The school's first building was opened in 1882 on
High Street in the port town of Fremantle under the name Fremantle Catholic Boys' School in a building still standing on school grounds, which is now Blessed Edmund Chapel and used for College Liturgies and Masses. This building was constructed because the original school had outgrown St Patrick's Presbytery. The single story building was designed by a former
Fenian convict,
Joseph Nunan, A change in the colony's Education Act in 1895 meant that all financial support for church-based schools was withdrawn. The recently arrived religious order of Christian Brothers was invited to take over the running of the parish school, and to establish a high school for the education of boys in the Fremantle area. In January 1901, the first group of brothers took charge of what was then known as St. Patrick's Boys' School. Thirty boys were enrolled but this number soon grew to ninety within four weeks. Soon afterwards, the High School opened with an enrolment of twenty-nine which soon rose to fifty-seven by the end of the year. From 1901 to 1913, Christian Brothers' College Fremantle was one of half-a-dozen schools in Western Australia preparing students for public examinations for the
University of Adelaide until the
University of Western Australia opened in 1914 with two brother and two former CBC students among the first graduates. In the last twenty years the school has become staffed by predominantly lay teachers, with 2002 seeing the appointment of the schools' first lay Principal, David McFadden. The years that followed saw CBC Fremantle undergo radical changes including the addition of a large gymnasium, new science labs, manual arts area, the renovation of the library, a new administration building and refurbishment of other key areas of the campus. In October 2007, Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA) took responsibility for the governance of CBC Fremantle along with forty other Edmund Rice schools, including
Aquinas College and
Trinity College. ==House system==