James Fergusson, architect

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architecture

Street View: Suppl. 5
Address: 20 Langham Place

Although Tallis just described James Fergusson as Esquire, he was much more than just a gentleman retired from active business. He was heavily involved in various building committees and the history of architecture on which he wrote several books. I have therefore given him the occupation of ‘architect’, although he was not a practising architect as such. Fergusson had made his money in India as an indigo planter, but sold up in 1840 or thereabouts and came back to England. In June 1842, he acquired the leases of four properties in Langham Place⁽¹⁾ and proceeded to build a block of houses to his specifications on what had been the front of Marks’ coach repository. Henry Stacy Marks, in his Pen and Pencil Sketches of 1894 wrote “the old premises were sold to Mr. Fergusson the architect, who had them entirely rebuilt and reconstructed”. “The Langham Place frontage was displaced by a new row of handsome houses … in the centre of which was an entrance to the new business premises, entirely remodelled, and if less picturesque, more convenient”.

Fergusson used number 20 (mistakenly numbered 25 by Tallis) as his own residence, which was larger than numbers 3, 19 and 21 as he also had the section above the new entrance to Marks’ coach repository (see illustration below; red line under Fergusson’s residence). See for the illogical numbering of the houses the post on Alfred Markwick who occupied number 19, and for the changes to the coach repository the post on Marks & Co.

The houses were not designed by Fergusson himself, but by David Mocatta. A sketch of the plan is held in the RIBA collection.

The third edition of Fergusson’s The History of Architecture was published after his death and included a ‘Sketch of his Life’ by William H. White, who said that Fergusson had always intended to come home from India as soon as possible and that “having known the pleasures as well as the discomforts of a planter’s life, he kept a tolerable stable”, whatever that is supposed to mean. He was certainly in England in 1841 when the census was taken and then living with his parents in New Windsor, Berkshire. According to White, he returned to India several times in the period 1843-1845 for lengthy tours that culminated in several books. But when he came back from these tours, it was to live at Langham Place for the rest of his life. In 1851, his mother, his sister and a niece were living (or just staying?) with him, but in later censuses, he is found on his own with just two servants. Lots has been written about Fergusson himself and the books he wrote, so I will not repeat all that, but suggest two websites with more information: Clan Ferguson and The Victorian Web.

Fergusson’s carte-de-visite by McLean, Melhuish, Napper & Co, ±1860 (© National Portrait Gallery)

Fergusson died in January 1886⁽²⁾ and the leases of Hayne’s Livery Stable (behind number 21), of the Portland Bazaar (behind number 20), and of 20 and 21 Langham Place themselves were acquired by Francis Ravenscroft who agreed with the Crown for the building of a concert hall, designed by Thomas Edward Knightley.⁽³⁾ The hall became known as Queen’s Hall and was from 1895 until 1941 the home of ‘The Proms’, the promenade concerts founded by Robert Newman, the Hall’s manager, and conductor Henry Wood. The Hall stood proudly on the extensive corner plot until May 1941 when the fire caused by a German incendiary bomb destroyed it completely.

Goad’s insurance map of 1889 with the plots acquired by Ravenscroft outlined in red. The arrow points towards number 20

Photograph copied from Robert Elkin, Queen’s Hall 1893-1941, 1944.

More information about the end of Queen’s Hall can be found on the West End at War website, and more about the Hall itself on the Wikipedia page. All that now remains is a green plaque.

Source: London Remembers

(1) Appendix no. 1 of the Twentieth Report of the Commissioners of her Majesty’s Wood, Forests, Land Revenues, Works and Buildings, 21 August 1843.
(2) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1886. The estate was valued at just under £43,000.
(3) Robert Elkin, Queen’s Hall 1893-1941, 1944, pp. 14-15.

Neighbours:

<– 21 Langham Place

20 (was 3) Langham Place (Marks) –> 19 Langham Place (Markwick) –>

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John Tarring, architect

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architecture

Street View: 65
Address: 23 Charles Street

Charles Street, frequently referred to as Charles Street, Middlesex Hospital, or Charles Street, Cavendish Square, was the continuation of Goodge Street, leading to Mortimer Street. The name for that stretch of the A5204 has disappeared and what was once 23 Charles Street is now 27 Mortimer Street (opposite Nassau Street) and a different building altogether.

