RAVENSWOOD
Talk given by member Tess Thomson of the Murray Districts Historical Society at a meeting held at the Ravenswood Hotel on Wednesday 27th June, 2012.©
Earliest Settlement
The first settler on Ravenswood was Adam Armstrong. Born in Scotland in 1788 and well educated, he had been the estate manager for the Earl of Dalkeith and had lived on a small farm near Edinburgh called Ravenswood.
Married in 1810, Adam came to Western Australia in 1829 on the ship (the GILMORE) as a land surveyor with Thomas Peel. By this time, he was a widower, and his six children aged between six and nineteen came with him( five boys and a girl).
His wife had died in London while waiting for Peel's group to set sail for Western Australia. Peel placed him in charge of the small group he sent to Mandurah down on the Murray, and by the end of 1830 they had some land cultivated and several houses built. However, by the middle of 1831 Armstrong left Peel’s service after several disagreements and with some worry about the growing aboriginal menace.
He moved to Perth and applied for land on the Swan. Granted 320 acres he called this farm Dalkeith after his home in Scotland. Things were very difficult initially and he had to apply to the Governor for provisions during the first year, 1831.
But seven years later in 1838 when he advertised Dalkeith for sale it included 35 enclosed acres, some sown with wheat, vines which were expected to bear one a half tons of grapes that season and melon vines which would produce up to 4 tons.
When Adam sold Dalkeith 1838/1839 he moved back down to the Murray, this time to 1,111 acres on Cockburn Sound Location16. Lot 16 was part of Peel’s Land Grant and it is thought that some of this acreage had been transferred to Armstrong to finalize affairs between him and Peel.
In 1848, Adam’s youngest son, 24 year old Christopher, married Maria Cooper, one of the daughters of Joseph Cooper of Redcliffe-Pinjarra and of Cooper’s Mill.
Redcliffe at Pinjarra was just a short distance south of Ravenswood and this marriage was not to be the last Cooper connection to Ravenswood.
By 1851 old Adam Armstrong was still living at Ravenswood with his son Adam, and family, and his sister, who had come out in about 1840 to keep house for him.
Wollaston (who ministered to the Australind settlers) visited Adam in 1851. He wrote: "Called and dined at old Armstrong’s. Old man fast failing, thanked me warmly for a letter I left for him last year directing his mind to another and better world. His manner and conversation seemed improved. I used to notice much asperity and fretfulness. Like all other Colonists he has only paved the way for others to reap."
In 1853 when Wollaston called again two years later he found Armstrong ‘greatly altered’. Wollaston mused: “I was surprised when his aged sister informed me her brother was only six year’s older than myself, while I am riding hundreds of miles, preaching too, as I go.” Five months later the old man was dead.
Old Adam’s health had been failing and in September, 1853, he died aged 67 and was buried in a ‘shady spot’ on Ravenswood. Although a notice in the Perth Inquirer on October 12, 1953 states that he died at his residence, Ravenswood, Murray River after a long and painful illness, aged 67, there is no other information of the location of the ‘shady spot’ on Ravenswood.
The property was left to young Adam and he lived there with his growing family for the next six years until he put Ravenswood up for sale. The sale notice included a description of the house that Old Adam had built. It read: “built in the cottage style, consisting of five rooms, with kitchen adjoining, also a barn, a straw-shed, a stable, a stock-yard, an excellent spring of water by the kitchen door, and every convenience required.”
Second Owners
In 1859 Ravenswood was purchased by Elizabeth Thomas on behalf of her husband Captain John Thomas. Elizabeth Thomas was the elder sister of Christopher Armstrong’s wife Maria of the Redcliffe family.
Welsh born, John Thomas had arrived in W.A. in December1829 as a 15 year old with his parents and three siblings on the Gilmore with the Armstrongs and Thomas Peel. His mother and a new baby died while the group was still camped at Clarence.
At 17, John began farming in the Kelmscott district where he and his partner William Gaze were attacked by a group of aboriginals. William died of his wounds and John gave up farming to become a boatman at Fremantle.
John and his wife Elizabeth became very successful. By the time they purchased Ravenswood they had ships carrying freight from Fremantle to Bunbury and the Vasse, and bringing butter back from those districts to Fremantle. Other ships they owned carried goods between Fremantle and Singapore. They also had various business and hotel interests in Fremantle, and Captain Thomas was Chairman of the first Fremantle Council.
By the time the Thomas’s bought Ravenswood in 1859 their seven children were then aged from seven to eighteen.
