Perth Military Headquarters – The Barracks
The Barrack Square: St George’s Terrace, Barrack, Howick and Pier Streets, Perth
[Photograph by Alfred Hawes Stone 1863-68. Courtesy of WA State Library Ref. b2203447_1 6909B4]
Where were the Perth Military Headquarters?
The military headquarters were first established for the British Army’s company of the 63rd Regiment which arrived from England on Sulphur and Marquis of Anglesea in the last half of 1829 as part of the Swan River Colony settlement. It would continue to be HQ for the subsequent infantry detachments which continued to serve in the Colony.
The site selected for the first military post and HQ was in the ‘square’ bounded by what became St George’s Terrace, Barrack, Howick (Hay) and Pier Streets. The day after Mrs Helena Dance felled a tree to commemorate the founding of the Swan River Colony, Peter Brown states in his journal [on 13 August 1829], the line of the new barracks laid down by the Surveyor-General. It would be some years before buildings appeared on the site. I will spell out the evolution of Barracks Square as we go along.
Where are the Records of the Barracks Establishment?
Peter Nicholas Brown/Broun (1797-1846) was appointed as the first Colonial Secretary in WA on 30 December 1828; whereupon the Colonial Secretary’s Office (CSO) was established.
The CSO was established as the chief administrative office for the new Colony with the Colonial Secretary responsible for conducting the business of the Governor with the various government departments of the day as well as with the colonists, collectively and individually. The Colonial Secretary was a member of both the Executive and Legislative Councils from their formation in 1832.
The construction of public works in Western Australia initially came under the control of the Civil Engineer for the Swan River Colony. This was to remain the case until 1877 when the first Director of Public Works was appointed.
Correspondence regarding the construction of public works for the 1800’s can be found in the records of the Colonial Secretary’s Office held by the WA State Records Office. This correspondence does not contain plans as such, but rather deals with the initiation, progress and completion of major and minor works in the Colony.
Who Designed the Barracks?
Henry Willey Reveley (1788-1875) arrived in the Colony on Parmelia. Lieutenant Governor James Stirling engaged Reveley at Cape Town as Civil Engineer to the Swan River settlement at a salary of £200 and the Reveley family continued the voyage with the other first administrators of Western Australia.
Reveley’s first work after arrival was the building of huts at the temporary encampment on Garden Island. When the party moved to the ‘mainland’, he was responsible for the design and construction of all public works. These included the first Barracks, Government Offices, Commissariat Store, first Government House, the first Gaol at Fremantle – the building now known as the Round House – and the first Courthouse at Perth. He also superintended the cutting of a canal through the shallow flats in the Swan River near the later Causeway, planned a breakwater and harbour at Fremantle, and as a private venture built in St George’s Terrace the first water mill in Perth on the Tuscan principle. Of the many buildings he designed in a simplified Georgian style, the only surviving ones are the Round House, Fremantle (1831) and the Old Court House, Perth (1836) [Engineering Heritage Australia website].
Who was the first Military Commandant at the Barracks?
Captain Frederick Chidley Irwin (1794-1860) of the 63rd Regiment, arrived in the Swan River Colony in June 1829 on the ship Sulphur as the first military commandant in the Swan River Colony. When James Stirling was absent in England from 1832 to 1833, Irwin served as the acting administrator and later Lieutenant-Governor. During this period, he dealt with difficult relations between the colonists and the Aboriginal people.
Captain Irwin, a veteran of the 83rd, 45th and 63rd regiments was awarded the Military General Service Medal with nine clasps for his participation in the Peninsular War, all of which are in a collection in the WA Museum, Perth [WAM H2001.47]. He was a deeply religious man and tried to imbue the values of the Church of England into his men. To this end, he held Sunday service for his 63rd Regiment soldiers until the first ordained minister arrived in the Colony. Irwin joined the British Army as an Ensign in 1808 and retired by sale of commission in 1856/57 [Harts:33].
In September 1833 Irwin returned to England, partly to give an account to the Colonial Office of the events that had occurred in the colony while it was under his charge. This was published as The State and Position of Western Australia, the first published account of the colony in 1835. In 1837, having been promoted to Major, he returned to Western Australia, and was made permanent Commandant of the military forces in the Colony. He was further promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel in 1845. On the death of Governor Andrew Clarke in February 1847, Irwin took office as acting Governor until the arrival of Charles Fitzgerald in August 1848. Irwin retired from the army in 1854 and returned to England in 1856, where he died in Cheltenham in 1860.
Who was the first Storekeeper and Barracks Master?
John Morgan (1792-1866) arrived in the Swan River Colony with his wife and daughter on Parmelia in June 1829, that is, with Lieutenant Governor Stirling. Morgan had served in the Royal Marines with distinction in various parts of the Empire and was on half-pay when he was appointed Storekeeper with the Swan River Colony settlement. His appointment date is a moot point because the regulations were to be changed on 1st January 1829 that would deprive the half-pay of Captain Currie, John Morgan and even Captain Stirling himself if not confirmed by 31st December 1828 if they were holding any Civil appointment after that date. [HRA Series III, Vol VI, p.598]. It was a close-run thing for Morgan who was on the civil establishment from 30th December [CO18-9-61].