The index to the Tallis Street View booklet number 65 lists Tarring at 23 Charles Street as dancing master, but that must have been a mistake. John Tarring was an architect who lived at 23 Charles Street from at least July 1837 when the births of his daughter Ellen Tryphosa Pearse and his son John Henry are registered at Dr. Williams’s Library. In 1868, when his son Frederick William (born 1847), also an architect, applies for the freedom of the City of London, the address for both of them is given as 69 Basinghall Street, but that may just have been the address of their office, as the 1871 census still gives John Tarring with his wife Ellen, sons John Henry and Charles James, widowed daughter Ellen and granddaughter Nelly at 23 Charles Street. Frederick William is listed at 42 Highgate Road, Kentish Town, at the same address as his sister Emily, but he may just have been visiting while living somewhere else.

Father and son were working as partners and they designed, for instance, the Wesleyan Methodist Church in Mostyn Road, North Brixton, which was illustrated in The Illustrated London News of 12 February 1870 (see above). The Tarrings frequently designed churches and chapels for non-Anglican denominational congregations and John is sometimes referred to as ‘the Gilbert Scott of the Dissenters’ because he introduced spires in Congregational buildings. Other buildings he designed were the Methodist church in Lansdowne Road, Great Malvern, the Victoria Road Church in Leicester, the Congregational Church in Weybridge (see here), and Horbury Chapel, Ladbroke Road (see here). And in London he designed the Congregational Memorial Hall (1879 photograph here) and Whitefield’s Chapel in Tottenham Court Road. No, not the one you see today, that one was built after WWII, nor the one Tallis depicted, but one that only stood from the late 1850s to 1889 when the foundations gave way. More buildings designed by Tarring are listed on his Wikipedia page.

Source: website All about Weybridge (see here)

John Tarring was born in 1806 at Holbeton near Plymouth and moved to London in 1828. In 1830, he married Ellen Pearse in his home town. At least, her name is given as Ellen Pearse in the list of ‘Select Marriages 1538-1973’ at ancestry.co.uk, which is taken from the registers at Salt Lake City, but I think her name was Ellen Pearse Crapp as the register of the birth of two of their children at Dr. Williams’s Library give her as the daughter of Thomas Crapp, gentleman, of Devonport. Also note that John and Ellen’s daughter had the Pearse name added to her first name. The couple also had a son Thomas Crapp Tarring who was born in 1831 and who was also to become an architect, but unfortunately died in 1858 while on a trip to Brazil.⁽¹⁾

Not much is known about Tarring’s business other than the buildings he designed, but in 1844 he registered a design for a ventilator to be used in smoky chimneys.⁽²⁾ I have not found a drawing nor a detailed description for the ventilator online, so no more information is available at the moment. And there is something to tell about one of his apprentices. Sir John Soane’s son George was a great disappointment to his father as he preferred literature and the theatre over architecture. George was always in debt and even had to spend some time in the Debtor’s Prison. He was certainly not his father’s dream son. George’s son Frederick, who suffered from the domestic violence inflicted upon him and his mother by his father, however, was set up by Sir John to continue the family tradition and placed with John Tarring. But Victorian morality being what it was, Frederick’s relationship with a Captain Westwood was considered ‘inappropriate’ and Sir John became so alarmed that he even had Frederick followed. Tarring asked Soane to remove his grandson because he was not applying himself to his work as he should and was staying out late with Westwood. To explain his behaviour towards his son and grandson, Sir John wrote the privately printed booklet, Details respecting the conduct and connexions of George Soane, late of Southampton and Worthing, now of Portland Place, Borough of Southwark, and West Place, London Road; and also of Frederick Soane, removed from Mr. Tarring’s, Charles Street, Middlesex Hospital, to No. 9 Alfred Place, Newington Causeway.⁽³⁾

John Tarring died in December 1875 and was buried at Kensal Green. His probate record says that he was formerly of 3 Dartmouth Park Road, Highgate Road, Middlesex, but late of St. Audrie’s Torquay, Devon.⁽⁴⁾ Son Frederick William continued the business until 1923 when he retired. He died in 1925.⁽⁵⁾

Grave monument at Kensal Green (Source: website Friends of Kensal Green)

(1) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1858. Estate valued at under £1,500. Father John was one of the executors.
(2) National Archives, BT 45/2/287.
(3) http://collections.soane.org/b5543. For Soane and his worries over his son and grandson see also Dorothy Stroud, Sir John Soane Architect (1984).
(4) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1876. Estate valued at under £2,000. The executor was son Charles James, a barrister.
(5) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1925. Estate valued at just over £390. The executors were widow Eliza and son Bateman Brown, surveyor.

