Swanbourne Hospital
Swanbourne Hospital is a heritage listed former mental hospital located in Mount Claremont, Western Australia. Built in 1904, it was the largest stand-alone psychiatric hospital in Western Australia for much of the twentieth century until its closure in September 1972. The hospital was originally known as Claremont Hospital for the Insane, Claremont Mental Hospital and Claremont Hospital. Following the closure of Claremont Hospital in 1972, the original 1904 section of the hospital functioned as the Swanbourne Hospital until 1985. The site was vacant from 1986, until renovated and reopened primarily as an aged care residence in 2018.
The site contains buildings of significant heritage value, including Montgomery Hall, which used to be the second largest theatre venue in Perth.
History
The first institution in Western Australia to care for the mentally ill was the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, which opened in 1865 with the transfer of ten convicts.In 1891, the colonial government began the process of designing a new facility to replace the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, which was already becoming overcrowded. Colonial architect George Temple-Poole gave evidence to an 1891 Select Committee inquiry and strongly urged the construction of a new and much larger hospital in "an airy situation, as far from the town as convenient". Poole also favoured the "pavilion" system: discrete self-contained blocks connected by a corridor. Each "pavilion" was designed for a separate group of patients – quiet and industrious, violent and noisy, epileptic, sick and infirm, or convalescent.
On 23 April 1895 the West Australian newspaper reported that the government had decided to build in what is now John Forrest National Park near Midland. However, at the end of 1895 the colonial government purchased the Point Walter site from Dr Alfred Waylen for £6000, and the West Australian confirmed on 4 March 1896 that Perth's new lunatic asylum "is practically settled, will be situated in a corner of the area of 200 acres at Point Walter".
Poole drew up two sets of plans for the Point Walter Lunatic Asylum: an original sketch plan and a later amended design dating from early 1896. Both show a pavilion-style hospital with classification of patients and the wards radiating in two crescents from a central administration block. The wards were arranged that the quietest patients were near the administrative block, and the classes of patient devolved to the "violent and noisy" blocks on the end of each crescent.
The Point Walter idea was abandoned because the site was too small. A new committee – Sir James Lee-Steere, George Shenton, and Drs Alfred Waylen, Thomas Lovegrove and Henry Barnett – was formed in the latter half of 1896 to co-ordinate the development of the new asylum, and they visited twenty different potential sites over three months. This committee eventually chose the Whitby Falls site at Mundijong, in the face of vehement opposition from Dr Henry Barnett, Surgeon Superintendent of Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, who died later that year.
On 26 May 1897 John Harry Grainger was appointed Principal Architect of the Public Works Department; he visited the Whitby site in July 1897 and pronounced it suitable for building a new asylum. However, an economic downturn and financial paralysis overcame the Whitby project; the State estimates continued to allocate very small sums to running repairs at Fremantle Lunatic Asylum, and to improving the existing property at Whitby. By mid-1899 it was becoming apparent that no major building works would go ahead at Whitby in the immediate future.
Claremont Hospital for the Insane
In 1901, the newly appointed Surgeon Superintendent of the Fremantle Lunatic Asylum and the Whitby Falls Asylum Farm, Dr Sydney Hamilton Rowan Montgomery, declared Whitby Falls an unsuitable site for a new large asylum. Montgomery and Grainger travelled to the eastern states of Australia to examine the design of various asylums and relevant legislation. In 1901 Dr Montgomery chaired a committee formed to select a site for a new asylum, and in early 1903 the committee chose a site at Claremont, accessible from both Perth and Fremantle, to be staffed largely by experienced personnel, including a resident medical officer. The advantages of this location were "ease of visiting", "lower construction and operating costs", "ease of providing entertainment", "proximity to medical help" and "ease of obtaining staff". Government Reserve H8636 at Claremont was set aside for the new asylum on 27 February 1903, consisting of of land, including an artesian water supply.The hospital was to be administered under the new Lunacy Act of 1903, managed by a state government Lunacy Department headed by the new Inspector General of the Insane, Sydney Montgomery. Temporary buildings were subsequently set up and on 18 August 1903 twenty "quiet and chronic" patients were moved there from Whitby Falls Hospital to help clear the scrub and prepare the site for building and farming. The layout of the site is almost identical to that of George Temple-Poole's 1896 designs for the Point Walter Lunatic Asylum, which may indicate that Grainger reused Poole's plans. The Claremont buildings, however, were almost exact copies of those designed by Hillson Beasley for the original Whitby Falls Asylum project.
