Crawley history: Crawley Park, the baths and the university

Crawley is a small suburb with an outsized place in Perth’s story: a colonial estate, a famous swimming baths and the University of Western Australia.

How Crawley got its name

Henry Sutherland bought the land in the early 1830s and named it Crawley Park after his mother, Maria Crawley.

Before the suburb

The southern side of Pelican Point is recorded as Goordandalup, meeting place of the married or betrothed. inHerit describes the nearby Mounts Bay Road foreshore as a favoured camping ground for Whadjuk Nyoongar people at the time of colonisation.

How it grew

George Shenton acquired Crawley Park in 1875, and in 1910 the State Government bought it for public foreshore recreation. The Crawley Baths were built in 1914 and were reportedly the largest enclosed body of water in the southern hemisphere. They were demolished in 1964.

The University of Western Australia moved to Crawley in stages, completing its move from the city in 1932, and the campus expanded greatly from the 1950s to the 1970s.

Places that tell the story

Shenton House, built in stages from 1846, is on the State Register.

The Hackett Memorial Buildings and Winthrop Hall were built between 1930 and 1932 and are on the State Register.

The Crawley Edge Boatshed, built in the 1930s and painted blue in the early 2000s, is a well known landmark on the foreshore.

The Eliza sculpture, unveiled in 2007, marks the site of the old Crawley Baths.

Crawley today

Crawley is largely made up of the university, the foreshore and a small number of apartments and houses on Matilda Bay.

More about Crawley

For what Crawley is like to live in now, read our Crawley suburb profile. If you own a property in Crawley and are thinking about selling, start with buyers for your property.

Sources

• inHerit: Shenton House
• inHerit: Hackett Memorial Buildings
• inHerit: Mounts Bay Road foreshore
• Hughes-Hallett, Indigenous history of the Swan and Canning rivers (2010)

Top image: The Crawley Edge Boatshed. Photo: Sebastian Davenport-Handley, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Dates and names are drawn from the sources above. Where sources differ, we have said so or given an approximate date.

By Key Performance Real Estate, 338 Beaufort Street, Perth