The house is rather typical for the area, consisting of a 19C limestone cottage that has been modified and expanded in a few phases over the last 100 years.
At its core, the original plan looks to be just 4 rooms arranged around a central corridor. The walls are thick rubble limestone messily stacked between red brick quoins and door/window reveals. The method in itself is an interesting inversion of the more common stone framing with brick infill, but in Fremantle the availability of good brick was far more costly than the almost unlimited supply of free soft limestone that makes up the land. The floors are joisted in the original rooms and ceilings are high. No original windows exist, and previous renovations have cut at the existing fabric with no regard for existing detailing, which leaves a striking misalignment between the eras. A major extension sometime around the middle of this century has built a series of new brick walls and concrete slabs on ground that fully enclose the original limestone north facade. The large deep north-facing garden is scattered with various DIY extensions and outbuildings.
The central challenge seems to be in arranging the living in a way that is better engaged with the garden while creating a living area that is well defined and generous that sits appropriately with the scale of the existing spaces. Many of the demands of today are at times in conflict with the house planning of 2 generations ago, though an attempt is made to maintain an arrangement of large rooms that sequence more like a traditional home than the series of open-plan spaces that typically dilute the existing cottages of Fremantle.
