Hilton history: Chester Park, the Commonage and the garden suburb

Hilton was once part of the Fremantle Commonage and of a district known as Chester Park. After the Second World War the State Housing Commission turned it into a planned garden suburb, and much of that plan survives.

How Hilton got its name

Landgate records that Hilton is named after Hilton Park, a reserve in the area. Hilton Park was on a list of postal districts put forward by the Postmaster General in May 1954, and the suburb kept that name until May 1959, when “Park” was dropped.

The name is older than the suburb. Writing in Early Days, the journal of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society, in 1931, Kate Caldwell recorded that the district had been known as Chester Park and was renamed Hilton Park after a competition held when the land was subdivided. She traced the land from McDermott to Richard Davis and then to Chester, and noted that it was owned by Simpson at the time of subdivision. The local primary school opened in 1950 as Hilton Park Primary School.

Before the suburb

The City of Fremantle recognises the Whadjuk as the traditional owners of Walyalup, the Fremantle area, which it places within Beeliar, one of the land divisions of the Whadjuk people.

Much of the land that became Hilton was Fremantle Commonage. In 1946 and 1947 the City of Fremantle and the State Housing Commission negotiated the release of more Commonage land for public housing. The council wanted the subdivision to provide public space and amenity, and the transfer conditions required that roads and reserves be provided first.

How it grew

Demand for rental housing rose sharply after the war, with returned servicemen and new migrants needing homes, and the Workers Homes Board was renamed the State Housing Commission. By 30 June 1948, 41 houses had been finished at Hilton Park under the Commonwealth and State Rental Homes Scheme. In 1949 the council made a further 135 acres of Commonage available east and south-east of the first estate, for 144 house lots, five shop lots, five acres for community use and 14 acres for a school. By June 1950 the total had reached 164 houses, with 28 more under way, and by June 1951 another 355 lots were ready.

Brick was costly, so the Commission concentrated on cheaper timber houses for lower paid workers. A City of Cockburn history records 427 houses in Hilton by 1956, against 178 in neighbouring Hamilton Hill. The school was built in stages from 1949 to 1954 as separate junior and senior schools, which were joined in 1977. The Paget Street shops and Morniborn Park followed in the 1950s, and the Police and Citizens Youth Club building in 1975.

Places that tell the story

The Heritage Council’s inHerit database records the Hilton Central Area, around Rennie Crescent and Paget Street, as a precinct designed on garden suburb principles, with curving and straight streets planned around the school, shops and park. It includes the school’s Bristol classrooms, built to standard Public Works Department plans, the Kulunga kindergarten, the community and child health centre and a relocated Progress Association hall.

The house at 2 Lynch Place, built in 1950, is on the City of Fremantle Heritage List as an intact example of a State Housing Commission house from the first years of Hilton Park. The City now treats Hilton as one of its 23 heritage areas, the Hilton Garden Suburb Heritage Area, noting its imported Austrian prefabricated houses and the timber houses designed by Marshall Clifton.

Hilton today

The 2021 Census counted 4,323 people in Hilton, with a median age of 38. Most of its housing is still separate houses.

More about Hilton

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

Sources

• Landgate: Perth and surrounds suburb names (archived 2022)
• Kate Caldwell, ‘Fremantle street names’, Early Days, 1931 (Freotopia transcription)
• City of Fremantle: Aboriginal history
• inHerit: Hilton Central Area
• inHerit: House, 2 Lynch Place, Hilton
• City of Cockburn history: State Housing and suburbia in Hamilton Hill, 1950s
• City of Fremantle: Local Planning Policy 3.6.1 Heritage Areas Listings
• City of Fremantle: Heritage listings and areas
• Hilton Primary School
• ABS 2021 Census QuickStats: Hilton (WA)

Top image: Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church, Hilton, 2012. Photo: Orderinchaos, CC BY-SA 3.0, 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