FREMANTLE PRISONThe Provisional Depot

1

Building the Prison

2

Accommodation for Prison Officers

3

Perimeter Walls

4

The Entry Complex

5

Workshops, Hospital and Services

6

The Main Cell Block

7

Building the Southern Wing

7

Building the Northern Wing

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Completion of the Main Cell Block8© Government of Western Australia 2009
Published by Fremantle Prison, Department of Treasury and Finance – Building Management and Works, Government of Western Australia
The Terrace, Fremantle, Western Australia, 6160, Australia
All rights reserved. This publication is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, classroom teaching, research, criticism or review, as permitted under
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Fremantle Prison’s Key to Knowledge resources have been produced by Fremantle Prison for general classroom use. Teachers may duplicate the resources for education purposes only.
Research and Text: Luke Donegan
Design: Axiom Design Partners
Text editing: Maia Frewer, Oonagh Quigley
Acknowledgements:
Fremantle Prison would like to thank the following organisations and individuals who have made significant contributions to the development of this resource – State Records Officeof Western Australia, State Library of Western Australia, National Library of Australia, Western Australian Museum, History Teachers Association of Western Australia, City ofFremantle - Local History Collection, St Patrick’s Primary School, Margaret McPherson, Maree Whitely
Front cover illustration:
Officers’ quarters and guardroom, convict prison, Fremantle - detail 1859, Henry Wray (1824-1900)
National Library of Australiaiwww.fremantleprison.com.au

Building the Convict Establishment

FREMANTLE PRISON

The provisional depot

Drawing of Fremantle showing location of the provisional
prison, red circle, and the Commissariat, blue circle c1859
State Library of Western Australia

In June 1850, the first convict transport ship the Scindian arrived at Fremantle.
On board were Royal Engineer Captain Edmund Henderson and his family, theSuperintendent of Convicts Thomas Hill Dixon, 75 male convicts, some warders,and 50 Pensioner Guards.
Because the Scindian had overtaken theship carrying the news of the transport’s
arrival, no-one knew they were coming.
There was no welcoming party and no
prison large enough to hold the convicts.

The provisional depot was a temporary
prison while the main prison was being
constructed. The convicts stayed here forfive years before they were moved into thenew prison on the hill behind Fremantle.

Henderson rented a warehouse on thebeachfront at South Beach from theharbourmaster. The convicts slept aboard
the Scindian for another three weeks
while the warehouse was converted intoa temporary prison. Henderson wasted notime. Within three weeks a 10 foot wall had
been built around the building, and sleeping
hammocks for 168 prisoners had been
installed. A kitchen, laundry and toilets,
plus two extra cell blocks to hold an extra
360 prisoners had also been built.

In the first year of transportation, fourships unloaded 676 convicts. In 1850
before the convicts arrived, Fremantle had
a population of less than 500 people. Verysoon the number of convicts outnumbered
the free settlers.

Because of the convicts the amount of
supplies arriving at Fremantle from Englandgreatly increased. Once the provisional depot
was built, Henderson built a commissariat
store to hold supplies including food andbuilding materials. Today this buildingis the Shipwrecks Gallery at the Western
Australian Museum – Maritime.
The convicts also built a new jetty on
Anglesea Point called the South Bay Jetty,
or Short Jetty. A cart shifted cargo from theconvict ships to the Commissariat along awooden railway track. In the space of a few
short months the first convicts had started
to transform the colony.

View of the convict built Commissariat and the Short Jetty c1870s
Fremantle Local History Collection

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Building the Convict Establishment

FREMANTLE PRISON

Building the prison

An isometric drawing of Pentonville Prison 1844, Joshua Jebb (1793-1876)
University College London

The site of Fremantle Prison was originally chosen for its proximity to the town
below and the harbour. Its elevated location caught the fresh sea winds which, it
was believed, would help prevent disease. The limestone ridge above Fremantle
town was levelled and the stone used in construction of the buildings.
Comptroller-General Edmund Henderson reported on the location to his superior in London:[t]he site proposed is in every way well suited for the purpose; it is ahealthy and elevated spot - removed from the business part of the town,
and within convenient distance of the harbour; in the improvement of
which there will be the employment for the Prisoners for many years afterComptroller-General’s report, 1 January 1851
the Government works are complete.

