George Burt

George Burt (2 October 1816 – 18 April 1894) was a public-works contractor and businessman from Swanage, England, who managed the construction company Mowlem, founded by his uncle John Mowlem. George’s father was Robert (1788–1847), a stone merchant, whose stone and coal business was located in Swanage High Street. His mother was Letitia born Manwell (1786–1861), sister-in-law to John Mowlem who was working for Henry Westmacott, a well known sculptor-mason in London, at the time of George’s birth. George had five siblings, Elizabeth Letitia (1818–1889), Robert Henry (1821–1876), Charles (1823-?), Francis Alfred (1825-?) and Susannah Ann, ’Susy’ (1829–1871).

George grew up in Swanage, on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset. In 1835, at the age of 19. George Burt moved to London to join Mowlem’s business, becoming a partner in 1844 and managing the business after Mowlem’s semi-retirement the following year. He married Elizabeth Hudson in 1841, and the couple had five children. Elizabeth Sophia (1843–1880), John Mowlem (1845–1894), Annie (1846–1918), Emma Rust (1849–1910) and George.

Upon taking over the Mowlem’s company, Burt substantially expanded the firm’s operations. In May 1851 the firm was ‘very successful’ in bidding for the London vestries’ contracts — some for only hundreds of pounds— that provided nearly all the firm’s work into the 1870s, earning it the nickname of London John. Work for ten major local authorities in the 1860s grossed an average of over £50,000 per annum. Surviving the lean years during the financial crisis of 1866-7, his company became a major public-works contractor and won the contract for Queen Victoria Street in the City of London (1869), followed by Billingsgate Market ⁷ (1874-7), and the City of London School in 1880 on the new Victoria Embankment, amongst others. In 1878, at the age of 62, he became the High Sheriff of London and  Middlesex ⁵ .

Burt, like his uncle, maintained an interest in Swanage, establishing a Gasworks (1867) and a Waterworks (1864), developing the Durlston estate, and lived in a large house called “Purbeck House”, now a hotel on the High Street. He and his wife bought the house for £550 and lived in it for 17 years. The porch is made of white Cornish granite, the mosaic floor is copied from the pavement in Queen Victoria Street, London and some of the tiles are from the Palace of Westminster.

The Gasworks was located near Prospect Farm on the current site of Victoria Avenue petrol station.

Swanage Gas Works est. 1867 rebuilt 1882

Before George Burt started constructing the first waterworks, the local population drew their water from wells or from springs situated at Court Hill, Mill Pond, Frog Well and Spring Hill. Some of these sources were contaminated by cesspits from buildings further up the hill. Burt wanted the residents of his new Durlston Park estate to have clean drinking water. So in 1864, he raised an Act of Parliament to supply Swanage with clean water from an artesian well 34.4 metres deep connected to a reservoir, 61 metres above sea level. The cistern was erected inside a stone tower at the top of Taunton Road, its turret similar to those at Durlston Castle.

In 1892, the town had expanded and required another source of water, this was found below the chalk at Ulwell. A well was sunk and a reservoir was constructed on the south of Ballard Down. To commemorate the event Burt erected a monument, an Obelisk, above the reservoir. This was another artefact that Burt had brought down from London as boat ballast – it was removed from St Mary Woolnoth at the junction of King William and Lombard street it was built between 1857-1875 ⁵ .

In 1865, the Swanage suburb of Durlston was conceived and developed by Burt. However it was never completed, part of the land originally intended for the development is now Durlston Country Park. Although, Durlston Castle with the associated Stone Globe was completed in 1887.

He provided public access to the Tilly Whim caves but the access route had to be modified due to Sir J. C. Robinson’s ban on public access over his land, much to Burt’s consternation and annoyance – an example of their rivalry.  George Burt resolved this issue, with a team of 20 workmen, created a steep stairway through the rock next to the coastal footpath, 30metres to the east of the caves. They used dynamite to blast a subterranean passageway that led to the mining lanes three metres below. This passage way was completed in 1887 ¹⁰ .

George Burt’s London Artifacts

In 1866 London , the Wellington Clock tower was deemed an unwarrantable obstruction by the Commissionaire of Metropolitan Police and was demolished by George Burt – the clock, made for the Great Exhibition of 1851, was returned to its owner a Mr Bennett of Blackheath London. Before the demolition, George Burt instructed his men to meticulously number the location of the bricks before the removal of the 1854 Wellington Clock tower that originally adorned the southern approach of London Bridge at a cost of £700 to the London borough and acquired free bricks as ballast for the Stone boat returning to Swanage.