Navy Office 14 January 1829 – Sir, In compliance with instructions from the Secretary of State, we request you to furnish Mr Morgan, the Storekeeper of the new Settlement at Swan River, with copies of the Bills of Lading of the Stores on board His Majesty’s Ship “Sulphur”, and the “Parmelia” Transport; and to charge him with those which will be delivered into his custody on arriving at the Settlement [Colonial Secretary’s Office – Inward Correspondence Accession 36 Volume 1:7].
Morgan had a number of issues about his situation in the Swan River Colony and the lack of clarity of instructions about his role and personal arrangements as Storekeeper. He seems to have had a special relationship with Robert W Hay Under-Secretary for Colonies. He corresponded with Hay frequently with observations about many aspects of the settlement as well as wry complaints about his personal situation. Finally, in a letter dated 24th July 1832, he reports, Stirling has appointed me JP and Government Resident, Perth and told Irwin to appoint me Barrack Master.
A year after his appointment Morgan hadn’t been paid as Barrack Master and although Hay took up the matter with Treasury it was all too late: Morgan accepted an appointment as Police Magistrate in Richmond, VDL and after further financial difficulties in Perth, he left on Eagle for Hobart on 2nd November 1834 with his wife and daughter. He revisited WA in 1858.
Who Built the Barracks?
Brown, Reveley, Irwin and Morgan were men of influence in the early days of the Colony, particularly associated with the first military headquarters, and they have all been allocated space in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. But who has ever heard of the builder of the Barracks?
Charles Frederick Leroux (1807-1839) was baptised in St Mary’s Islington church in June 1807, son of Henry and Frances. Charles F Leroux married Eliza Turner in 1827 and they had two sons. When Leroux arrived in the Colony on Edward Lombe from London on 25th August 1830, there is no indication his family accompanied him. In 1832 he was granted 578 acres in the Canning District and 3,720 acres in the interior [Statham:201]. However, his travelling companions included Thomas Carter – his future business partner, and James Richard Lacey – his foreman at the building of the Barracks [WASRO Acc 36, Vol 8/106].
Leroux always attracted attention in the press, including retrospective pieces almost a century later in the Perth newspapers. Most famously he had a peripheral role in the duel fought between William Nairne Clark and George French Johnson at Fremantle on 17th August 1832. It was said that Leroux was at Johnson’s bedside when he died. He was most definitely co-executor of his Will along with William Drake [Cons 3403-1832-002].
During his four years in the Colony Leroux was involved in a merchandising business with Thomas Carter. His publican’s licence granted in January 1833 was most likely applied to the Travellers Joy, a half-way house between Guildford and York which was operated on Merrows Farm by his partner Carter. Leroux was involved in court actions when building materials were stolen by George Smith in June 1833 and Philip Corrigan in October 1833. He was elected to the Agricultural Society in January 1834. He gave notice of his departure from the Colony in September 1834 and this was followed by the dissolution of his partnership with Thomas Carter in November. Public auctions of his landholdings and other assets followed. He possibly returned to England for up to a year.
Leroux returned to Australia to work in the NSW Colonial Engineer’s Office as a surveyor and architect in Sydney (1836-1837) and as the first Clerk of Works in Port Phillip (1837-1838). He lost both positions because of his drinking habit and died in his bed in Port Phillip on 17 August 1839 ‘in an advanced state of alcoholism’.
What’s on the Plans – is it ever Reality?
The Parmelia left London with equipment for the Surveyor General’s Department. For the surveyors: compasses, sextants, theodolites, plotting scales and even a pentagraph and perambulator (left). We know that a 63rd Regiment soldier, Private Terence Sheridan, used such a device in September 1831 on the way to York [Redcoats webpage]. For the draughtsmen: superfine, thick and elephant paper; tracing and blotting paper; Indian ink, black power ink; quills and pencils. And much more according to bills of lading of articles for the departments of the Colonial Secretary and Surveyor General of Swan River correspondence [Acc 36 Vol 1/13].
On board Parmelia from the Surveyor General’s Department were the man himself, John Septimus Roe and Matilda his wife, along with Assistant Surveyor Henry Sutherland and his wife Ann. Not a lot of staff for the large piece of land they were charged with surveying.
What they didn’t have at that early date was the means of cartography copying. No photocopiers or plan printers! Our historic legacy has therefore been either no surviving plans or, traced copies of one plan used over and over again with changes and additions, often undated.
This plan (below), representing a proposal approved by the Governor in 1835, has been traced and redrawn for a different purpose – to show where other structures are situated adjacent to Barrack Square. It does not show structures already in place, built inside the square in the previous four years. Below is a cropped and edited version I have depicted in two parts from the same plan. Click to enlarge the image. The Lascars hut mentioned is not shown as it was marked on the original full plan between Goderich and Wellington Streets, outside the vicinity of the barracks. It does show the status of structures for some 21st Regiment soldiers [Cons 3868-319-18-3].
