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Rowland Assheton was unfortunate to pass away on the threshold of a stellar career concentrated in the fields of hospitality and entertainment.
Not before 50 passengers had died from an outbreak of cholera on board did the Dirigo, on which Rowland Assheton's father, the Lancastrian John Assheton (1829-1896) chose to sail to Australia in 1854, return to port. Fumigated and restocked, the same ship took John from Liverpool to SA where he settled near Nairne in the Adelaide hills. A carpenter by trade, he involved and ingratiated himself in the district, soon marrying the 15 year-old daughter of a tanner and fellow Forester (SA Register 6.2.1857: 4). In the city, John worked under Perryman & Son on the 1856-7 stage of the Legislative Council building but by 1862 he and his wife had moved to Moonta where his skills were recognised at the New Cornwall Mine (Marsden et al, 1990: 246; SA Weekly Chronicle 10.10.1863: 2). Convivial and managerial, in 1868 John naturally assumed the licence of the Prince of Wales Hotel. He separated, remarried the local nurse, and became all the more a public figure, widely-known and highly-regarded. After his second wife and their infant daughter died, he married Caroline Spooner, 20 years his junior (Wallaroo Times 19.8.1868: 1; BDM). Then began the years 1879-92 in charge of the Commercial Hotel, Naracoorte. Five children were brought up here in an atmosphere of community service, lodgemanship and dedication to every worthy cause - from the church fete to the Dramatic Club. John Assheton served five years on the district council championing, especially, the cottage hospital to which, using his building expertise honorarily, he made additions and improvements. ‘He was blunt in speech, and in his dealings … did not traverse angular positions’ (Naracoorte Herald 10.3.1896: 2). A final move was made farther eastwards to the ‘break-of-gauge town’, Wolseley (Naracoorte Herald 22.3.1892: 2). Another popular regime at the Wolseley Hotel ended with his much-mourned death in 1896.
Encouraged by their parents, the talented and outgoing Assheton children produced and acted in fund-raising amateur theatricals from an early age. While his older brothers, Fred and Arthur - known as ‘Pip’ - figured prominently on the sports field, Rowland was winning prizes for creative work at Wolseley Primary (Naracoorte Herald 29.10.1895: 3). In 1897, Caroline Assheton transplanted the family in Malvern, southern Adelaide. At Unley Public and, for a year or two, Pulteney Grammar School, Rowland continued to excel, gaining a scholarship on the strength of his woodcraft to attend the Government School of Art and Design (Advertiser 11.2.1898: 6). At the turn of the century, he entered the office of the timber merchant-turned-architect, Henry Cowell, as an articled student. After an indenture of four years, working beside the Cowell boys, Hubert and Walter, Rowland rented a room in their chambers and proceeded to draught on contract to his erstwhile employer and other ‘leading’ architects of the day.
Whereas the eldest Assheton son, Fred, obtained railway engineering experience in West Australia, Pip picked up the licence of the familiar Wolseley Hotel and, an understudy of his father in every way, undertook building work on the side. Rowland was summoned to modernise the hotel, to draw Anglican Church works at Bordertown, and to bring about the Naracoorte Masonic Lodge (Naracoorte Herald 23.3.1906: 3, 3.9.1907: 2, 22.9.1925: 4). The Cowells appear to have handed Rowland a residence to design in West Adelaide just before Pip, under pressure to revisit his wife’s country, accepted the inaugural licenseeship of the Grand Hotel, Port Lincoln (a work of 1905 by E.H. Bayer). Making himself useful there in the infectious Assheton manner, Pip secured another Masonic Lodge commission for Rowland in 1908-9 (Register 25.5.1909: 7). Despite these modest beginnings in practice, Rowland became the subject of a biographical sketch in the compendious Cyclopedia of SA (v. i, 1907, p. 548), taking a place ahead of many another more distinguished architect.
Out of the social swim on the West Coast, Pip next bought into the Federal Hotel, Semaphore, to run a legendarily jolly house until he was replaced by an equally popular Fred Assheton who, at Port Elliot, had also fallen into hotel management. In return for bed and board as well as a desk at the Federal, Rowland added a balcony to round off some redecoration by C.E.W. Parsons (Register 13.2.1911: 7). At the seaside, Rowland mixed with other hoteliers, hotel brokers, beachfront showmen, and assorted agents. Commissions for sizeable refreshment rooms on the Henley and Semaphore jetties, refurbishment of a temporary theatre and a new pair of lettable cottages on the Henley Esplanade for the Gaetjens family came of these associations (Advertiser 23.9.1911: 12, 8.12.1911: 11). Already a go-between, one of the brokers, C.A. Moody, went further to assemble a syndicate of ex-Moontaneers in the hotel business with the aim of building a cinema. Loyal to the memory of John Assheton, the investors in 1911 appointed Rowland and Pip to design and construct the Central Picture Theatre, Wakefield Street, Adelaide. While Pip attracted sensational headlines: ‘200,000 bricks laid in a record-breaking 15.5 days … 67 creditors owed a total of £3229’, Rowland found his true vocation (Evening Journal 12.7.1912: 4, 3.5.1912: 3; Pt Pirie Recorder 26.4.1913: 4). Two commissions later - new houses for his mother and Mr Moody - and he was planning the Torrensville Star for Fred Assheton’s successors at the Federal (Express and Telegraph 3.3.1915: 4; Register 6.11.1915: 3). Sure of his direction, Rowland marries a police trooper’s daughter, returns to the Malvern house, and rents an office suite in Grenfell Street.