After arrival at Swanage, George Burt reassembled it in 1868 at a cost of £1000, in the grounds of large seashore house called the Grove. Owned by Thomas Docra, a retired London building contractor who bought the property in 1866. In 1904, the spire was replaced by a Cupole because an adjacent owner of a residential property called Rockleigh objected to the ecclesiastical appearance of the spire; no doubt George Burt charged the owner a considerable sum by granting the owner’s wish. You can see why Burt was considered an entrepreneur ⁶ .  

Sir John Charles Robinson CB FSA 1824 – 1913

Robinson was an art advisor to the Kensington Museum (later the V&A) and he became Queen Victoria’s surveyor of pictures from 1882 to 1901. Robinson acquired Newton Manor and transformed the house. At first Robinson and Burt were on friendly terms, but gradually as Robinson acquired more property they became bitter rivals.

Charles Edmund Newton-Robinson

John Charles Robinson had a son Charles Edmund Newton-Robinson, who was Educated at Trinity College and became British barrister, author, gemologist, fencer, and yachtsman
Born in London October 1853 and died in Swanage April 1913, wrote a book in 1882 about a visit he made to the Isle of Purbeck. The book was called “A Royal Warran: Or, picturesque Rambels in the Isle of Purbeck”.
A section describes his observations, in 1882, as he travelled from Newton Manor to the Royal Victoria Hotel.

Newton Manor

Belonged in the sixteenth century to a family of the name of Cockram, who also owned the estates of Whitecliff and Bucknoll. By the will of the last of the Cockrams, who died in 1830, Newton was directed to be sold, and through several intervening hands it passed to the present possessor John Charles Robinson.
No vestiges of any very ancient building remain; the oldest part of the present house being the Elizabethan stone fireplace in the kitchen. The front, an excellent specimen of Purbeck stone and mason’s work, was built by Captain Cockram some sixty years ago; but the two drawing-rooms, one in Jacobean, and the other in a rather later style, were lately added; and the barn of the old homestead, with its open timber roof, was at the same time adapted to serve as a dining. hall. In this room is a fine carved stone chimney-piece, brought from a Florentine palace, and bearing the legend
IPA DIES QNQ.PARENS QNQ.NOVERCA. E: a hexameter, if the abbreviations are read aright, which is the equivalent of the English proverb, “Fire is a good servant, but a bad master.” ²⁵ .

Purbeck House

The residence of George Burt, Esq
Let us walk towards the sea, under the granite walls of Purbeck House, the edifice which stands so picturesquely in the midst of the High Street, dominating the scene from all sides with its machicolated tower, surmounting a host of tall chimneys and storied gable ends. Closely seen, the pink and blue granite chippings from Jersey and Aberdeen, laid with a regularity overcoming the cornery nature of the material, the smooth Portland stone quoins and dressings, the porch carved out entirely in solid grey granite, give an impression of the most finished workmanship, which does not yield to the sense of picturesque outline, until one retires to a distance. Then the case changes, and from every point of view the house becomes an interesting centre to the quaint, confused masses of dingy walls and roofs that straggle along the line of the street on either side. It occupies the site of an older mansion of less importance, at the back of which there had grown up a thickly-planted old-fashioned garden, such as in half-a-lifetime can hardly be reproduced. And this is the reason why, after old Purbeck House had fallen into decay, new Purbeck House rose up from the ruins on the self-same spot.
 
The architect was Mr. Crickmay of Weymouth

Perhaps some Londoners may recognise an old friend in the gilt flying fish performing the duties of a weathercock in an airy berth on the top of the tower, whence, Tantalus-like, he longingly surveys the blue sea, into which he never more can plunge again. This is a relic of old Billingsgate market, and is not by any means the only architectural importation to be found at Swanage Witness many instances to be described hereafter in their proper turn.

In a little sunken garden opposite Purbeck House, tenanted by one luxuriant evergreen oak, stands a cottage remarkable for nothing externally, but which many a Swanager would never forgive me for leaving without mention. A tablet in the gable informs the passer-by that this is “Wesley’s cottage;” Wesley’s, however, only because the religious reformer twice accepted a bed there. This, after all, is an association, if not a very interesting one, and very likely better authenticated than some others of greater pretensions. ²⁵

Swanage Gaol

Down a dark and tortuous passage, or “drong.” as they are styled in Dorset, which formerly existed in rear of the cottage just mentioned as now no more, there used to lie, coyly hid, one of the sights of Swanage. Think of the terrible Bastile, conjure up recollections of all the tales of misery that hang about the Bridge of Sighs ; remember Chillon with its ghastly story, and call up to mind that dread inscription over the portal of the Inferno, “Abandon hope, all ye who enter here!” and you will still be very far from having a true conception of the prison-house of Swanage. Truly, a grim and dreary dungeon it was!