Neighbours:

<– 24 Charles Street

22 Charles Street –>

Suter & Voysey, architects

Tags

architecture

Street View: 74
Address: 35 Fenchurch Street

Unfortunately, the depiction of number 35 Fenchurch Street suffers badly in my facsimile copy of the Street Views from finding itself in the crease between the two halves of the booklet, so apologies for the imperfect elevation at the top of this post.

Richard Suter & Annesley Voysey, architects, had their office at number 35 Fenchurch Street, but they did not have it all to themselves as they shared the premises with W.C. Franks, a tea broker, who will get a separate post some other time. The earliest mention I found of Richard Suter in Fenchurch Street is in 1832 when he is listed at that address in a list of contributing members of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. It says that he had been a member since 1829, but that does not mean he was already at 35 Fenchurch Street in that year.⁽¹⁾ In fact, that seems unlikely as the Sun Fire Office records give Messrs. Short and Co., merchants, as paying the insurance premium on the premises in May 1830. The Directory of British Architects 1834-1914 give the year 1827, but I do not know on what evidence. When Suter and Voysey became partners is also uncertain, but they had known each other since at least 1825 as Suter is named as one of the executors of Voysey’s will which was dated 22 July, 1825. The address given for Suter in the will is Suffolk Street, Southwark. Voysey then lives at Conway Street, Fitzroy Square.

In 1837, Voysey travelled to Jamaica where he was to design and build a church for Port Antonio. How he got involved in this project is not clear, but it may well have had something to do with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to which he was also contributing. Unfortunately, on 5 August 1839, before the work on the church was completed, Voysey died of fever, just 45 years old.⁽²⁾ There is a copyrighted image of the memorial tablet for Voysey in the Jamaican church which you can see here.

Christ Church, the Port Antonio church that Annesley Voysey designed (Source: Port Antonio website)[update: web address no longer valid, but more photos here]

It took a little while for the message of Voysey’s death to reach London, so no wonder that the firm is still called Suter & Voysey in the Tallis Street View. Voysey’s will was proved almost a year after his death in London.⁽³⁾ Richard Suter had to continue the business on his own after the death of his partner. In 1841, Suter, his wife Ruth Ann, their two sons, Richard George and Andrew B., nephew Edward Dyer Suter, a clerk and two female servants could be found in Fenchurch Street, but ten years later, the family has moved to 3 Upper Woburn Place. Forward ten more years and Richard, by now a widower, is living at Castle Hill, Cookham. He remarries in 1862 to Elizabeth Ann Pocock. They remain living in Cookham and that is where Richard dies on 1 March 1883. One of the executors was Edward Dyer Suter, the nephew who had been living with the family in 1841 and who ran the Infant Book Depository at 19 Cheapside.⁽⁴⁾

And what about the Fenchurch business? The 1843 Post Office Directory gives Suter at 28 (in stead of the earlier no. 35) Fenchurch Street and he certainly still had his office there in 1863 when he confirms that he has surveyed the Vicarage of Winslow, Buckinghamshire.⁽⁵⁾ The Directory of British Architects 1834-1914 gives yet another number, 23, for the year 1868 and they do the same for son Richard George in 1869, so whether the architects’ office moved once again, or whether it was just the numbering that changed is unclear. In 1849, the Gentleman’s Magazine wrote that the first stone was laid on 23 June for the new almshouses of the Fishmongers’ Company in Wandsworth. They were to replace the old ones at Newington Butts and were to be built at East Hill. “The almshouses, forty-two in number, will form three sides of a quadrangle, each side about 320 feet long, and one of which will, with the chapel and school in the centre, look upon the river. They will be built in the Elizabethan style from the design of Mr. Richard Suter, architect of Fenchurch-street”.