The relationship in Adelaide between gin or coffee palaces and picture palaces is again demonstrated by Alfred Drake, owner of the Norfolk Arms, Rundle Street West. Engaging Rowland, Mr Drake spent £14,000 to rebuild the hotel beneath the towering Grand Theatre, Rundle Street, still a landmark in the city today (Mail 15.7.1916: 6, 16.12.1916: 6). In the lead-up to the erection of ‘the Grand’ in 1916 by Arthur Assheton - his bankruptcy honourably-discharged - Rowland’s services were in heightened demand. At the end of the year, the press reported ‘… a man quick to perceive, clever in design, faithful in construction, and an enthusiast all the time’ had lately delivered three other theatres, upgraded an existing one, and extensively altered several city hotels (Mail 16.12.1916: 6). Before the wartime government decided that civilians were enjoying themselves too much and ceased issuing permits to developers, cinemas popped up far and wide. Rowland designed an enclosable open-air venue in Broken Hill, the Lyric Theatre in Renmark, the Taylor Street hall in Kadina and, challenging the luxury of ‘the Grand’, a seafront example at Glenelg (Register of Works, AM). Wells’s Picture Gardens on the Parade, Norwood, was improved before Dan Clifford eliminated its competition from his Star cinema chain.
Competition for patronage likewise fuelled the remodelling of hotels. New, ‘artistic’ interiors at the Red Lion, Rundle Street, may have forced Mr Drake’s neighbouring hand while the Oriental on a Gawler Place corner needed a fresh image after a change of name owed to a prevalentanti-German sentiment (Mail 7.12.1912: 1; Daily Herald 18.12.1915: 3). Internal modifications of the Prince Alfred Hotel, part of the Town Hall complex, emerged the most costly at over £1800 (Mail 16.12.1916: 6). Subsequently, the Assheton brothers’ combined experience, not least in fireproof reinforced concrete construction, determined their selection to design and build the Grosvenor Hotel on North Terrace. Financed by £100,000 worth of shares sold by the megalomaniacal J.J.H. Browne, director of the furnishers, Davis Browne Ltd, the 360-roomed coffee palace aimed at sobersided visitors from the country, exceeded in bulk the similarly six-storeyed Grand Central Hotel of 1911 on Pulteney Street. Its lasting presence remains an undeniable monument to the genetic probity of two Naracoorte boys, 40 and 32 years old at the outset of negotiations in 1917 (Mail 13.9.1919: 5).
The remainder of the war years yielded only minor alterations to one hotel and two cinemas but a rare, new residence at Gawler as well. Conversion into a drama theatre of a dance hall (1920) for the Percival family of caterers - promoter of the Glenelg movie house - marked a revival of general commercial activity which was emphasised in 1922 by an assertive rebuilding of Thebarton’s Wheatsheaf Hotel (Register 8.7.1927: 10; S246/2/82, AM). Indeed, the licensed victuallers’ grapevine resprouted to bring Rowland another series of makeovers reaching to Frances in the South-East and, farther, once more to Wolseley where Pip had withdrawn part-time to pull down the hotel and start again.
Considering the upward economic trend and Rowland’s professional reputation, it is unexpected to find his invitations to tender thenceforward nominate only sundry hotel renovations. When it became known Rowland was suffering from spastic fits and a spreading, terminal paralysis, estate agents threw two or three lifelines, but he could no longer draw and did not live to see realised Mr Percival’s repeatedly-postponed Gentleman’s Bungalow at Glenelg wherein he had embodied ideas cherished from a formative Edwardian past. Arthur Assheton was the likely contractor (SA Weekend 22-23.8.2015: 15).
Citation details
Walkley, Giles 'Assheton, Ralph Rowland George’, Architecture Museum, University of South Australia, 2024, Architects of South Australia: [http://www.architectsdatabase.unisa.edu.au/arch_full.asp?Arch_ID=167] |
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