Its vast proportions (twelve feet by eight), its stony cell unlit by the light of heaven, save through holes decayed in the nail-studded oaken door-were all eminently calculated to strike amazement into the beholder. And this sentiment, so rarely inspired by prisons, was apt to find vent in a burst of laughter when, after much difficulty, this mouldering inscription could be spelled out at last.

“Erected for the Prevention of Wickedness and Vice
by the Friends of Religion and Good Order.”

Royal Victoria Hotel

We are opposite the Royal Victoria Hotel, in which we need not doubt of securing a comfortable room, the first of August being still to come. This establishment, once the manor house of the estate now forming the new suburb of Swanage, stands nearly on the sea-level, with nothing but the road and a well-kept garden between it and the water’s edge. The centre is a good stone building in the Italian style, built in the last century, but rather overshadowed now by the large, plain wings built on by Mr. Morton Pitt of Encombe, nearly a hundred years ago, when he converted the mansion into an hotel, in emulation of Weymouth, then at the zenith of its fame as a watering-place.

Mr. Morton Pitt, by the way, besides establishing the rope and twine factory at Kingston, encouraged new industries at Swanage also, in the shape of a herring-fishery and straw plait manufacture, the first of which has long since come to grief. Straw-plaiting, however, even now survives to be a little staple. In 1835, when the Queen (then Princess Victoria) visited Swanage, she was presented with an address and a bonnet of native manufacture; and at the present day Swanage straw goods are regularly sold in London.

The hotel, it is to be feared, did not flourish in the days of Mr. Pitt, or even long after him. Many can remember it a dull woe-begone edifice, where you could have the very large coffee-room and a very small fire all to yourself as a sitting-room, if you liked, but nothing to eat except lobsters. Now things are changed, and certainly no one has any reason to complain of the lodging or the food. Securing ourselves against famine by ordering an early dinner, let us go out and see what is to be seen.

Swanage Bay

Rather to one side in front of the hotel, a small sturdy stone pier with rounded ends and low parapet wall projects into the waters of the bay, and affords a convenient standpoint whence to obtain a general idea of the surrounding landscape. Before us the tranquil water lies, not ruffled by any breeze, closed in on all hands but one with a regular area of hilly land. Nearer, low green and reddish cliffs, dotted with a few small villas, and bordered with a fringe of bright yellow sands, on which a tiny village of red, blue, and white bathing machines has taken up a summer stand.

Further, the horizon is excluded by that ubiquitous range of lofty green down, breaking away here into a grand white wall of chalk, terminated by the abrupt precipice of Bollard Head. So high these cliffs are, as to completely dwarf the bay, and to seem scarcely half-a-mile distant, although in reality a cannon shot from one of the old 18-pounders on the battery at Peveril Point would hardly reach them. Look more closely, and you will perceive some tiny bushes on the down-side. Those are great elms that have seen a hundred winters. That toy-boat under Bollard Head is a vessel of two hundred tons. In the far distance to the north-east, that thin and almost invisible grey line is the Hampshire coast, from Boscombe to Hengistbury Head; and still more to the eastward, those gleaming white specks are the Needles Cliffs, in the Isle of Wight.

Our bay is quite lively in the calm weather; eight or ten sail of shapeless antiquated hookers are lying off at anchor, each on the top of a reflected image of itself, loading Purbeck stone from small walnut-like row barges, which take their cargoes from carts driven out into the shallow water till the wheel-axles and the horses’ bellies are submerged. The carts are themselves loaded from the great heaps of stone that constitute such an eyesore in front of the houses in the principal street, hard by on our left. A clumsy method of shipping this, but not really quite so wasteful as it looks. It was in full force in the days of J. M. W. Turner, the great painter, who, in a curious doggerel poetic effusion, jotted down in a notebook, perhaps, while he was making his well-known tour of the South Coast, harps on this very theme.
 
“Even Swanage Bay can’t boast a pier,” is one of his rather unmusical lines.
²⁵ .