Henderson submitted his plan for the Convict
Establishment to Joshua Jebb, Director ofConvict Prisons in 1851, based on Jebb’s
own design for the Pentonville Prison.
The original plans included the two
diagonal cell blocks similar to those atPentonville. These however were omitted
from Jebb’s revision of the plans as they
were considered to be too expensive. The
linear range was increased to 500 feet inlength and four stories – once built thiswould be the longest and tallest cellblockin the southern hemisphere. Once the final
plans were approved and Captain Henry
Wray arrived with the Royal Engineers, thebuilding project began.
The first part of the establishment
constructed was a graded limestonecapped slope leading from the town up to
the building site. This ramp later became
Fairbairn Street. A tramway linked the ramp
to the Commissariat on Anglesea Point.

Left: A sketch plan of Fremantle Prison and Chapel,
revised by Captain Henderson 1852
Fremantle Local History Collection

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Building the Convict Establishment

FREMANTLE PRISON

Accommodation for Prison Officers

Officers’ quarters and guardroom, convict prison, Fremantle 1859, Henry Wray (1824-1900)
National Library of Australia

Paid accommodation was very expensive in Fremantle
and one of Henderson’s first priorities was to build
prison-owned accommodation for his warders. Threesets of warder’s cottages were planned and built outof limestone at the bottom of the ramp. The cottages
formed the frontage of the convict grant along
Henderson Street.
The first set of cottages was completed in
1851. These were built to accommodate thewarders with large families – however, twosets of families had to share each cottage
leading to overcrowding and discomfort.
Henderson reserved a plot of land for
himself to the south of the prison buildings,
set apart from the other accommodations.
The Knowle, designed by Henderson andbuilt for his family, was completed in 1853.
From the verandas of this majestic, spacious
building Henderson could survey the entire
convict range and observe the comings andgoings of convicts and warders along theramp and around the prison site.

In 1867 after Henderson returned toEngland the Knowle became a convict
invalid depot, then in 1897 the Fremantle
Hospital. The building remains intact andcan still be seen within the grounds ofFremantle Hospital today.
The frontage of the prison, now known
as The Terrace, was originally called The
Esplanade. During the 1850s four mainhouses as well as the gatehouse wereconstructed on The Terrace. These provided
accommodation for the senior officers
including the Superintendent, the Deputy
Superintendent, the Chaplain, and theSurgeon Superintendent.

These grand buildings helped confirm
the officers’ high status in the societyof the colony. The houses continued toaccommodate staff until the 1960s when
they were taken over by the expanding
prison administration.
On the northern end of The Terrace aguardroom was constructed in 1857 toaccommodate 19 men. Charles Nicolay
who was the prison’s chaplain from 1878
to 1893 started a geological collection ofrocks and minerals which he kept in theold guard’s quarters at number 2. His rocks
were moved to the Old Perth Gaol in 1889
and this collection formed the beginning of
the Western Australian Museum.
The arrival of convicts during the first few
years of transportation to Western Australia
and the building projects they completed
both on the prison site and in the settlementtransformed Fremantle from a small
village into a town. The size and luxuryof these prison accommodations were aclear indication of the social structure of
the Convict Establishment, as well as the
position of the prison officers in Fremantle
society. The largest building of them all, theMain Cell Block, was yet to be completed.
Despite its grandeur and size, the convicts
who were to be accommodated here were at
the bottom of the social ladder.

Left: The Knowle c1890s
Fremantle Local History Collection

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Building the Convict Establishment

FREMANTLE PRISON

Perimeter walls
Once Captain Wray and the Royal Engineers(also known as the sappers) arrived in 1851,
construction on the prison site began in earnest.
Because limestone was readily available and aneasy stone to craft, it became the building
material of choice. The sappers trained theconvicts to work the stone and the prison
slowly began to take shape.

Fremantle Prison perimeter walls 1928
State Library of Western Australia

In 1853 work on the perimeter walls began
and these were completed two years later.
The walls were built of solid limestone,
eighteen inches thick and fifteen feet high.
The walls formed a perfect rectangle with
only one opening at the main gatehousein the centre of the western wall (ascompared with the six major openings thatcan be found in the walls today).

Henry Wray described the incident in his diary:
About 5:30pm yesterday, a whirlwind passed over the prison premises from, north tosouth-east and has done damage to a large extent … tearing off branches from the trees andcarrying everything it came across up to a great height in its vortex. As soon as it reached theprison wall, nearly the whole of the northern boundary 150 yards long, 20 feet high and in someplaces two feet six inches thick, was laid perfectly flat, turning over on its side like a hinge.

Henry Wray, Personal diary 1856

While the site for the Main Cell Block
was levelled and excavated, the perimeter
walls were built to follow the naturalcontours of the land. As such they provide
a clear indication of the original contoursof the location, most dramatically along
the southern wall. This wall graphicallydemonstrates the extent of the excavation
work completed by the convict labourers
in preparing the ground for the Main Cell
Block. The walls were extensively rebuilt
and widened after a mini tornado knocked
down much of their length in 1856.