The Hospital of St. Peter, Wandsworth: bird’s-eye view. Wood engraving by C. D. Laing, 1850, after T. S. Boys, 1849. Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images

But Annesley Voysey and Richard Suter were not the only ones in their families to become architects. The son of Richard Suter, Richard George Suter, followed in his footsteps before emigrating to Australia and becoming a minister of the Catholic Apostolic Church there.⁽⁶⁾ Voysey’s son, Henry Annesley, also became an architect, but he unfortunately died even younger than his father, just 29 years old. The next generation also produced an architect, grandson Charles Francis Annesley, son of Annesley’s religiously wayward son Charles. Charles Francis Annesley became the most famous of the lot, not just for the designs of his buildings, but also for his applied art, such as furniture, wallpaper etc., very much in the style of the Arts & Crafts movement (biography here). But who knows to what architectural heights grandfather Annesley might have soared had he not died in his prime in Jamaica.

———————–
(1) A Sermon Preached before the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts … Together with the Report of the Society (1832).
(2) Fever given as cause of death in The Gentleman’s Magazine, December 1839.
(3) The National Archives; Kew, England; Prerogative Court of Canterbury and Related Probate Jurisdictions: Will Registers; PROB 11/1931/357.
(4) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1883.
(5) Oxford Diocesan Papers c 1670\1, letter by Suter dated 7 October 1863 (see here).
(6) Directory of British Architects 1834-1914, p. 736.
(7) There was also a George Voysey, architect, but he does not seem to be related to the Annesley Voyseys, see here.

Neighbours:

<– 36 Fenchurch Street

34 Fenchurch Street –>

John Weale, Architectural Library

Tags

architecture, book trade

Street View: 11
Address: 59 Holborn

The Architectural Library at Holborn – not a library at all, but a bookshop and publishing firm – was started by Isaac Taylor (-1807) who, in late 1797, handed over to his son Josiah.⁽¹⁾ The shop was then located at number 56 Holborn, or High Holborn as it was frequently referred to, but Tallis just calls it Holborn, so I will stick to that. I do not think they moved, but the numbering changed as it so often did in Victorian London. Isaac is shown one house from Hand Court in the 1795 Land Tax Records, but both 56 and 59 are one house from either side of Hand Court, so that does not help much. The entrance to Hand Court can still be seen under number 58 in Tallis’s Street View.

1799 Horwood map

In November 1822, a fire broke out at number 60, then in the occupation of a Mr. Walker, feather bed and mattress manufacturer, and it rapidly spread to the neighbouring properties on either side and at the back to Hand Court. See Horwood’s map for the proximity of the Hand Court properties. The bakery on the corner of Holborn and Hand Court, number 58, occupied by Mr. Tate, had its upper floor damaged, but the firemen managed to stop the fire from doing more damage on that side. On the other side, they managed to stop it from getting to number 62, where an oilman was based, and had that gone up in flames, “the destruction that would have ensued is incalculable, as there was no time for the removal of the stock”. As it was, the damage was devastating enough. The roofs of two of the houses fell in and so did the front of Mr. Walker’s shop; “the progress of the fire was so rapid that Mr. Taylor’s architectural library was on fire and in blaze before any of the highly valuble scientific books and drawings which it contained could be got out”.⁽²⁾ But Taylor managed to get his business going quite quickly again and in January 1823, he was already announcing new publications in the papers.

Taylor died in 1834 and John Weale took over. Before that, he had been in partnership with Mary Priestley, the widow of George Priestley, at High Street, Bloomsbury. Weale had already steered that company towards architectural books; they had, for instance, published The architecture of Marcus Vitruvius Pollio in ten books in 1826, and the death of Taylor was a good opportunity for Weale to move on. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography writes about him, “Weale’s evident ability attracted the attention of the pre-eminent architectural bookseller and publisher Isaac Taylor, who instructed his executors to assist Weale in purchasing his business at 59 High Holborn, London, on his death, which occurred in 1834”⁽³⁾, but that is nonsense. Isaac Taylor died in 1807 and did not write anything about Weale in his will⁽⁴⁾ and neither did Josiah Taylor who did die in 1834, but left his money to a vast number of friends and family members, but none to Weale.⁽⁵⁾ Taylor directs his friends and executors, George Scrivens and James Webb Southgate, to sell the leasehold at 59 High Holborn, and all his other property, and to distribute the proceeds amongst his heirs according to his wishes. From the will we learn that nephew Martin Taylor was Josiah’s assistent, presumably in the bookshop, although that is not specified. Martin is to get £1500 and a gold watch. A later court case sees Martin and his three siblings taking proceedings against the executors, but I will spare you the wrangle that ensued over the legal costs.⁽⁶⁾ What did happen, was that the stock of books in Taylor’s shop was sold off by auction.

