Introduction

Property people during Victorian Bournemouth’s early period began with gentlemen investors but by its close professional financial institutions had appeared. Along the way, builder-developers featured to no small extent. Two social features ran through this process: a range of social types; the existence and influence of kinship groups.

Respectable commerce

Professionals

Bournemouth’s Victorian historian, Charles Mate, surveyed the resort’s early leaseholders. Amongst them numbered Mr Edward Castleman, holding land around Decoy Cottage. A man so named would feature at the meeting, convened by angry ratepayers, protesting against the Improvement Commission’s reassessment plans. A firm of lawyers named Castleman flourished at Wimborne, recorded there in 1842. An aged attorney of that name lived at Bournemouth for 1841, perhaps another member. The Castlemans helped to administer the estate belonging to another of Bournemouth’s early leaseholders: Edward Polhill. In 1841, this man’s wife died at one of their properties, 8 Westover Villas. A decade later, Polhill’s daughter and her husband occupied it, as they would in 1861. She had married into the Ledgards, a prominent Poole banking family, linked to that town’s Newfoundland trade. This nexus of property people therefore consisted of respectable men, active in traditional professions of law and money.

Newer money

According to Mate, of three other property people, investors in Bournemouth’s baths, one remains unknown so far, but the other two have a higher profile: Samuel Bayly and George Conway. Bayly, once a Christchurch draper, became a prominent Bournemouth citizen, having fingers in many enterprises until bankruptcy burned them (1856). His Bournemouth prominence in part lay in his tenancy of the Belle Vue hotel. Conway acquired a different notoriety by losing a well-publicised breach-of-promise case. He had made money as a coal merchant and brickmaker, based in Poole, but he also held land in the area. His name appeared on advertisements marketing Westover Villas 5, 9 and 10. His son-in-law John Wise ran a coal and corn business at Bournemouth during the early period. Although perhaps a gentleman’s son, Bayly’s association with retail and Conway’s with coal granted a lower level of respectability to law and banking.

Institutional lenders

Bournemouth’s building society

At this time, press references to a building society appeared. Active in Bournemouth, it reported record profits by the end of its third year, 1855. [Bayly] The secretary, a Mr Housden, once perhaps an attorney’s clerk at Wimborne, later had a bookshop there. During his clerking days, his likely sister, Eliza, twelve, appeared in his house. This lady may have later come to Bournemouth, working as a linen-draper, but, in 1855, somebody so-named became the second wife of James McWilliam. Earlier, McWilliam had married into the Tucks, an established family of builder-developers, prominent at Victorian Bournemouth. McWilliam worked in the same business, no doubt working for his father-in-law, David Tuck. This genealogical analysis suggests that kinship may have connected property people (the Tucks) to the secretary of the Bournemouth Building Society. This raises the possibility that the Society acted on occasion as a financial arm of the Tuck property enterprise.

The Consolidated House, Land and Investment Society

This enterprise, based in London, but of mobile address, advertised for shareholders there and in Bournemouth’s area at this time, launching perhaps early in 1854. According to the secretary, the society aimed ‘to provide not only the land but houses for its members, and obtain for them county, city, and borough votes, as well as to foster provident habits’. The society ‘was an opportunity for retired tradesmen to possess a cheap house in a healthy environment’ at Bournemouth. It adopted a catchy marketing proposition. The ‘cost of two or three cigars a week’ would finance shareholders’ investment. It attracted Samuel Bayly’s attention before his bankruptcy, for he chaired a CLHIS meeting at the Belle Vue. The society may have had some connection with William Clapcott Dean, a local proprietor, now gaining control of his inheritance. The CLHIS faded from view soon after, perhaps liquidating after selling on its Dean land.

Labouring property people

Builder landlords

Although, some of the property people listed by Mate had affluent and privileged backgrounds, he noted that David Tuck had secured the lease on 1 Westover Villas. Once a contractor for Gervis Tapps, a man of apparent humble origin, Tuck appears to have become a property entrepreneur, a builder-developer. His name, that of his son, Peter Tuck, and his erstwhile son-in-law, James McWilliam appeared often during property matters of all types during Bournemouth’s early period. Not only did they build houses, but they marketed them. Peter’s social mobility became apparent through his self-description as an architect by 1871. It seems plausible that the Tucks retained the leases on some properties they constructed if they acted along the lines adopted by one of their main competitors, John Hibidage. According to a messy case involving his estate, Hibidage, also of humble origin, had built many houses, from which he derived rental income.

Labouring power brokers

The builders wove kinship tapestries. In addition to McWilliam, Tuck’s group included John Habgood, a bricklayer, and perhaps links to Samuel Ingram. Hibidage’s daughter had married a journeyman carpenter, Thomas Lance. The shadowy Robert Kerley, sometimes a gentleman, sometimes a lodging-house keeper, had kinship linkage with a son of Rebbeck, the estate agent. Meanwhile, as a later connection, Hankinson, who also became an agent, had marriage connections with the McWilliam and Housden families. Whether the linkages occurred by accident of association, lying in the background, or whether intention connected couples having a purpose of influence must remain unknown. Builder-developers, not least McWilliam and Kerley, played important roles on the Improvement Commission and, therefore, within the growing town’s power structure. Although gentry and financial institutions played roles, it seems plausible that Bournemouth’s key property people occupied the ranks of builder-developers. For the most part, such men came from labouring backgrounds.

Takeaway

Thus, property people active at Bournemouth during its early periods came from a wide range of social levels, gentry and artisans. Financial institutions began to play a role during the later part of this period. Perhaps most active, though, count the builder-directors, later to become part of the town’s direction. At both affluent and artisan levels, however, kinship appeared to play a role in property investment.

References

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