Right: Site plan for Fremantle Prison c1910s
Fremantle Prison Collection

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Building the Convict Establishment

FREMANTLE PRISONThe entry complex

Three warders outside gatehouse c1912
Fremantle Prison Collection

The entry complex was built between 1854 and 1855, including the gatehouse with
its two towers on either side of the main gate, the entry courtyard and the two
guard houses flanking the inner Wray Gates. The gatekeeper lived in the groundfloor of the northern gatehouse building. The Deputy Superintendent lived in theupper floors of the two towers.
The main gate was installed in 1855, andthe tower clock, made in London in 1854,
arrived and was installed above the maingate in 1856. The gatehouse was designed
to look like an English fortress to make thesettlers feel protected from the convicts on
the inside.

In 1854 the guardhouses flanking the inner
iron gates were completed. The northerngate was occupied by the military andthe southern by the civilian warders. The
guardrooms were manned to defend thegatehouse area against attack from both
inside and outside the prison.

5

Rifles positioned in the slot windows
could fire upon anyone threatening theprison. The slot design allowed guards
inside to manoeuvre and aim their rifles
while having maximum protection.

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Building the Convict Establishment

FREMANTLE PRISON

Workshops, hospital and services

Fremantle Prison Hospital c1970
Fremantle Local History Collection

The prison needed more than just cells in which to lock up prisoners. It alsoneeded buildings in which to cook food, do laundry, care for the sick, and provide
work for the convicts.

The services building was constructed in
the northwest corner of the prison site andcompleted in 1855. The building included:• a kitchen with four boilers, a scullery,a pantry, a cool room and adjacent
stores – the kitchen was capable offeeding up to 1,000 convicts threemeals a day• a bakehouse and ovens, with a storeroom
for flour and another for bread• a washhouse, laundry and drying room.
Once the establishment became a colonial
prison in 1886 the services building wasconverted into a women’s prison and theabove services moved to other areas on theprison site.

The east workshops consisted of theblacksmiths shop, built in 1852, and acarpenters’ shop, built in 1858. Woodworkand metalwork used in the construction of
the prison was prepared in the workshops.
The east workshops were the prison’s earliest
attempt to provide the convicts with training
in preparation for re-entering the community.

The finished building included a generalward for thirty patients, fever andophthalmic (diseases of the eye) wards forten patients each, four observation wards
for single patients, two skin diseases wards
for three patients each, as well as a kitchen,scullery, bathroom, store, medical store,
surgery and dead-house, and five toilets.1

The hospital was one of the last buildings
to be constructed during the convict era.
Construction commenced with the layingof the foundations in 1857, plans werealtered in 1858 with the addition of anothersix wards and construction completed in
December 1859. The additional wards
allowed prisoners with contagious diseases
to be quarantined. It also meant violent
prisoners could be segregated from others.

While the support infrastructure and buildings
were vital to the functioning of the Convict
Establishment, they paled in comparison
to Henderson and Wray’s main project, thebuilding of the Main Cell Block itself.

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Memorandum of Buildings, Royal Engineers Office,Fremantle, 1860www.fremantleprison.com.au

Building the Convict Establishment

FREMANTLE PRISONThe Main Cell Block
Building thesouthern wing
Limestone was excavated from thesite and shaped by the convicts.
Stone too soft for building was usedas landfill throughout Fremantle tofill in swampy ground. Once all thegood stone was excavated fromthe prison site, other quarries wereopened up, including one at thebase of Arthur Head. Wells forty
foot deep were sunk to provide
working convicts with fresh water.
In 1853 works on the southern wing of theMain Cell Block began. By the following
year the masonry work on the southernwing was almost complete. The convicts
had also almost completed eighteen cells in
the Refractory Block (solitary confinement)
and its surrounding wall. In 1855 thesouthern wing was completed including thetwo southern association wards. A circular
stairwell made of jarrah was built to gain
access to the upper association ward.
While the southern wing was being
constructed, a short-term wooden division was
built in the parade ground to accommodate
convicts during the construction phase.
Henderson ordered iron fittings for thegallery guardrails and doors from Englandin 1852. However, by 1855 the iron still had
not arrived. Keen for his convicts to moveinto the prison, Henderson ordered that ironbe scavenged from the convict transport
ships and refashioned into doors and gallery
railings. The original railings still exist andcan be seen in the southern wing. Where
the two-rail railings end in 2 division andthe five-rail railings begin marks the limit of
the southern wing building project.