Jackson’s Oxford Journal 28 February 1835

Weale not only sold architectural books, he also published them, many of them illustrated with intricate engravings, for instance the 15 plates of Atlas of the Engravings to Illustrate and Practically Explain the Construction of Roofs of Iron (1859; online here) with a list of “Mr. Weale’s Series of Rudimentary Works”. This was a series of works on technical subjects, brought out cheaply to reach a large audience. Wikipedia has an – incomplete – list. One remarkable advertisement in the newspapers caught my attention: Ferdinand de Lesseps tried to get financial support for his plan to build the Suez Canal and toured Great Britain to promote his idea. Weale published the reports of the De Lesseps’ meetings in various British cities (1857).⁽⁷⁾ Weale also published work by Augustus Welby Pugin, the Gothic revival architect, for instance: The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841) and An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England (1853). Pugin’s published correspondence (The Collected Letters of A.W.N. Pugin, ed. M. Belcher) contains several letters to Weale, mainly about proof sheets and plate corrections.

The Era, 6 September 1857

Advertisement in Nova-Scotia Considered as a Field for Emigration (1858)

At the time of the 1841 census, John Weale, his wife Sarah, and their children could be found in Margate, presumably visiting friends or family. In the 1851 census, they are living above the shop at 59 Holborn. One of the children listed, James Watt Weale, was to take over the bookshop after his father’s death, but not very successfully; he went bankrupt in 1867. In 1861, the family lived at 19 Canterbury Villas, Maida Vale, and that is where John died on 18 December 1862.⁽⁸⁾ In February 1863, an obituary was published in The Gentlemen’s Magazine in which it is said that Weale “made it his great object to suggest, create, and mature works which have been of acknowledged aid to professional men, and others. He long enjoyed the personal friendship of the first scientific men of the day, and may be truly said to be one of the benefactors of the reading public”. Hear, hear.

Printer’s device from Weale’s The Theory, Practice, and Architecture of Bridges of Stone, Iron, Timber, and Wire, 1843 (Source: Bibliotheca Mechanico-Architectonica)

‘Figure of the Thames’ in London Exhibited in 1852 (J. Weale, 1852)

(1) The London Gazette, 13 February 1798.
(2) Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 30 November 1822.
(3) Jonathan R. Topham, ‘Weale, John (1791–1862)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008.
(4) Suffolk Record Office, Bury St Edmunds Branch, HD 588/2/6.
(5) National Archives, PROB 11/1828/218.
(6) Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery During the Time of Lord Chancellor Cottenham, volume 4 (1843).
(7) Advertisement in The Era, 6 September 1857. The whole book can be read online here.
(8) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1863. The estate is valued at under £6,000 and probate is granted to widow Sarah.

Carlton Chambers

Tags

architecture, solicitor

Street Views: 17 and 1 Suppl.
Address: 4-12 Regent Street

When John Nash was working on his Regent Street project, he ran into financial difficulties and James Burton came to his rescue. In return, Nash promoted the career of Burton’s son Decimus. Burton was a builder/developer who had already made his mark in building houses in Brunswick Square, Bloomsbury Square and Russell Square and was later to found the new town of St Leonards-on-Sea (see here). He bought up the leases of parts of Regent Street and one such plot was 4-12 Regent Street. Instead of just building individual houses, he envisaged one large building in which many professionals could have their office. According to James Elmes in his Topographical Dictionary of London and its Environs (1831), it was “a large handsome building”, “fitted up as sets of chambers for gentlemen and professional men”. It seems to have been ready for occupation in 1820.

If you compare the elevations for the property in the 1839 and 1847 editions of the Street View for that section of Regent Street, it is noticable that in 1839, the names of various tradesmen are written above the building: Luck, Kent and Cumming sell carpets, Jones is a tailor, Hatch is a bootmaker and Seguin has a library and ticket office. Not really the professionals you envisage in chambers. But the only name visible above the 1847 depiction of the building is that of the London Life & Fire Assurance Corporation.

