HOUSE (RELOCATED), 1 McCABE PLACE

Parent Place or Precinct

22385 North Fremantle Precinct

Physical Description

RELOCATED - See Place record for Stringfellow's House, 3 Stirling Highway.

History

McCabe Place was formerly the north end of Thompson Road. When Ford Motor Company built a factory cutting across Thompson Road c.1927, this residence (then 102 Thompson Road) was the only house remaining on the north side. Subsequently, permission was granted to change the remaining north end of the street to McCabe Place, after Jeanette Stringfellow at 102 Thompson Road (daughter of the original owner) who married Jock McCabe in 1956. The residence was constructed for Burnett (Ben) Stringfellow by a friend in 1913-1914. Stringfellow had moved from NSW to Western Australia in 1903. Stringfellow was a blacksmith, and a founding member of North Fremantle Methodist Church. He raised his family at the place. His first wife, Jane (nee Richards) died in 1927, leaving three daughters. Stringfellow remarried, and he and his second wife, Nora Ellen, had another daughter. The Stringfellows lived at the place until Ben’s death in 1963, and the house remained in the family until 1968. After this the cottage became used for rental accommodation and the surrounding area became more industrialised. A 1939 plan shows the house as a timber cottage with a verandah across its entire front elevation, and three free-standing outbuildings in the rear yard, one of which (closest to the house) is a laundry. In the 1970s, the owner applied to build greyhound kennels at the place, but the application was refused as being not in keeping with Council policy. An application to demolish the house in 1990 prompted the Timber House Group within the Planning Committee of the City of Fremantle to use the house as a test case for the ‘Innovative Timber Houses Recycling Project’. The project was jointly funded by the City of Fremantle and the State Government’s Homeswest and aimed to provide a solution to two problems - the increasing demolition of timber houses in Fremantle and the need to provide a variety of rental accommodation to clients of Homeswest. In 1991, a newspaper article described the relocation of the residence as the result of an arrangement between Fremantle Council and Homeswest, whereby the two organisations worked together to save the cottage, which had become surrounded by an industrial area, and relocate it to vacant Council land for use as low-income rental housing. The previously vacant site was created through amalgamation and subdivision of land owned by the City of Fremantle and the Water Authority of WA. The house was sawn in half for transport to the corner of Stirling Highway and Tydeman Road, approximately 1km away to the south, where it was to be rebuilt and restored by Homeswest. Photographs show the place at that time in poor condition. It is timber-clad with fibrous cement interior walls. Brick fireplaces remain in at least three of the four main rooms. The place has a hipped corrugated iron roof and bullnose verandah with simple timber posts. The front entrance doorway has toplights and sidelights fitted with ripple glass. The rear of the residence has two hipped-roof sections and a skillion verandah covering a rear area enclosed with weatherboards, glass louvres, and fibrous cement. The Mayor of Fremantle, John Cattalini, opened the cottage on 30 May 1991. Present at the opening was Burnett Stringfellow’s daughter and two granddaughters. In 2004, the cottage is used as a residence and managed by the Department of Housing and Works.

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