Plan of Barracks Square January 1857
This 1857 plan, judging by the handwriting of the street names, was drawn by 1st Assistant Surveyor Alfred Hillman in October 1851: the Hospital, the Soldiers Barracks, the Officers Quarters, the Jail, the Schoolhouse, St George’s Church; six buildings. By January 1857 it had the same structures appearing on the plan but with changes in use and additions of structures; now nine buildings or sites. The structures drawn on both versions, 1851 or 1857 – were plans not necessarily reality. Remember the tracing paper being used to depict the same site for different circumstances? Photography was not well advanced in the 1850s, thus most of the photographs available of these structures were taken in the 1860s by Alfred Hawes Stone. Some were not captured at all.
On the 1857 plan we have the Military Hospital (completed 1831). To the Soldiers Barracks (completed 1832/33), has been added a Five’s Court. Fives was an English handball game played on a 3- or 4-sided court with a rubber or leather ball weighing about 50 grams; something like squash but hit with a gloved hand instead of a racket. The Officers Quarters (completed 1832), looks unchanged. The Jail has gone (completed 1830), replaced by the Deanery (completed 1859). The Schoolhouse looks unchanged (completed 1854). St George’s Church (completed 1845) looks like it has an extension pencilled in.
The Mechanics Institute (completed 1853) has been added to the plan. The Freemasons Hall (completed 1867) has its site named. The Engine House and Guard House (completed 1862) has been added. No mention on either plan has been made of the Powder Magazine, part of the contract let to Mr. Leroux in August 1832 and its original site still unknown.
All the structures will be explained in more depth following this image.
The Military Hospital aka the Colonial Hospital
An instruction dated 15th January 1829 provided the Bill of Lading for barque Parmelia, John H Luscombe, Master, lying at Deptford. To the Officer administering the affairs of the Settlement to be established on the West Coast of New Holland: 2 Medicine Panniers A, B Canteen of Hospital Utensils; 7 Bales 438, 11800-05 Bedding; 2 Bales 443, 444 Hospital Dress; 30 loose unnumbered iron trestles for Field Bedstead for 15 field bedsteads; 3 Bundles unnumbered poles for ditto; 1 Bale 442 bedsackings [WASRO Acc 36 Vol 1/24].
The army’s hospital personnel who sailed on Sulphur from Chatham in January 1829 were Tully Daly, Assistant Surgeon 63rd Regiment and his hospital assistant Horatio Holden. The Colonial Surgeon, appointed 30th December 1828, Dr Charles Simmons, MD (Glasgow 1823) celebrated his 27th birthday early in the Parmelia‘s voyage which left about a week later and was to rendezvous with Sulphur at Plymouth. So far, so good, they both made the Cape. But Tully Daly drowned at the Cape in April and was not replaced as the army’s assistant surgeon until Dr William Milligan arrived at the Swan River in January 1830 on Wanstead.
The first hospital in the Colony for June, July and August 1829 was a Valeeze hospital marquee pitched on Garden Island – until Stirling decided the weather was mild enough to move onto the ‘mainland’. During those first three months of the settlement, Dr Simmons reported what he termed, a few cases of comparative little importance. He had treated nine cases of which eight of his patients were soldiers. And on 10th June 1829 he delivered a son to 63rd Drummer John Mitchell’s wife Jane.
By October 1829 the marquee was re-erected in Perth on the site selected as Barracks Square. Dr Simmons was delivering babies in Perth from this time and even if he managed this on an out-patient basis, it indicates his base was at the marquee. When Milligan arrived, Stirling transferred Simmons to the southwest and Milligan took over duties in the military/colonial hospital without assistance. The hospital assistant, Horatio Holden left for the Cape within a few weeks of Milligan’s arrival. I doubt they had barely the opportunity to shake hands, or salute!
There are conflicting accounts of the temporary arrangements made by Milligan and the government for hospital care moving from a marquee to more substantial rental accommodation. In one account the first admission* was a labourer named Robert Wilson at “the Perth tent hospital”; in another account Wilson was admitted to “Dr Palmer’s hut, rental 4s. weekly” [Brine:26, 40]. The first mainland hospital location is unlikely to be resolved any time soon. However, the Swan River weather statistics offered in a report written from India in 1837, support how wet the 1830-1833 winter months were [Brine:173/188].
[*The illustration on p.26 is open to interpretation. It could easily have meant that Wilson was the first admission for scurvy. It is hard to believe that between October 1829 (Brine:29 Joske) when the tent hospital went to Perth and June 1830 there were no patients admitted].