Three years after they purchased Ravenswood, the great flood of 1862 washed away the original mud brick cottage built by Adam Armstrong. The Thomas family took refuge in a barn, and when this burnt down, Captain Thomas built the more substantial residence “Ravenswood Hall” along with a new red brick coach house barn in 1863.
Mrs Mary Jane Thomas wrote in the 1920s: ”The two storey building of 14 rooms of brick – the bricks being made from clay from the estate, also all the timber used in its construction was cut from trees off the estate. The limestone was also brought to Ravenswood and burnt there. The shingles for the roof were also cut on the estate”.
17 years later, Captain & Elizabeth Thomas moved back to Fremantle about 1876, leaving two of the boys running Ravenswood by which time they had increased the land area to more than 3,000 acres, with nine miles of frontage to the Murray River.
11 years later half of the 3480 freehold acres were fenced, 150 acres were cleared/developed, 75 acres were cropping and they ran 100 cattle, 50 horses, and 20 sheep.
By this time a cottage home had also been added to Ravenswood. This cottage is just downstream of Ravenswood Hall and today is separated from Ravenswood Hall by the road to Mandurah.
In 1880, John & Elizabeth’s eldest son John Frederick Thomas, who had married Emily Reddaway the daughter of a Pensioner Guard, built this cottage for his young family on Ravenswood. Windows from the cottage which had been washed away in 1862, were incorporated into this 1880 cottage now known as Thomasfield.
In 1888 Elizabeth (Cooper) the wife of Captain Thomas died and was buried with her mother at Pinjarra?
When the bridge was built over the Murray at Ravenswood in 1899, it soon became the most popular route between Bunbury and Fremantle because it was shorter.
This gave rise to the re-naming of the old road from Pinjarra to Mandurah known as Mandurah Road but now known as Old Mandurah Road.
HOTEL - Ravenswood Hotel
This 1899 bridge brought traffic past Ravenswood Hall and in 1906 Alfred Thomas, the youngest son of Capt. John Thomas and Elizabeth, gained a licence and Ravenswood Hall then became the Ravenswood Hotel. It remained in the family until 1943.
Sketch plans held at Battye Library show that in 1907 an extra wing was added to the Hotel.
This publican son, Alfred Thomas, (1864-1911) had married Anna Augusta Amelia Armstrong in 1890. Known as Amy, she was a daughter of Christopher Armstrong and Maria Cooper. Amy was her husband Alfred’s first cousin as their mothers were sisters.
(Maria Cooper married Christopher Armstrong and Elizth Cooper married John Thomas.) The marriage of this couple brought the Ravenswood family full circle. Both Alfred and Amy were grandchildren of Joseph Cooper while Alfred was a son of the second owners, the Thomas family, and Amy was a grand-daughter of old Adam Armstrong.
John Frederick & Emily Thomas’s daughter-in-law, Mary Jane (a.k.a. Aunty Jean) ,the widow of their son William, was interviewed for the Battye Library Oral History Programme in October 1975.
She tells us:
“I came to Ravenswood in 1927 as a waitress to work at the Hotel. Originally I‘d come from South Australia. Usually I wouldn’t stay in a place longer than three months but I met my future husband, William Thomas, at Ravenswood and we married. William was the son of John Frederick and Emily Thomas and the grandson of Captain John Thomas. His Aunty Amy who was the widow of Alfred Thomas, who died in 1911, ran the Ravenswood Hotel. My parents-in-law lived in the Cottage home over the way, and William and I lived in a little cottage behind the hotel. The rest of the Thomas family had left Ravenswood to live elsewhere.”
Mary Jane goes on to say:
“Ravenswood was just a big paddock until the Thomas boys split it into blocks for sale in 1933.
The area of Ravenswood now (in 1975) is 3,600 acres, but only 73 acres remains in the Thomas name.
When Captain Thomas died in 1907, the Ravenswood property was split between the four sons. Alfred only got 111 acres, but that was because the hotel was included in that 111 acres.”
She then described the licencing of the hotel in 1906 and says:
“When Uncle opened the place to the public he charged two guineas a week, or eight shillings a day, for bed and board.
It was run as a country hotel, and advertised hunting, shooting and fishing. It was very wild looking in those days but people liked it like that. Elizabeth Thomas (Capt Thomas’ wife) had planted a grape vine and this sprawled over part of the hotel. It was always laden with fruit. Year in and year out the same people would come to stay at the hotel.
Most of them were professional people, lawyers, doctors, teachers, but a lot of honeymooners would come to stay too. Wagons and carts drawn by horses would bring big loads of supplies regularly from Perth.
