Ye Olde Elizabethan Village Toilets
Abandoned buildings don’t need to be cool. We recently ventured down to the Elizabethan village in Armadale. A once bustling tourist attraction, it is now a fenced residential estate consisting of houses of the Elizabethan fashion, to some extent. You can still visit the Elizabethan village pub or stay in a replica of Shakespeare’s house. It was the former that attracted us to one of Perth’s lost attractions.
After getting a pint of house Last Drop Thunderstorm from Western Australia’s oldest boutique brewery we settled in to the comfortable surrounds of the pub which made me feel like I was in a faux English pub in America, until the local Armadaleans reminded me of my true location with their romantic tongue.
The décor certainly fit the theme, and they have a marvellous range of beer coasters on the roof, as well as some theme appropriate prints of Elizabethan paintings, about 4, that had been printed numerous times and adorned on the opposite walls, so you could stare at King Henry from afar, and then turn to your left and see an identical Henry from up close. Convenience.
WA's oldest boutique brewery.
We downed the brew (which redeemed our decision to take the detour we did to get here) and headed out to sight see the estate, which the signs informed us was not allowed, but a visit here is a waste of time if you don’t go and see the houses and marvel at the folk living there, and the buildings, both appropriate and not so. So it goes.
After our exploration we were overcome by the sudden need to expel the beer, post absorption. We thus headed to an old toilet block that was a little worse for wear. Upon entering, we were interested to discover that it truly was a shit hole. Likely unused for a decade at the least, dust, spiders and rubbish ruled the roost here.
What once would have been a well maintained pit stop for the many tourists who ventured here, it was now nothing more than a depressing mess. And so we discovered that it was not just the pub that would have suffered at the fall of the village, but it was also the public toilets, which stands as a signpost of the past glory, as well as a symbol of the current state of affairs.
Tom Camp & Louis Hooper