The hospital in Barracks Square was built before the soldiers barracks and officers quarters contract was approved. I had mistakenly believed the structure, between St George’s Terrace and Howick (Hay) Street, to be limited to the use of the military and its families. Not so. The builders were William Hokin, a government bricklayer arriving on Parmelia, and Henry Trigg a builder from Gloucester, arriving on Lotus [CO18-9-89]. The brick hospital in the Barracks Square was commenced in March and completed in July 1831 and was both the military hospital and the colonial hospital. And appropriately so when the surgeon (Milligan) was both the military surgeon and temporary colonial surgeon after the death of Charles Simmons in October 1831 and prior to the appointment of Alexander Collie. The cost was £500 [AJCP CO18-10-99 & 105]. It was later described on a plan as being 1 rood 10 perches in area (approx. 1265 sq. m.). I am not sure if this was the area of the building or the area of location B11 [Cons 3850 Item 34 (a)]. When the weather improved by the end of 1831, it was closed [Buchanan:8/7].
In 1832 some repairs to the hospital were flagged in the Public Works Report in March and June quarters. Plastering, fire place, and some repairs to the roof – of brick and lime mortar roof shingles laid on battens, to cost £60. And the addition of a kitchen stove to cost £250 [CO-10-99 & 105].
When Collie took over as Colonial Surgeon in February 1833, civilians were treated from a room in George Embleton’s town lot in Perth, while Milligan returned to treating soldiers in the military hospital, albeit he also had to travel to outposts outside of Perth, from Fremantle to Upper Swan.
If the military-cum-colonial hospital was closed for the summer in previous years, it is clear that the authorities intended to re-open for a further six months from September 1833 into 1834 as this advertisement (right) shows.
Alexander Collie must have been celebrating his appointment as Colonial Surgeon when he acquired an abundance of land in 1833. It was said, on St George’s Terrace he built the best house in Perth with great trouble and many setbacks. It cost £500 and he hoped to let it for £120 a year. In 1834 he was living in his new house ‘with bells hung and knocker up—rarities in this savage land [ADB: Vol.1]. When I searched for corroboration of this, I discovered that he was granted A10 allotment on the other corner of St George’s Terrace and Pier Street – immediately across from the jail – on 6th February 1833. He acquired other town and suburban allotments in the Colony early in 1833: Perth C1 on the corner of Adelaide Terrace and Hill Street; three Fremantle suburban lots and two Albany lots with Mr R Sholl.
In 1855 the permanent Colonial Hospital was established and over many years developed into the Royal Perth Hospital Precinct including Kirkman House and its landmark fig tree on Murray Street.
Regimental Assistant Surgeons
Most sources have ignored the existence of the military hospital in the Barracks Square and therefore little has been written about its permanent closure. It may as well have been a mirage until a small report was written in the Perth newspapers in June 1864 that the old military hospital was being fitted out as a police office.
The following men may have served in the barracks military hospital until 1864 when it was closed. Thereafter they could have used the colonial hospital and/or the military hospital which had been built close to the pensioners barracks in 1867, until the military regiments left Perth.
The Barracks Contract
Only two weeks after the Clark vs. Johnson duel and its outcome, Charles Frederick Leroux’s tender for the building of the barracks was accepted by the WA Executive Council. The cost was literally down to the last penny.
The Council concurred in opinion that Mr Leroux’s tender for the erection of the Officers Quarters, Soldiers Barracks, and Powder Magazine, for the sum of £3950 10s. 1d. within the space of nine months, was the most eligible as being the lowest in amount, and that the best security which the Government could take in addition to the usual sureties required from Contractors, for the due performance of the Contract would be to reserve a power of paying the sum agreed on, by monthly instalments of £165, and extend the period for the completion of the Contract to twenty four months, so as be within the Limit fixed by the Council, held on the 7th July last, for monthly payments on account of Public works; and also a power of paying out of each instalment the wages due at the termination of each week, to the workmen employed, by Mr Leroux, into the hands of the workmen themselves.
Mr Leroux was called in and expressed his assent to these terms.
The Honble The Colonial Secretary was directed to instruct the Commissary to carry the decision of the Council into effect. [CO 20-1-86].
When the 21st Fusiliers arrived in September 1833, Acting-Governor Irwin instructed the builder to complete the work immediately. In a dispute over the quality of materials used that arose after the building’s completion, Reveley refused to authorise payments to the builder until it was put right, and Leroux complained that he had to complete the Barracks in Four Days (which by my Contract I had thirteen months). Arbitrators were appointed and found that Leroux had grounds for a claim upon the government; the affair was settled to the satisfaction of all parties. Such disputes were frequent in the early years, and the practice was subsequently adopted of calling separate tenders in advance for the supply of basic building materials for public buildings to ensure that they would be ready when needed.
Meanwhile in England in a letter dated 3rd August 1833 from Thomas Spring Rice (Treasury) to Robert W Hay (Colonies), Rice agreed that the cost of the soldiers and officers barracks and the powder magazine would be defrayed from Army money [Buchanan:21/15]. The Swan River treasury officials would have been pleased!
Who Used the Soldiers Barracks?
