COLIN NICHOL discovers the story of Atwell Arcade and Buildings
ON Thursday 14 October 1937, the Daily News announced: “Mrs. Sarah P. Atwell, who died at her home in Mary Street (now 77 Solomon), Beaconsfield, yesterday afternoon, was one of the biggest landowners at Fremantle and one of its oldest residents. Born in Perth 85 years ago, she had lived in this State all her life. Her property at Fremantle includes some valuable city blocks and the city’s only arcade, which bears the family name”.
Such was her standing and that of the Atwell name, the Fremantle Town Hall flag was flown at half-mast. Her husband Henry, a prominent Fremantle businessman born in England in 1831, had pre-deceased her by more than 20 years. The Atwells had 10 children and their 1898 home remained theirs until its purchase for nurses quarters in 1958 and is now in private hands.
Henry had risen well above his beginnings here, having been convicted of “uttering forged papers” in 1856 and transported to the colony aboard the Merchantman in 1863. Given his ticket-of-leave shortly after arrival and a conditional pardon in 1866, he worked as a sawyer and firewood contractor and, amongst other activities, as manager of Pearse Brothers’ abattoir and meatworks. Also involved in marine salvage, he bought the rights to the merchant ship Macedon, which had sunk off Fremantle. The ship’s bell is displayed in the Fremantle Maritime Museum.
Henry’s industry obviously brought its rewards and he had Atwell Buildings constructed in 1895. The structure was impressive for the times and newspapers reported the “old-fashioned stone cottage” known as the former council chambers was replaced with a row of five large shops with “dwelling houses and show rooms attached”.
There were “plate glass windows (‘among the largest in the colony’) with splayed entrances floored with ornamental tiles, the frames of the windows being of picked jarrah varnished so as to exhibit the quality of the timber”.
The ground floor had “large rusticated piers from which rise cemented pilasters of bold proportions supporting a rich entablature and balustrading, also finished in cement work. The central feature a large pediment surmounted with a crowning number of scrolls and shell ornaments above. The windows are treated in a most happy manner with a canopy supported upon ornamental trusses rising from cement in post mouldings”.
Shop fronts were built of Melbourne bricks, “being coloured richly and pointed in black, forming a distinct and bright contrast to the cement dressings with which the front is ornamented. The cement work coloured in imitation of rich tinted sandstone, and the whole front designed to present to the eye a desirable combination both of shade and colour”.
In 1929, after Henry’s death, Sarah added the Atwell Arcade and shops between High and Cantonment Streets in his memory. Then in 1933 the High Street frontage was “modernised” and the entrance diverted to effect a more direct line through to Cantonment Street, necessitating the reconstruction of approximately half the arcade. Now, 119 years on, the process of dramatic change is again in prospect.