The 1839 elevation

The 1847 elevation

The directory of the 1839 Street View does not help us very much either. Besides the four names we have just encountered in the elevation, the directory also mentions Ryalls & Co, a publisher, the London Assurance Corporation and just one firm of solicitors: Fuller and Saltwell. But, in the 1847 directory, the situation is quite different. Besides various shopkeepers, who, I assume, had their shop on the ground floor, quite a few architects and solicitors are listed as the occupants of the building.
Shopkeepers:
number 4: Luck, Kent & Cumming, carpet manufacturers
number 6: Jones, Tailor
number 8: –
number 10: London Assurance Corporation
number 12: Bailey & Moon, booksellers
Chambers:
number 4: no name specified
number 6: –
number 8: Mr. J. McMahon Du Pasquier, solicitor; Mr. Humby, solicitor; Mr. Blake, solicitor; Mr. Gell, solicitor; Cundy, solicitor; D.E. Columbine, solicitor; Mr. Snell, surveyor
number 10: –
number 12: Mr. Parish, architect; Fuller and Saltwell, solicitors; Mr. Vane, solicitor; Mr. Railton, architect; Mr. Laing, architect; Elmstie and Lee, architects; Mr. Hayes, solicitor; Mr. Mee, architect

I will write about the individual shopkeepers mentioned by Tallis separately at some point, but for this post, I will concentrate on Fuller and Saltwell.

Carlton Chambers (Source: christies.com)

Frederick James Fuller (-1874)⁽¹⁾ and William Henry Saltwell (1793-1875)⁽²⁾, solicitors, seem to have been the most permanent fixture amongst the occupants of the building as they can be found there right at the beginning in 1820 and they are still there in 1873. The first notice in the newspapers I found for them at Carlton Chambers is 25 February 1820 in The Morning Chronicle where they advertise for information on a missing young man. The last notice I found is on 5 July 1873 in The Ipswich Journal when they, still from Carlton Chambers, deal with the estate of the Reverend Robert Gordon, deceased.

At some point Fuller and Saltwell were assessed for a tax according to Act 48 Geo. 3. c. 55, to which they – unsuccessfully – objected and the report on the case gives us an interesting insight into the building and its use. Fuller and Saltwell claimed that “they were not liable to be rated to the duties on inhabited dwelling-houses, no person sleeping or boarding in their said chambers”. Their office was on the first floor of Carlton Chambers and

“the whole house being built for the express purpose of letting out in sets of chambers to gentlemen, with a public staircase, the same as in the inns of court, but with the exception of a door to the entrance from the street, which door is kept open during the day, but shut at night, and then opened when required by a porter or a female, who constantly reside in the lower part of the building for that purpose, as well as taking care of the chambers. Messrs. Fuller and Saltwell hold a lease granted by the owners of the building for 21 years, determinable at the option of either party, at the expiration of 10 years. The porter above-mentioned cleans the public stairs and keeps the chambers, and is paid by Messrs. Fuller and Saltwell as well as all the other occupants of sets of chambers 2s. 6d. per week, for so doing. The female also lights the fires in the appelants’ chambers, cleans the same, and is paid by them and the other occupants of chambers 4s. per week for her services.”⁽³⁾

I have looked in various sources to complete the picture for the period 1820-1850 and a long list of occupants could be compiled for Carlton Chambers, most of them architects, surveyors, attorneys or solicitors. Two are perhaps of note and worth mentioning: Decimus Burton, the son of the builder James Burton, became an architect and had his office at Carlton Chambers and so did George Gilbert Scott when he first started his career.
In 1938, the Carlton Chambers building was replaced by Rex House, designed by the architect Robert Cromie. At some point, it housed the BBC radio studios.

(1) Fuller died 25 December 1874 at 93 Maida-vale. Probate was granted on 9 March 1875 to two of his sons, Frederick, also a solicitor, and the reverend Charles James, clerk.
(2) More information on Saltwell here.
(3) Cases Determined on Appeal, Relating to Assessed Taxes. England for the years 1824, 1825, & 1826, Case 35.