The Last Hurrah for the Barracks
The last serving Redcoats to arrive in the Swan River Colony were the two companies of the 14th Regiment. On 4th June 1868 the two companies arrived on Virago from Hobart – well, all but a handful of men and a great many women and children who arrived on Albert Victor on 12th June. One company was destined to be based in Fremantle, the other in Perth. Their arrival was not auspicious. One newspaper reported that the ‘hovels under Mt Eliza were not suitable for troops’ yet the company bound for Perth was taken there by the steamer Lady Stirling. The Fremantle company was to use the Convict Establishment at Fremantle as barracks. All this because, apparently, the only convivial barracks in town were occupied by the pensioners. We have to assume this was a reference to the new barracks recently erected (1866) for the Enrolled Pensioner Force at the top of St George’s Terrace. There was no welcoming reception nor was the ship thrown open to the ‘locals’ as was the custom.
This turned out to be a very short visit – one wonders what this last show of Redcoats was all about – as the two companies left less than nine months later on Racer. The departure seems to have been a confusing affair as one newspaper reported that Racer left for Melbourne (Perth Gazette), while the other (Inquirer) recorded the departure was for Hobart. Nonetheless by 20th February 1869 both companies left the colony, except for four men who took their Army discharges in Perth the previous November: Privates George Best, brothers Henry and Thomas Murphy and Daniel Pye.
No mention was made of the Barrack Street Barracks for the visit of the 14th Regiment. This is not surprising as in the Inquirer newspaper dated 29th May 1867, it was reported that the soldiers barracks were to be utilised as a general post office.
In June 1869, the first telegraph line from Perth to Fremantle was established with telegraph offices in each of those locations. At Eucla a weatherboard station began operations on 9th December 1877 and was staffed by four male telegraphists, who lived in nearby tents and wooden cabins. Thus the long isolation of the colony came to an end with the opening of telegraphic communication with Adelaide and from there, via Darwin, with the outside world. In a nice transition to the brave new world the old barracks in Barrack Street, Perth, were converted for use as a telegraph office [Stannage:531].
I had not been able to corroborate this, until Heritage Perth tells us, under the heading ‘State Buildings’, starting with just three small buildings to run all of State Government business, various additions were made to the site on the corner of Barrack Street and St Georges Terrace, firstly in 1874, designed by Richard Roach Jewell. It was not until 1890 that the complex started to take on its more familiar look, when architect George Temple Poole drew up plans for a new General Post Office in the French Second Empire Style. This paragraph came with a present-day map of Perth with a flag sitting where the barracks and its ‘reserve for military purposes’ was shown on the Hillman 1857 plan. So there you have it… the link to what we later called the Treasury Buildings. The ‘last Mohican’ of this complex being the Department of Land Administration which moved to its new premises in Midland in 1993. And as of tonight (1st December 2025) it would cost you over $1000 to stay in a room on top of the old barracks (see end of this page for the current ‘Treasury Buildings’).
The Officers Quarters
In February 1831, Captain Irwin observed that the Perth barracks were to be erected without accommodation for officers. He suggested the barracks be extended to house officers, indicating that when Melville Island was settled no lodging money was requested and the WA climate ‘is much superior’. He said, no instance of an allowance to officers on first establishing a Colony is recalled. It was decided that the matter would be put to the Secretary of State. On 28 April 1831 Frederick Robinson, Secretary of State for War & Colonies wrote to Governor James Stirling indicating that he should first construct the barracks with officer accommodation to avoid the demands for an allowance in lieu of quarters [Buchanan:82/7 & 19/11].
Following the letting of the contract in August 1932, Leroux built the officers’ accommodation first. The earliest we can actually see the Officers Quarters almost in full view on the ground, is over sixty years later through the lens of a camera (above). It has captured the building long after it functioned as part of the military establishment. After the troops left in 1869 it was used as church offices; Revd. Charles O L Riley, Bishop of Perth can be seen in the foreground. In 1917 the Officers Quarters were demolished when Septimus and Louisa Burt gifted funds to build the Burt Memorial Hall on the church land in honour of their two sons killed in WWI.
Click here for a list of officers from 1829 to 1869 – the men in charge of seven infantry regiments of Redcoats. The list excludes the 39th Regiment officers who were in the western part of Australia before the Swan River Colony was declared for Britain.
The Jail and Deanery
During 1832 four privates of the 63rd Regiment were in confinement on charges awaiting courts martial [WO12-7264- folios 195, 197, 203, 204]. Were they first confined in the Barracks jail before being admitted to the Round House? Vouchers were issued for all four – perhaps for travel to Fremantle?
Roundhouse Admission Release
Richard BONSALL 6 Apr 1832 19 Apr 1832
Jonathan JENKINS 6 Apr 1832 26 Apr 1832
Henry YOUNG 29 May 1832 17 Jun 1832
William WRIGHT 7 Jun 1832 26 Jun 1832.