Inside the Main Cell Block, 2 division 2005, Roel Loopers
Fremantle Prison Collection

On 1 June 1855 the convicts moved fromthe provisional depot on South Beach into
the southern wing. Henderson had been
waiting five years for this day – his words
below suggest a sense of excitement and
pride in what had been accomplished:
The removal of prisoners from the old hiredbuildings, which were low and surroundedby swamp, to the airy, well-ventilated new
prison is most beneficial in every way bothas regards discipline and health.2

The convict bends to his task,
quarrying stone and lime. He reaches
to the earth, bowing in obedienceand submission to the land. His
workmates are the blinding summer
light, enervating heat and alkaline
limestone that burns and scours
the skin. He is entrapped by a grimtask, literally hewing from a stony
outcrop a place that will serve as ascene of punishment.
Trinca, M. Convicts and the Construction of Controlling Space inWestern Australia, 1993, p. 1.

2

Henderson 1855, quoted in Ayris, C.
Fremantle Prison: A brief history, 1995. p. 15.

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Building the Convict Establishment

FREMANTLE PRISONThe Main Cell BlockConvict Prison, Fremantle – detail 1859, Henry Wray (1824-1900)
National Library of Australia

Building the northern wing
The end of 1856 saw thefoundations of the northern winglaid and two fifths of the masonrycompleted. At this stage the Royal
Engineers were called away to fightin the Crimean War. Henderson wasin England on leave and Captain
Wray stayed behind as Acting
Comptroller-General to see theconstruction completed.
During the following year the convicts
completed the masonry works on thenorthern wing, constructed the basement,
slated the roof and paved the corridor.
Whereas the southern wing had been pavedwith Yorkshire flagstone, the northern wing
was paved instead with a hard limestone
quarried locally in North Fremantle.
A sunken area for light and ventilation
surrounded the basement. Because thebasement was the coolest location in theprison it was used as the storage area. The
morgue next door was constructed with abarrel vault ceiling and designed to store
corpses waiting burial or post-mortem
investigations by the prison’s surgeon.

Completion of theMain Cell Block

In 1857 he reported:
In constructing the upper tier of cells it wasconsidered desirable to throw 2 cells into
1 in order to accommodate 3 men in each,
24 cells are thus formed giving increasedroom for 24 men; 6 cells on each floor havealso been converted into 2, each holding 5
men, affording increased accommodationfor 16 men.3

By 1856 the Refractory Block
was completed and work began
on excavating the exercise yards
from the hillside behind theprison. These were completed
and walled the following year. In
1858 stairs were built and thenorthern wing fitted out withguard railings and doors. By
December 1859, Henderson had
returned from England and theprison was officially completed.

While packing more men into the same spacesolved his accommodation problems, it did
nothing for the wellbeing of the prisoners.
As Acting Comptroller-General, Henry
Wray was responsible for all costs andbuilding budgets. In 1857 it became clearthat the building project was running overbudget. Back in 1851 Wray had surveyed thesite without the help of a theodolite which
resulted in the southern wing being six feetlonger than planned. To keep the prison
symmetrical, he had added an extra six feetto the northern wing, making the prison
twelve feet longer than originally intended.
This extra length however helped Wray toincrease the accommodation of the prison.

Henderson’s original plans for the prison
had focused on single cells. He believedthat keeping the prisoners separate would
help prevent the development of a ‘criminal
brotherhood’. However, while Henderson wasin England, Captain Wray came under pressure
from the Governor to increase the number ofprisoners the prison could hold. His solution
was to build larger cells on the upper levels of
the northern wing.
The restored Main Cell Block, 2007
Fremantle Prison Collection

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After 10 years of planning and building,the establishment was ready to receive
more convicts from England. The
Main Cell Block was designed tohold 882 men, or up to 1,000 men if
required.4 Ironically, in 1860 the grand
total of new convicts to arrive in thecolony numbered only one. Economic
uncertainty temporarily stopped convicts
being sent to Western Australia. This
would have been a major disappointment
to Henderson and Wray who, after
years of work, must have felt it had all
been in vain. However, by 1861 thetransportation of convicts had begun
again and Captains Henderson and Wray
were able to shift their attention to otherbuilding projects that were required
throughout the colony.

3

Wray, H. 1857, reported in Kerr, J. Fremantle Prison: A policy
for its conservation, 1998, p. 51

4Trinca, M. Convicts and the Construction of Controlling Spacein Western Australia, 1993, p. 23

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