Of course Uncle Alfred, and later Aunty Amy kept their own cows and hens so they were pretty much self-supporting. They employed the usual complement of cooks, maids and handymen and these people came and went. When Uncle Alfred died in 1911, Aunty Amy took over the licence until 1936 when she started to lease it out.
The first people to lease were partners from Melbourne. They lasted a year and then a Mr. & Mrs Conway took up the lease. They stayed for four years.
The Metro Bus Company took up the lease in 1941 and in 1943 they bought the hotel, i.e. it passed out of the Thomas Family. The bus company were going to do marvelous things with the place, but the World War stopped them because there was a shortage of materials. Later, Mrs. G. Davern took over the hotel, followed by a Mr. Rossman and the present (1975) owners are a Miss Hornsby and a Mr. Hancock.”
Just adding to Mary Jane’s memories:
I have read some extra details about Miss Hornsby or Mona Hornsby as she was better known and would like to share those with you.
Mona Hornsby [1910-1988]- Ravenswood publican 1954-1977
A teacher before the war. In WW 2 she was Captain Mona Hornsby of the Australian Women’s Army Service. Publican of Serpentine Hotel before coming to Ravenswood.
Described as a larger than life character and became a legend. She was big, strong, forthright, astute and soft hearted. The licencee who followed Mona, Tony Boucat, described her as “a big woman, with a voice like a bull, with a soft heart, very popular and knew how to run a good hotel.
The story he told was of one Saturday morning, when what seemed like dozens of bikies roared to a stop outside, stacked their helmets into a big pile in a corner and marched into the bar. Mona was apprehensive, but asked firmly who the leader was. She invited him to have a drink during which she told him that bikies were welcome as long as they followed her rules because she was the boss. The bikies obviously respected her and her wishes as there was no trouble and they returned on other occasions.
Back to Mary Jane’s story:
“When Aunty Amy started leasing the hotel,(from 1936) she moved into an old barn near the hotel which had been converted into a three-roomed cottage. She lived there for ten years and then in 1945 moved to a cottage in Subiaco.
After I married, I had nothing more to do with the running of the hotel. My husband looked after his share of the Ravenswood property and ran cattle, sheep and goats. Early in the century the Thomas family had sent 100 goats to Kalgoorlie for the gold miners.
I was kept busy with the housework and as the men came home for meals I wasn’t lonely.
In 1931 William and I moved into the Cottage home after his parents had died. The cottage had been built in 1880. Some of our property was reclaimed by the Roads Board as the roads went through and now there are only 73 acres left. Apart from a kitchen which was added two years ago, [in 1973] and a new post fence along the side, the cottage is as it was nearly 100 years ago.”
(End of Mary Jane’s writings)
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Ravenswood as a Property was jealously guarded by the Thomas family. Across the river, on the other side of the bridge is the property of Jim Jam.
When Edward Beacham of Jim-Jam died in 1958 his funeral notice referred to Jim-Jim as being at Ravenswood. This was promptly followed by a public notice in the ‘West Australian” from William Thomas pointing out that Jim-Jam could not be at Ravenswood, as Ravenswood was a privately owned registered Estate.
However things were changing and in 1961 Ravenswood became a small township with a subdivision behind the hotel, consisting of a crescent of 56 house blocks along the river and seven small streets - Rodoreda Crescent and Lloyd Avenue, Nancarrow Way ,Gowman Way ,Hayes Court, Stubbs Court, Scott Way, Carter Street.
By 1998 there were about120 houses in Ravenswood and a big development that was being planned for north of the township is now, eighteen years later, the full blown suburb of Ravenswood Waters along Pinjarra Road and opposite Thomasfield, the small 73 acre estate that was divided into several large lots with river reserve frontage.
The 1880’s Thomasfield cottage remains on a few acres, (ten?) and the 1863 Ravenswood Hall is still very visible as the central part of the Ravenswood Hotel.
The red brick coach house barn built with the Hall still stands behind the hotel but is now surrounded by another new small lot development called Ravenswood River Estate which merges into the 1960s first township development.
The hotel building is also much the same today as it was in 1907 but a modern dining room and motel units have been added as well as a caravan park and camping ground alongside in the general area where the very first Armstrong cottage was washed away.
References
Yunderup, Ravenswood Centenary 1898-1998: (A souvenir booklet with no author shown, but general acknowledgements appear on the final page.)
Prosser, Richard, Nov. 21 1981: A brief Outline of the Thomas family and the history of Ravenswood, Battye Library PR11245.
Richards, Ronald: The Murray District of W.A., p.432.
Prosser, Richard, Nov. 21 1981:A brief Outline of the Thomas family and the history of Ravenswood, Battye Library PR11245