I had read somewhere that the land on which the jail was built had stocks and a whipping post thereon. This is confirmed, in part, by this story from a newspaper in late 1833. The jail built on land on the corner of Pier Street and St George’s Terrace was built in 1830 to Henry Reveley’s design. He suggested it was a small stone and shingle building, with a guardhouse and store attached. It was a public jail, not exclusively military, and comprised six-cells. It was superseded by the Perth Gaol, the construction of which began in 1854. Right: Western Australian Journal 14 Dec 1833.
In July 1849 tenders were called to extend the native prison in the jail [PG 27 Jul 1849]. The enlarged accommodation was required to house aboriginal prisoners from Rottnest when the prison on the Island was temporarily closed. The Rottnest Gaoler Henry Vincent returned with his charges in September that year, and after a brief stay in the Round House, the prisoners and Vincent were accommodated in the jail in Barracks Square until the Rottnest Island prison re-opened and the jail was demolished in 1855.
Bridget Hurford is recorded as not only the first woman to be executed in Western Australia (Purdue:5) but also the first woman hanged in the ‘new’ Perth Gaol; this having taken place on 15th October 1855. I have found no indication that any hangings occurred in the Barrack Square Jail. However, several are recorded prior to Hurford’s execution in 1855 by Sheriff’s letter with an unknown location or vague ‘Perth’ mentioned. It is likely that these were conducted in the execution yard of the new gaol before construction was completed at Francis and Beaufort Streets.
The deanery, designed by Richard Roach Jewell, was completed in 1859 on the site of the of the old jail as a residence and office for the first Dean of Perth, George Purves Pownall. The government demolished the jail in 1855 to build the deanery, and explains persistent stories that Noongar leader Midgegooroo was executed on the church land of the deanery. Of course the church did not own the land at that time. The execution on 22nd May 1833 remains a controversial topic in WA history when Midgegooroo was executed by firing squad at the jail after hearing depositions before the acting Lieutenant Governor Frederick C. Irwin at the Executive Council meeting.
From Church to Cathedral
Captain James Stirling overlooked two important essentials of a European settlement when Parmelia and other immigrant arrivals reached landfall in New Holland: an ordained minister of the established church and a printing press. The latter is a story told elsewhere [Errington 2011]. This is about Perth’s church and later cathedral.
Of all the spaces, and structures on those spaces, St George’s Church and then Cathedral were on the largest piece of land within the streets which bounded ‘Barrack Square’.
There was no ordained clergyman in the Swan River Colony during the first six months of settlement. Rev Thomas Hobbes Scott was the first ordained minister of the Church of England to practice religious services in the Colony, and an accidental one at that. Scott was on his way back from Sydney, NSW to his parish in Whitfield, Diocese of Durham, England on the HMS Success when the ship was wrecked off Fremantle in November 1829. Scott had recently resigned as Archdeacon of New South Wales. Stranded in the Colony, Scott quickly set-to, and with the help of soldiers of the 63rd Regiment and early settlers, established the ‘Rush Church’ (dedicated to St James), a timber frame filled with reeds and rushes on the corner of Irwin and Howick (Hay) Streets. It was from there that he conducted the Colony’s first baptisms from 6th December 1829 and held the first Christmas Day services that year. Scott left the Colony on 18th August 1830 on William.
No resource went to waste in the early days of the Colony. The little rush church building was transported to Carnac Island and used by the short-lived Northern Fishery Company as a storeroom at its depot in 1837 [Dept Conservation].
Rev John Burdett Wittenoom was appointed Colonial Chaplain by the British Colonial Secretary in July 1829, but he did not arrive until January 1830 on Wanstead. It was during Wittenoom’s era that the first permanent St George’s Church was built in the centre of ‘Barracks Square’, front-facing St. George’s Terrace. In the meantime services in the ‘Rush Church’ were moved into the first court house building (1836) now the Burt Museum, the oldest building in Perth. St George’s Church was built to the design of Joseph Brown, with alterations at the suggestion of J. G. Austin, Chief Surveyor of the Australind Settlement. On 1st January 1841, Governor John Hutt laid the foundation stone, when a bottle containing coins and inscriptions in Latin were buried [Perth Gazette 9 Jan]. The church was completed in 1845 by which time there were other sturdy structures built in the colony outside of Perth, e.g. Henley Brook (1841), Picton (1842) and Fremantle (1843). None of these churches was consecrated until 1848 when Bishop Augustus Short visited WA to consecrate St John the Evangelist in Albany, and St George’s in Perth.
WA’s first Bishop Mathew Blagden Hale did not arrive until 1858 and officiated in St George’s Church until his retirement in 1875. Bishop Hale would have been pleased to see that the deanery was under construction when he arrived and was finished the following year.
