Mundaring is a suburb located 34 km east of Perth on the Great Eastern Highway. The suburb is located within the Shire of Mundaring. The Aboriginal name of the area ‘Mindah-lung’, said to mean ‘a high place on a high place’, was anglicised to become ‘Mundaring’. Mundaring Weir is a dam (and historically the adjoining locality) located 39 kilometres (24 mi) from Perth, Western Australia in the Darling Scarp. The dam and reservoir form the boundary between the suburbs of Reservoir and Sawyers Valley. The dam impounds the Helena River. Mundaring Weir is located in the Darling Scarp. European populations did not grow significantly in Western Australia until construction of the dam in the late 1890s. It was only after the completion of the weir that the location became popular with picnickers and sightseers, as the project caught the imagination of the public in Perth. The Irish Australian engineer Charles Yelverton O’Connor was involved the design of a pipeline that transported water to Kalgoorlie the most controversial project ever undertaken in its time.
The hotel is built on the first piece of freehold land, five minutes walk from the Weir. The Hotel was built to accommodate the rush of visitors viewing the construction of the Weir, and for the men working on the Weir. Sly grog had been discovered on the site and the three-man police force stationed at the Weir were keen to get alcohol sales under control.
In 1898, the Jacoby brothers built a single storey building called the Reservoir Hotel. The building was situated adjacent to the railway line on the first piece of freehold land next to the weir easement. In 1906, Fred Jacoby constructed a two-storey building as part of the Hotel and renamed it the Goldfields Weir Hotel. Some of the building materials for the construction of the hotel were brought out to Australia from England by sailing ship. A bricklayer doing repairs to the foundation of the fireplace, which is now the Coffee Shop, found bricks bearing the name of his home town in the north of England.