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ENGITECT
Issue
Four - March 1999
Introduction
Welcome
to the fourth edition of Engitect.
This edition celebrates our 90th year and
chronicles some of the history of the practice and its founders.
We like to believe we are one of the oldest Structural
Engineering consultancies concerned with buildings in the country.
Our archives certainly contain examples of many early
20th century forms of building engineering as the construction
industry moved from the master builder approach, to embrace
the technologies and materials developed during the mid to late
19th century. Such materials include steel, reinforced
concrete, etc.
How
It All Started
It
all started when Joseph Westwood was the principal guest at
the prize giving at All Saints Choir School, Eastbourne, and
offered an apprenticeship to one boy to whom he had handed a
number of the prizes. Thus it was that at the age of fifteen
years and two weeks on 15th April, 1890, Bertram Hurst started
work at Joseph Westwood's iron and steel works at Millwall on
the Isle of Dogs. Here he met men who had worked on Brunel's
Great Eastern ship built on the site 35 years earlier, and learnt
how to design, detail and fabricate iron and steel work.
Five years later he left Westwoods for 9 months with the GWR
at Paddington and then returned to Westwoods for 9 months as
Assistant Chief Draughtsman before returning to the GWR for
nearly 3 years. All this time he was learning civil and
mechanical engineering and all aspects of building construction
at The City of London College. In 1899 he moved to The
Admiralty, where he led the team responsible for the detail
design of the breakwaters which still guard the entrance to
the Grand Harbour in Malta.
Whilst
at The Admiralty he was chosen to look after the design and
drawing office at Portsmouth, where he met Sir Aston Webb and
made a number of other contacts who consulted him when he was
in practice on his own account, which started in January 1910,
after two years in an unsuccessful partnership with C. W. Gray.
His
first years, with a staff of two or three, including Norman
Peirce who came down from Liverpool to join him in July 1910,
saw work for Sir Aston Webb, who paid the first fee on 10th
January, 1910 of £100 for advice on works to the Conservative
Club. Work was also carried out for the Rand Water Board
and 102 bridges and other structures for the Great Western Railway,
including Ladbrooke Bridge which carries Westbourne Grove over
the main line just outside Paddington.
B.
L. Hurst's first major project was to advise on the foundations
and structure of the reinforced concrete framed Cunard Building,
Liverpool, where Mewes & Davies were the consultant architects.
Site work started in 1913 and finished in 1917 and it was fee
income from that project which saw his practice through the
thin times of the First World War, until London County Westminster
and Parr's Bank (now NatWest Bank) came with their new head
office in Lothbury as well as their Threadneedle Street Branch,
with Mewes & Davies as architects.
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The
Years Between The World Wars
During
the First World War J. N. Peirce served in the British Expeditionary
Force in France in the Royal Engineers 87th Field Company, returning
to the firm in 1919. After the war, B. L. Hurst and J.
N. Peirce worked hard in rebuilding the firm's practice which
had severely diminished, however work slowly built up and by
1920, when J. D. Malcolm was indentured as a pupil there was
a staff of three.
The
firm continued to expand and when J. J. Taylor ( who as the
firm's longest serving employee was to stay for 63 years) joined
the staff in 1925 there was a total of six under J. N. Peirce.
The firm continued to grow and when B. L. Hurst took J. N. Peirce
into partnership in 1930 the staff numbered ten; however the
name of the firm remained B. L. Hurst for some years before
becoming B. L. Hurst & Peirce.
In
1938, eighteen years after commencing his pupilage in 1920,
J. D. Malcolm was taken into the partnership, joining B. L.
Hurst and J. N. Peirce. By then the firm had moved to
offices in Gloucester House, Charing Cross Road. The title,
however, was to remain B. L. Hurst & Peirce until after
the Second World War.
The
number of jobs dealt with during the 1920s and 30s was very
extensive and for reasons of space we will only refer briefly
to three jobs of particular significance.
In
August 1927 the Commercial Union building in Cornhill collapsed
and B. L. Hurst was appointed to investigate the matter and
take appropriate action. The collapse was due to excavations
carried out on the adjoining Lloyds Bank site.
 The
next building, the Scottish Widows Fund, was supported with
steel shoring deliberately painted red, as a statement to regain
confidence in the construction industry which, in the City,
had been seriously eroded by the event.
In
due course the Commercial Union building was rebuilt to the
firm's designs with a four-basement sub-structure which involved
excavations to over 50 ft. below street level in Cornhill.
The architect for this new building was Sir Aston Webb.
The
successful resolution of the Commercial Union collapse established
a reputation for dealing with such matters, and records show
a rapid expansion of the firm's client and architect base during
the subsequent  years.
