal.
Henderson ultimately settled on the current site on a hill,[3]: 21–22 in a raised and dominant position overlooking the port city of Fremantle.
[1] Fremantle Prison was built on a land grant of about 36 acres (15 ha) from limestone quarried on-site,[4] and timber cut from Mount Eliza.
The ground level is considerably higher in the south-western corner of the site with what remains of the natural landform, formerly known as Church Hill, now referred to as the South Knoll.
[1] Fremantle Prison comprises substantially intact convict era structures, including the limestone perimeter walls of exceptional heritage significance.
[1] The convict era complex includes the 1859 main cell block, chapel and wards, yards and refractory cells; perimeter walls, gate house complex and prison officer residences on the Terrace; service buildings and hospital; south-eastern workshops; ramp access tramway (Fairbairn Street) and Henderson Street Warder's Cottages.
[7] North of the main block is New Division, and west of that, in the north-western corner, is the former Women's Prison,[4] previously the cookhouse, bakehouse and laundry.
[1] The prison is surrounded by limestone perimeter walls, which define the extent of the depot and its original topography to the south, east and north.
[10] The gatehouse has two towers either side of a narrow gate, reminiscent of those found in 13th century English castles or walled cities.
[1] The gatehouse has remained a significant feature and landmark since the closure of the prison, as the main entrance, and housing a café and office areas.
Designed to hold up to 1000 prisoners, it is 145 metres (476 ft) long and four storeys high, the longest and tallest cell range in Australia.
[1] The central, four-storey high cell block is flanked on either end by large dormitory wards, called the Association Rooms.
While each cell initially had a basin connected to running water, the installation was before the advent of S-bends; the smells coming up the pipes lead to their removal by the 1860s.
Its interior features include an early and substantial example of a laminated arch construction in the colonies and the first in WA, handsome decalogue boards and some original and elegant joinery.
[7] The floor has evidence of its former use for communal prisoner accommodation, in the form of mortices for hammock rails and a convict painted mural which decorates its wall.
The building, L shaped in plan, is three storeys high of regular coursed pale ashlar limestone blocks with rock-face.
The interior configuration and cells are significant as an example of an attempt to introduce the separate system to Western Australia,[1] whereby prisoners were completely isolated for the first three months of their sentence.
During World War Two, the Australian Army appropriated the New Division, to keep prisoners separate from the main population, and for those condemned to death.
The space was used for education and assessment until the main prison's closure in 1991,[8] and has since been adapted for TAFE use as a visual arts facility.
[16] Number 16 is a house is two-storey building, roughly square in plan, with painted limestone walls and a corrugated sheet metal roof behind a parapet.
[19] Located in the north-eastern corner of the prison compound, the building is H-shaped in plan, single storey with rendered and painted limestone walls.
Underneath parts of the eastern terrace, the adjacent Hampton Road, the pumping station and the workshops there are a complex series of shafts, drives and weirs cut from the rock during the 1890s and early twentieth century.
This prompted a tank to be installed at the prison, behind the main cell block, to offer the town an alternative water supply.
From 1888 to 1894, additional wells were built, connected by a series of tunnels or horizontal drives[a] 20 metres (66 ft)[22] under the north-east of the prison.
[1] South Knoll comprises the remains of the high, natural ground level which at least by 1896 had been terraced to form flat, grassed areas.
The ramp, constructed between 1852 and 1853, is of limestone rubble from the cut and fill activities required to create the prison site and the terrace.