St George’s Cathedral owes its existence to the energy and foresight of Bishop Henry Hutton Parry who arrived in WA in 1877 and quickly realised his first task was to build a cathedral which would meet future needs. The building committee decided to put up a “good, plain Gothic building” and initially approached famous English church designer Arthur Blomfield, before finally settling on Sydney-based architect, Edmund Thomas Blacket. The foundation stone was laid on 2 November 1880, although it took until 8 August 1888 before St George’s Cathedral was ready for its first service led by Bishop Parry. To complete the cathedral, a sum of more than £17,000 had to be raised, which is all the more impressive when you realise there were only 40,000 European settlers in all of Western Australia. The Cathedral was consecrated by Dr Alfred Barry, Bishop of Sydney and Primate of Australia, on 15th November 1888. WA Bishop Henry Parry was delighted since the date was the 20th anniversary of his own consecration. Parry was not to know that he would die on the silver jubilee of that consecration in 1893.
The Guard House and Engine House
This building was not on Hillman’s 1851 plan, but appears in the 1857 version. It was probably built in 1862 by the convicts and designed in a similar style to the pensioner barracks at the top of St George’s Terrace by Richard Roach Jewell. As the old Perth Jail was demolished in 1855 to make way for the building of the Deanery, the military would have required a facility for short-term incarceration of soldiers pending courts martial sentencing.
What engine was housed within this complex I do not know, but it has also been described as the pump house. Men in uniform are shown on a photograph of indeterminate date. The Town Hall is shown in the background (completed 1870). The last of the Redcoats had gone by 1869, so perhaps the men are not soldiers, but firemen, and the ‘pump’ and ‘engine’ a fire fighting facility. Speculation.
The Schoolhouse
This building on Pier Street was on Hillman’s 1857 plan and its 1851 predecessor. I once again erroneously surmised this was a schoolhouse for the soldiers’ children since it was built within the Barracks Square. Wrong again; it was not built for the military, although the daughters of the military may have attended but it was a government school.
Perth Girls’ School was founded in 1847 as the Perth Colonial Girls’ School. It was originally housed in the Court House, followed by a property in William Street, and then in Hay Street. Arrangements for a new build were underway by 1848, but it took its time, not ready for business until 1854. Mrs Mary Wittenoom was appointed headmistress in 1855 and remained in that position until 1862 when Mrs Ann Veall arrived from Fremantle Girls’ School to replace her. When the Pier Street school ran out of space, a new one was built and in 1878 Mrs Veall escorted the girls and infants to the school on a site between James and Roe Streets, now covered by the Art Gallery and State Library. There she remained until retirement in 1886.
I have not been able to establish what happened to the Pier Street schoolhouse building after 1878 when Perth Girls’ School vacated it. The Sunday Times reported in 1928 that the building was the property of the Anglican Church – I cannot verify this.
The Powder Magazine
The original powder magazine was not on any plan of the military barracks that I have found. However, it was part of Charles F Leroux’s contract to build back in August 1832. Let us assume that he completed his mission and the powder magazine was somewhere close to the other structures in Barracks Square.
On 18th April 1839 – the same year that Leroux died in Port Phillip – the Commissariat Office published a notice requesting Tenders for Repairs of Officers’ Quarters, Soldiers’ Barracks, Powder Magazine, Guard House, Painting Commissariat Store… Thus we know that Leroux completed the work on the magazine; but when and where was the first guard house built? Presumably reasonably close to the magazine.
A further eight years passed and we see a flurry of articles in the press heralding a plan to build a new magazine in a more judicious location. An article on 23rd October 1847 in the Perth Gazette (left) appeared the same day as the government’s request for tenders to build the facility – advertised by W H Drake, Assistant Commissary-General, friend of Charles Leroux; Drake progressing his career nicely. On 25th November Mr Lennard’s tender for £193 was accepted – if only because it was low enough, under the rules, not to require the approval of the government in England!
Governor Charles Fitzgerald signed his approval to the plan of the new location on 13th June 1853. It was sited on Lot S35, south of Adelaide Terrace (right).
Mr James Kennedy’s’ boyhood recollections of Perth proved to be spot on. He remembered a number of things about the soldiers barracks and the officers’ quarters, the old church, the green with the mulberry trees which were known as the Twelve Apostles. More importantly, he recalled, Near the Causeway, on the site of the Ozone Hotel, was the magazine and on the opposite side of the road was the guard room [Early Days 1927:7-10]. The Ozone Hotel was on 1 Adelaide Terrace built in 1897, and after that HQ of Woodside Petroleum.
Other Structures
The Mechanics Institute Hall (completed 1853) was something new on the Hillman 1857 plan. I believe the year displayed on the building was the date the Institute was formed, not the date the building was completed. The structure on the left is the original, the structure on the right an extension added later.
The Freemasons Hall has a site drawn on the 1857 plan on Howick Street but not a building. The foundation stone for the first hall in Western Australia was laid in Hay Street, Perth in 1866 for the Lodge of St John No. 721 EC and it was dedicated by the Worshipful Master, W. Bro. Frederick Palgrave Barlee (Colonial Secretary in Western Australia 1855-1877) on 1 May 1867 [inHerit].
