Albany Bell Hatchery

Born in South Australia on 20 April 1871, Peter Albany Bell moved to Western Australia in 1887 with his mother, following the death of his farmer dad. For the next six years, he went on to work in a number of jobs including a draper’s delivery boy, an inland stockman and shop assistant. In 1894, he opened a small shop at 86 Hay Street in Perth, making and selling confectionary and lemon squash, which later expanded and developed into a 14-tea room business.

Bell was quick to expand. By the late 1890s and early 1900s, Albany Bell shops and tea rooms had spread across Perth and the goldfields. His city premises moved often, partly because the business was growing and partly because old street numbering was a mess and later changed, with a major renumbering introduced by the City of Perth around 1906-1908 to fix duplicated and inconsistent numbering as Perth became more built up. The renumbering was driven by rapid development following the gold boom and the introduction of the Municipal Corporations Act 1906.

Albany Bells Tea Rooms Hannan Street, Kalgoorlie

Shops and Tea Rooms

Perth City locations

Barrack Street

149 Barrack Street – 1897-1898
127 Barrack Street – 1902
121 Barrack Street – 1908
126-128 Barrack Street – 1908-1924 (demolished 1925)
93 Barrack Street – 1908-1924
119 Barrack Street (Albany Chambers) – 1925-1933

Hay Street

86 Hay Street – 1894-1897
478 Hay Street – 1899-1907
462 Hay Street – 1906-1907
547 Hay Street – 1906-1907
598 Hay Street – 1908
698 Hay Street – 1908
771 Hay Street – 1908
694 Hay Street – 1909-1912
696 Hay Street – 1913-1936

Wellington Street

421 Wellington Street (ABC Co - G.H. & R.E. Cargeeg) – 1912-1915
431 Wellington Street – 1916-1936

William Street

158 William Street – 1897-1907
126-128 William Street – 1908-1924

Suburban locations

Fremantle – 101 High Street – 1900-1912
Subiaco – 1906-1910

A Summer Retreat Albany Bell - Coolgardie Miner - 1 January 1906

Regional and suburban locations

Bunbury – 1906–1928
Coolgardie – Bayley Street – May 1898-1928 (former “Arctic Circle” shop)
Kalgoorlie – 98-100 Hannan Street – 1901-1934
Kalgoorlie – 100 Hannan Street – 1935 (Later became “Tippetts Tea Room”)
Kalgoorlie – 288 Hannan Street – 1906-1928
Kanowna – Isabella Street – 1899-1928

Early factory sites

Perth – 344 Bulwer Street – 1900-1904
North Perth – Earl Street – 1901-1907
Perth – 21 Dangan Street – 1908-1917
Mount Lawley – 84-88 Guildford Road – 1917-1937

From shops to tearooms

Bell also looked overseas for ideas. In 1898 he travelled to the United States to study the soda fountain trade. The trip had a real impact on his business. Upon returning, he introduced newer American-style products and serving methods, including pure fruit juices, milkshakes and sundaes.

In April 1900, a tender was advertised for bricklayers to build a two-storey shop and dwelling on Hannan Street in Kalgoorlie.

Albany Bell Manufacturing Confectioner Trademark

Sometime after Federation in 1901, Bell began manufacturing cakes and pastries, which helped turn his confectionery shops into tearooms. In 1904, he registered a trade mark for Buttercups in respect of confectionery, as part of building a recognisable business identity. This was followed with another in 1905 for “Sundae”, covering substances used as food or ingredients and in 1906, a third trade mark for “The Sort Mother Used To Make” in respect of confectionery.

Albany Bell Ltd was formally established in October 1911.

Early setbacks

Not everything ran smoothly. At one of the Kalgoorlie-Boulder shops, a girl working there accidentally started a fire when she used powder in an attempt to get rid of mosquitoes. A constable rang the fire alarm and the local brigade turned out, only to be reportedly disgusted when they learned what had caused the fire.

In 1908, Bell was fined £2 for selling adulterated milk (about $590 today), although his defence was that he sold it as it had been supplied to him. Adulterated milk was basically milk that had been watered down or had the cream removed, meaning people weren’t getting what they paid for. It was a problem not just because it was a bit dodgy but because it could also be unsafe if contaminated water was used and by the early 1900s, it had been made illegal under food purity laws.

An earlier police court report shows he was charged 2 shillings and 6 pence plus costs when some of his cattle strayed. A later record shows he was granted a cow-keeper’s licence in 1907 for his 18-acre site on Guildford Road, near the Maylands Hotel. By 1909, he was also reported to be producing maize up to 10 feet high.

Albany Bell Hatchery Castle

Albany Bell Hatchery

Around 1913 to 1914, Peter Bell bought a large parcel of land on Guildford Road in Mount Lawley, then about two miles east of Perth. At the time, this was still fringe suburban land, with natural springs providing a substantial water supply, which was a major advantage for food production. The site had previously been described as an old pineapple estate.

The main factory building, later nicknamed the Albany Bell Castle, was designed by architect Alexander Cameron of Powell, Cameron and Chisholm and built between 1914 and 1919. The building followed what has been described as Inter-War Functionalist design, using brick and render with a small tower element and a curved concrete canopy over the entrance. The castle-like look, with towers, crenellations and a garden setting, was said to have come from Bell seeing similar factory architecture overseas and wanting something more attractive and respectable than the plain industrial boxes most manufacturers were building. Other sources point to the Ghirardelli chocolate factory in San Francisco as the inspiration, which, given Bell’s trip to the United States, makes more sense.