The
firm were consulting engineers for Shell Mex House on the Embankment
with architects Messrs. Josephs. This large building was
built remarkably quickly as the two photographs below show.
They were taken in 1931, only 18 weeks apart, and show an empty
s ite
followed by an almost completed building structure.
The
7,500 tons of steel were erected at an average rate of 400 tons
per week, and of the 72,000 square yards of floor, 5,500 square
yards (the size of a football pitch), were laid in one week.
This rate of progress is seldom achieved nowadays.
 Among
the many projects for the John Lewis Partnership was the rebuilding
of Peter Jones in Sloane Square with architects Slater and Moberly
and consulting architects W. Crabtree and Sir Charles Reilly.
Work started in 1934. The photograph shows King George
V passing the site in the summer of 1935. The still modern
appearance of the building was achieved by the façade being
cantilevered some 8 ft. outside the main columns which allowed
the innovative curtain wall and shop windows to run smoothly
along elevations.
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Your
Feedback
 We
had a number of letters from readers in response to the back-page
article in our last edition of Engitect on arsenic in wallpapers.
Michael Ney of Schroeders Begg & Co wrote:
"Turning
now to the Victorian dwarves at their paperhanging, you may
recall that Napoleon Bonaparte was taken into exile by the British
after Waterloo in 1815 and incarcerated on the island of St
Helena. (It was more secure than Elba). Even though
he was a villain, he was an officer and a gentleman so was put
under house arrest in a nice house that was, of course, wall
papered. It is said that the arsenic in the wallpaper
was what did for him and hastened his demise. Perfidious
Albion got him in the end!"
Perhaps
this was an early case of 'sick building syndrome'.
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CDM
And All That
 You
may recall the article from our last 'Engitect' which included
a photograph of Barry Pitcher standing by the lion outside the
New York Library. Submissions included the following:
By
the Earl of Lytton:
"It
must represent the profession of sacked Surveyors, lost its
ranging rod, lounging about instead of rampant, with a hard
had for a crown, a pigeon for a partner and definitely stone
from the neck up!"
(For
non-surveyors, the crest for The Institute of Chartered Surveyors
features a lion)
However,
the judges decided that Mike Rose of Waitrose Ltd's submission
of:
"Ecce
Leo in 'at"
was
judged to be most appropriate. Mike is awarded a bottle
of champagne and many thanks to all those who took the time
and trouble to reply.
Perhaps
you would like to put your mind to the next caption competition.
This view of a recently cast wall in Crete was taken by Barry
Pitcher. What would the site agent be saying to the formwork
foreman upon encountering this sight? Note also the homemade
ladder. The Framework Directive on Construction Health
and Safety agreed by the European Council of Ministers has obviously
not reached Crete.
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Partnership
News
Lawrance
Hurst will retire as Senior Partner on 31st March 1999 but will
continue as Consultant to the practice. John Hussey succeeds
Lawrance as Senior Partner. Michael Hurst is retiring
from his position as consultant.
We
would like to welcome two new members to our technical staff:
Aniceh Al-Touqamtchi who joins us as Senior Engineer and Sabu
Padmajan as Senior AutoCAD technician/Engineer.
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And Finally...
Continuing
our series of articles from the 19th century on building practices
and hazards to health, here is one we are sure would not pass
the scrutiny of the Building Control Officers' pipe pressure
test!
The
article is recorded as an actual incident in a house in Halifax
and is taken from a book by T. Pridgin Teale M.A., surgeon to
the General Infirmary. The book was published in 1879.
We
quote from Mr. Pridgin Teale:
 "In
a gentleman's house the children were always ailing, and in
consequence I ordered an inspection of the soil pipe which was
supposed to run under the house and some outbuildings, and to
join a main-drain in the road behind. On the floor of
the coal cellar being taken up, there was found a very large
quantity of sewage, which had been accumulating ever since the
house had been built, seven years before.
During
the whole of this time all sewage from the w.c. had run under
the floor of these cellars; for at the end of the coal cellar
the soil pipe came to an abrupt conclusion against a mass of
solid rock, twelve yards thick, at the other side of which a
pipe was placed and connected with the main-drain in the road.
No doubt it was in order to save the expense of blasting through
the rock that the contractor scamped the work."
"The
authorities saw the junction"
"The
Borough Inspector having received due notice from a builder
of his intention to connect a house drain with a public sewer,
came and 'saw the last pipe put in; with what security to the
public may be judged from this Plate'".
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Post
Script
We
are conscious that this commemorative issue of 'Engitect' focuses
on the early history of the firm. We make no apologies
for this, as history is important to us in that it assists in
solving today's problems and because we need to know how yesterday's
building's were put together in much that we do. We are
however, equipped for the 21st century and will continue to
provide a personal service to all our clients.
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