Acknowledgements
My thanks to: Marko Kanban, WA Parliamentary Library; Ian Kolk and Maryam Yousefi-Mitchell, WA State Library; Damien Hassan and Janet Hudson, WA State Record Office; Stuart Everett, Dept. of Planning , Lands & Heritage; Joanne Hyland, FHWA Convict Group; Jon Bryant, via ancestry; Reece Harley, Museum of Perth; Rockingham Museum Library; WA Police Museum; Royal WA Historical Society Bookshop. Thomas Trendall, St George’s Cathedral Tour Guide. One way or another, you all gave your time to me.
Sources and Bibliography
Books, Journals and Websites
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Melbourne University Press 1866-2021 online.
The Availing Struggle, C L M Hawtrey 1949 Paterson, Diocese of Perth.
Bicentennial Dictionary of Western Australians pre-1829-1888, Vols. I-IV, Rica Erickson, UWA Press, 1987 online.
City of Perth, Heritage Perth online.
Colonial Office Correspondence 1829-1830, Vols. 1-8, Graham Bown, Friends of the Battye Library online.
Conquest and Settlement – the 21st Regiment in Western Australia 1833-1840, Geoff Blackburn, Hesperian Press 1999.
Conservation Commission WA, Management Plan No. 47, Department of Conservation and Land Management 2003.
Dictionary of Western Australians, Vol. 1 Early Settlers 1829-1850, Pamela Statham, UWA Press 1979.
Engineering of Australia Heritage online.
A Guide to the Swan River Papers, Bruce and Anne Buchanan 2004 online.
Harts Amy List 1856/57 online.
Henry Reveley, architect and engineer, John White, Early Days, Journal of the RWAHS, Vol. 7, Pt. pp. 24-42, 1979.
Heritage Perth website, supported by the City of Perth.
History of Royal Perth Hospital, G C Bolton, E J P Joske, Royal Perth Hospital 1982.
Legal Executions in Western Australia, Brian Purdue, Foundation Press 1993.
Locked up in Fremantle 1829-1856, Steve Errington, Hesperian Press 2023.
Looking for Milligan, John Brine and friends, The Milligan Society 1991.
The Military Establishment in Western Australia 1829-1863, E S W & C G S Whiteley, Hesperian Press 2010.
Perth Girls’ School 1847-1962, Islay Kelly, Early Days, Journal of the RWAHS Vol. 12, Pt.1 pp.73-85, 2001.
Perth In My Boyhood, James Kennedy, Early Days, Journal of the RWAHS Vol. 1, Pt.1 pp.7-10, 1927.
Pillars of a Nation, Joan Beddoe 2022 online.
Redcoat Settlers WA, York Military Post, Diane Oldman online 2022.
Register of Heritage Places Assessment Documentation for St George’s Cathedral, Heritage Council, WA.
Royal Perth Hospital (Kirkman House) Place No. 02049, inHerit, Heritage Council of WA online.
A New History of Western Australia, ed. C T Stannage, Builders and Building, UWA Press 1981.
State and Position of Western Australia; Commonly Called The Swan River Settlement, Captain Frederick Chidley Irwin, Simpkin, Marshall and Co. and J Cross 1835,
and Facsimile Peter Conole and Hesperian Press 2019.
Swan River newspapers and their editors, Steve Errington, Early Days, Journal of the RWAHS Vol. 13, Pt. 5, p.543, 2011.
Wikipedia and Wikipedia Commons.
Archives
AJCP Colonial Secretary’s Office Series CO18 Files 1-165, 1828 to 1870.
AJCP Colonial Secretary’s Office Series CO20 File 1 Folio 86.
A Guide to Colonial Secretary’s Office (CSO) Inward and Outward Correspondence 1828-1878, WASRO.
Parish Registers of Birth and Marriage, Middlesex, England.
Parish Registers of Birth, Death and Marriage 1829-1841, Diocese of Perth, sworn as true copies by Alfred Burton 1937.
Plan of Perth Barracks January 1857 WASRO Cons 3868 item 293-18-6.
Plan of Perth Barracks A Hillman October 1851 WASRO Cons 3868 item 322-18-6.
Plan of Perth Barrack Ground approved Stirling 1835 WASRO Cons 3868 item 319-18-3.
Plan of Perth Public Buildings undated WASRO Cons 3868 item 321-18-5.
Plan of Perth Powder Magazine approved Fitzgerald 1853 WASRO Cons 3850 item 36f.
Swan River Papers Series of 18 Volumes, 10 October 1826 to 27 November 1834, copied by Alice Mayes,1980 transcription, WASRO.
Will of George French Johnson p.1, Probated Civil Court, WASRO Cons 3403-1832-002.
War Office Musters & Paylists WO12-vaious regiments, The National Archives, Kew.
Newspapers and Gazettes
Rather than reproduce my list of around forty newspaper and gazette references, I suggest you check the approximate date and keyword for the topic and then use TROVE, the National Library of Australia’s world-beating newspaper and gazette resource. If you haven’t used it before, you will find it fun, and wonder why you hadn’t.
© Diane Oldman 2025