In 1903, the Public Works Department, under Grainger's supervision, prepared plans for the development of the site. The central area contained the administration block, main store, kitchen, attendants' quarters, and the dining and recreation hall. To the north were the female patients' wards, with those for male patients located to the south. There were separate wards for different categories of patients, which included "quiet and chronic", "recent and acute", "sick and infirm", "epileptic" and "violent and noisy", which were located furthest from the centre. Covered walkways on the eastern side of the blocks connected the wards to the central buildings. The main administrative buildings were located on the highest point of the site, at its eastern end, and included a portico constructed from Donnybrook stone. Grainger also designed the heritage-listed Inspector General's residence, which still stands at 1 Grainger Close, Mount Claremont.
By 1904 all the male wards were under construction, but the female wards were constructed over a more extended period, with the fifth female ward not being constructed until 1934. To the north east of the central core buildings were the hospital's service buildings including the boiler house and laundry. Transfer of patients from Fremantle began in 1904, but it was not until 1909 that all patients had been moved and the Fremantle asylum closed.
From 1910 to 1912, four new wards were designed and built by the Public Works Department under the direction of then Principal Architect, Hillson Beasley, and Acting Principal Architect William Hardwick. X Block, as it was known then, was constructed at the site that eventually became Graylands Hospital. The block was placed in an isolated position, adjacent to the dairy farm, and approximately 800m to the east of the main Claremont Hospital for the Insane site. Similar in plan to the main hospital, this block had a central core incorporating a kitchen, a dining hall, a doctor's residence and small rooms for the head attendant, with two wards located on either side of the core area. Two rotundas that provided shelter for patients were constructed in the outdoor area on either side of the kitchen. The four separate free-standing wards and the core buildings were connected by means of timber framed covered walkways. Each ward had a separate single-storey bathroom and latrines building located on the eastern elevation. X Block was completed by 1910–11 at a cost of £24,789 and accommodated 150 patients, who worked in the adjoining farm, associated gardens and orchards located on the hospital site. The X Block wards were originally open wards, with patients on an honour system to be inside by 10 pm.
Claremont Mental Hospital
The hospital was renamed Claremont Mental Hospital in 1933. In 1939 a new physical treatment block was planned and built at Claremont Mental Hospital by the Public Works Department under the direction of the Principal Architect, Albert Ernest Clare. This building, known originally as the "Treatment Block", comprised two wings of wards at right angles with associated bathroom, lavatory, treatment and recreation areas with a central administration area constructed to bisect the two wings on the diagonal. The building was constructed at an estimated cost of £26,500.However, the new treatment block was taken over by the military at the outset of World War II pending the construction of the military's own hospital facility at AGH 110. During this period, the building was known as "Davies Road Service Block", "Davies Road Annexe", or "Military Block". Mental Health Services regained control of the block by 1945 and used it to accommodate ex-servicemen with psychiatric disorders, and by the 1950s the block became known as "Montrose House". Incoming Inspector General of the Insane Dr Digby Moynagh then had Montrose House renovated, and on 17 April 1959 the building was re-opened as Australia's first psychiatric day hospital. The Graylands Day Hospital continued to operate on the site until it moved to Shenton Park in the 1960s, and the building was resumed for ward purposes and renamed "Riverton House" in 1967.
In 1954 the Commonwealth government funded the construction of a Tuberculosis Block on the Claremont Mental Hospital site, which lay across the southern end of the Hospital sports ground. This was later renovated for use as an early treatment and admissions centre, outpatients clinic and infirmary, which became part of the original Graylands Hospital complex in 1972 and was called "Victoria House".
In 1961 a sheltered workshop was constructed at Claremont Mental Hospital, and by November that year activities were established involving patients in simple production and manufacturing tasks, including the maintenance of hospital equipment and the production of concrete slabs for hospital pathways. The first building constructed for this purpose was Forrest House.