Albany Bell Confectionery Factory - 80 Guildford Road

Albany Bell Confectionery Factory - 80 Guildford Road

The Albany Bell Castle is a heritage-listed building at the corner of Guildford Rd and Thirlmere Road in the Perth suburb of Mount Lawley, Western Australia. It was built in 1914 for the catering company Albany Bell Ltd as a factory to manufacture cakes and confectionery for its eleven tearooms in Perth and three in Kalgoorlie and Boulder. The site chosen two miles (3 km) from Perth, with natural springs that could supply 100,000 gallons of fresh water per day.

The factory was designed by Alexander Cameron, styled on the Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory that Bell had seen in San Francisco, California and the Australian Federation style. It was built in two stages, the first being completed in 1914, including the north wing—a single-storey bakehouse with an oven protruding from it, heated by fire boxes in the cellar. The south wing was of two storeys, the ground floor housing freezer rooms cooled by compressed-gas engines. The second-stage central section was completed in 1919 — including a basement with double-brick cavity walls which provided ideal conditions for the dipping of chocolates. Albany Bell Ltd employed over 400 people in its factory and tearooms. Mr Bell sold the company and factory in 1928.

The factory then became a chicken hatchery and, later, a reserve building for WA Newspapers Ltd during World War II when there were concerns that the paper's St Georges Terrace building might be bombed. After the war it became the offices of the Department of Transport and the Civil Aviation Authority. Later, the Royal WA Institute for the Blind occupied it, establishing its Blind School and providing housing for the children who attended. When the building again became vacant in the 1970s, it was used for rehearsals by WA Opera. In November 1992, the property was assessed under the Heritage Council criteria adopted in 1991 and listed on the interim register. It was eventually resold and developed into apartment accommodation, retaining the external structure and gardens.