The Guildford Road estate handled large-scale production of cakes, pastries, chocolates and ice cream for Bell’s tearooms. The north wing was a single-storey bakehouse, with an oven projecting from the building and heated by fireboxes in the cellar below. The south wing was two storeys. The ground floor contained freezer rooms cooled by compressed gas engines, while the basement was built with double-brick cavity walls, creating the right conditions for chocolate dipping.

At its peak, the operation employed more than 400 people. It was also regarded as a progressive workplace for its time. Workers were said to receive two weeks annual leave on full pay and those in the goldfields were given holiday rail fares to the coast. This was well ahead of what many workers elsewhere could expect.

The family also lived on the estate. Peter and his wife Edith Agnes, together with their children, were recorded as living at 88-96 Guildford Road in Mount Lawley, depending on how the property was being numbered at the time.

Addresses and tenants

84 Guildford Road, Mount Lawley

ABC Ltd (registered office) – 1928-1933
Ace Confectionery Works – 1933-1941
Adams Ltd (cake manufacturers) – 1936-1937
Albany Bell Ltd – confectionery manufacturers, head office & workshop – 1917-1937
Atlas Macaroni Manufacturing Co – 1933-1940
F. X. Bernet Ltd (wholesale pastrycooks & confectionery) – 1930
Howell & Goss (pastry cooks) – 1933-1935
Havu Distributing Co (wholesale grocers) – 1938-1939
Maston Albany Bell – 1936-1946
Lewis Richard Butt (pastry cook) – 1938-1939
National Trading Co Ltd (wholesale grocers & factory) – 1939-1941
Williams & Gibson (confectionery manufacturers) – 1942

Individuals and caretakers

Arthur Maloney – 1930-1935
Frederick Herbert Carroll (caretaker) – 1921-1928
Herbert Walter Beal – 1917
John Gates – 1918-1920
Peter Morrison – 1934-1935

86 Guildford Road

Andrew Sheahan – 1937-1939
Williams & Gibson (confectionery manufacturers) – 1945-1949

88 Guildford Road, Mount Lawley

Albany Bell – 1928-1930
Albany Bell Hatchery – 1944-1946
Maston Albany Bell – 1941-1949
W. B. Castieau – 1937-1940

Maylands (renumbered sections of the same site)

90 Guildford Road

Peter Albany Bell – 1939-1949
Albany Bell Hatchery – 1945-1949

At some point during the inter-war years, a separate building on the estate was used as a commercial chicken hatchery run by Peter’s son, Maston Albany Bell. Most poultry breeding at the time was still carried out on farms rather than in purpose-built hatcheries.

Albany Bell Soda Fountain, confectioner and pastrycooks, 124 William Street, Perth

Selling up

For nearly thirty years, Albany Bell tearooms were hugely popular but things started to go wrong in 1925 when the hospitality industry was hit by a bitter strike. As chairman of the Master Caterers’ Association, Bell was right in the middle of it. The strike, led by the Hotel and Restaurant Employees’ Union, ran for more than four weeks and caused major disruption. Police were heavily criticised for not stepping in and the matter even triggered a censure motion against the government, which is a formal parliamentary expression of strong disapproval.

Bell’s company tried to have the union deregistered but failed, although the eventual agreement softened compulsory union clauses. Between that dispute, rising costs and growing competition, he seemed to have had enough. In 1928, he sold his interest in the business and stepped away, with later records showing the Guildford Road site passing through a mix of operators, including members of the Bell family.

Faith and service

Bell’s life outside business was deeply shaped by religion. He was an early convert to the Churches of Christ. His mother Jane was a foundation member of the first Church of Christ in Western Australia and Peter himself was among the first new members to commit his life to Christ, being baptised in the Swan River in March 1891. His view in life seemed to be that money was to be made not just for personal gain, but for God’s work.

He became a foundation member of the YMCA in Western Australia, a foundation member of the Silver Chain Nursing Association and a member of the Perth Hospital Board. In 1909, he was commissioned as a justice of the peace and served in the Children’s Court. During a business trip to the United States in 1915, he also studied progressive approaches to juvenile delinquency.

Peter Albany Bell

In 1916, Bell volunteered for overseas service with the YMCA and sailed to England and France on the Afric. The YMCA was not a military unit but during wartime, it worked closely with the troops, running huts, canteens, rest spaces and other support services that helped keep morale, health and daily life functioning. Overseas YMCA service was often treated much like military duty because it was attached to the army system, carried many of the same risks and was seen as national service rather than just a charity. Even though YMCA workers were not combatants, they served in active war zones and faced shelling, bombing, disease and long deployments. Many were injured, killed or captured. Their role was to support the physical and mental wellbeing of troops across the war front, which was considered vital to military effectiveness. Bell returned home in February 1919 and was discharged the following month.

In later life, his religious and charitable work increasingly shaped the direction of his efforts. In 1941, he attended the Federal Conference of Churches of Christ in Australia with Roy Raymond to help create a board focused on what records at the time described as the evangelisation and general uplift of Australian Aboriginal people. When the Board was formed, Bell became chairman. He subsequently purchased 3,750 acres on the Collie River near Bunbury and established the Chandler Home for Unemployed Boys. This later became the Roelands Aboriginal Mission in 1938, also known as the Roelands Native Mission Farm and Roelands Mission. By 1941, the farm would exclusively house Aboriginal children. Over roughly 34 years, more than 500 children of the Stolen Generations passed through the institution. Today Roelands is a positive place of healing and development for the children of the mission and their families.