John Belcher, architect and surveyor

Tags

architecture

Street View: 18 Suppl.
Address: 5 Adelaide Place

There are two John Belchers, father and son, both architects. Belcher senior lived from 1819 to 1890 and junior from 1841 to 1913. It was obviously senior who had his office at 5 Adelaide Place in the Tallis Street View as junior was only seven years old when the Supplements came out, but because they worked together during part of their careers, I have chosen to include junior. John senior is frequently given the year of birth of 1816; the ODNB is slightly more careful in giving 1816/17, but if you look at the census records for 1851 to 1881, John consistently gives his age as 32, 42, 52 and 62 which would give the year 1819 for his birth. John was apprenticed to William Chadwick, architect, on 22 April 1833. His father, John Young Belcher, a chemist and druggist, had to pay £150 for the privilege. The fact that his father is described as a chemist, helps to confirm the birth date of John; on 17 January 1819, John, the son of John Young Belcher, a chemist, and his wife Sophia, is baptised at St. John’s, Hackney. This does not preclude a birth date in 1818, as baptisms did not always take place straight after birth, but it is a good indication.

John senior married Anne Woollett, the daughter of George Woollett, a linen draper in 1840.⁽¹⁾ The year after, on the 10th of July, John junior is born, the eldest of many more children to come. At some point, John junior is sent to Luxembourg and Paris to complete his architectural schooling and in 1865, he becomes a partner in his father’s practice. That is also the year in which he marries Florence Parker, the daughter of William Parker, originally from Ireland, and Laura Elisabeth Boass (sometimes referred to as Louisa); John and Florence did not have any children.

designed by J. and J. Belcher for Rylands & Co., Wood Street, Cheapside, London (Source: archiseek.com)

Belcher and Belcher had their offices at 5 Adelaide Place, but that was not where they lived. 1-6 Adelaide Place, on the east side of the new approach to London Bridge, had been built in about 1835 and functioned as the address for many separate businesses, ranging from solicitors to provision agents. At some point, the Belchers left these offices and they seem to have moved to 38 Somerleyton Road, Brixton, or at least, that is the address given on the City freedom record of John junior in 1873. After his father’s retirement in 1875 Belcher worked with various partners: James W. James (-1882), Arthur Beresford Pite (1885-1897), and John James Joass (1897-1913) who continued the business after Belcher’s death. Belcher’s probate record gives 9 Clifford Street, Westminster, as the business address. Joass was the dominant influence when Belcher and he designed Mappin and Webb’s premises at 1 Poultry.

Mappin and Webb building (Source: architecture.com)

Although the Belcher business was very successful (you can see some more buildings they designed here), they did not always get to build what they designed. In the competition for the completion of the Victoria and Albert Museum, they came second and the design of Aston Webb was chosen, although Alfred Waterhouse, the architect of the Natural History Museum, considered Belcher’s “a magnificent design, the most original of the 8 [entries]”.

Belcher’s design for the V&A (Source: Victoria and Albert Museum Collection)

According to the census records, Belcher and Belcher lived at the following addresses:

John senior
1841: Montague Terrace
1851: Trinity Square
1861: Doddington Grove, Newington
1871-1881: Brunswick Square

John junior
1841: Montague Terrace
1851: Trinity Square
1861: Doddington Grove, Newington
1871: Sutherland Square, Newington
1881: Love Walk, Camberwell
1891-1911: Redholm, Camberwell

According to the Herne Hill Society, the house at Herne Hill was designed in 1885 by Belcher himself; according to the Grade II listing it was built in 1887.

Redholm at Herne Hill (Google Street View)

William Parker, John junior’s father-in-law, is described in the 1861 census as a proprietor of copper mines, but in 1871 as the minister of the Catholic Apostolic Church of Albury, Surrey. Ten years later, we find John senior with the same job description. According to the ODNB, John junior was also a minister of the Apostolic church, although the censuses consistently name him as architect. What he certainly did do was design their church in Camberwell New Road (now a Greek Orthodox church).

Apostolic Church, Camberwell (Source: archiseek.com)

There is much more to be said about the two Belchers, but I will leave it at this as most can be found online, for instance on Archiseek, Bob Speel’s website, Wikipedia, or, if you are interested in their entries at the Royal Academy of Arts, see here for pages 169 and 170.

(1) Holy Trinity, Newington, 30 June 1840. Why the article on John Belcher junior in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography fails to mention George and just names one Philip Woollett as Anne’s ancestor because he is the father of William Woolett, an engraver, is totally beyond me.