ARCHITECTURE:
This Edwardian Vernacular Arts & Crafts demonstrates several Kendrick Sharp themes: a distinctive tapered architrave across the front-facing gable, with shingles above and half-timbering and stucco below, and massive, sinuous brackets. A recessed front porch emphasizes the shallow box bay with hipped roof over four casement windows with a transom containing a series of ogee pyramids surrounded with circles and shields. (These motifs can also be seen at 608 Su’it St. Interestingly, Sharp did not use them on his best surviving building, opposite, at 810 Linden Av. which is much closer to his own house on Fort St, now demolished.) The gable windows are 9-over-1, and the multi-pane style is continued in a charming gabled conservatory, on the right side. Wide roof dormers on each side are probably original, having horns on the sashes. The main floor is shingled. There’s one tall, corbelled chimney, and a rear extension with a shed roof. Sharp built this $3,000.
ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:
1910-23: Realtor Charles Trevor Cross (1869-1923), and Jessie (née Duke, 1863-1948). Charles was born in Cheshire, England, to a shipbuilding family. He came to Canada in 1885, lived in Winnipeg briefly, then Helena, MT, and Palouse, WA, where he stayed for many years. He moved to Silverton, BC, in 1897, where he met his future Victoria business partner, Francis Joseph O’Reilly (1866-1941) (2616 Pleasant St). In 1906 Charles came to Victoria and established Cross & Co, General Agents, Real Estate, Timber Lands & Mines, with O’Reilly. The company occupied the Belmont Block for many years after its construction in 1913. Charles held interests in real estate, and succeeded Beaumont Boggs (1140 Arthur Currie Ln) in the presidency of the local Real Estate Exchange from 1914-20. He was long member of Victoria Board of Trade, and was a director, then head, when it became the Chamber of Commerce. He died when he fell down a flight of stairs in his home trying to extinguish a fire in the basement. Jessie sold this house soon after, and moved to Vancouver in 1929. Daughter Edith Grace (1893-1978) was a teacher who lived with her parents until 1928 when she married civil engineer Percy Halero Buchan (1886-1974).
OTHER OCCUPANTS:
1924-28: William R. Johnson, retired proprietor of a grocery store on Cadboro Bay Rd (1914-1923) and wife Susan “Susie,” stenographer with F.R. Stewart, then B.K. Mills.
1929-32: Canon Edward Penard Laycock (b. Barrow-in-Furness, ENG 1879-1972) married Bessie Honor (née Perry, b. Cambs, ENG 1877-1963) in Essex in 1906. Edward trained as an architect, then was ordained a priest. As Archdeacon of Christ Church Cathedral, he helped supervise construction of Christ Church, and other BC churches in Columbia Coast Mission, where he was Archdeacon from 1921-33. He returned to England and retired in 1949.
Tenants: 1933-40: Hon. Col. Francis George Hood, RE (b. London, ENG 1880-1949) in 1904 married Helen Kendell Mouncey (née Prior, b. Victoria 1878-1977) daughter of Hon. Edward Gawler Prior, BC Lt. Gov. 1919-1920 (729 Pemberton Rd & 620 St. Charles St). Col. Hood commanded “Victoria Rifles” in Montréal and Fifth Btn Royal Scots of Canada before coming to Work Point Barracks as Adjutant in 1903. They returned here after retirement.
1941: Georgina Laura Mary Golby (née Cooney, b. West Ashford, Kent, ENG 1917-1992) wife of Lt-Cdr James Wake Golby, RCNVR, DSO (b. Victoria 1917-1964). He commanded four Canadian warships during WWII, HMCS Burlington, Sudbury, Coaticook and Humberstone. He was a member of the RN demolition party to destroy installations at Le Havre.
1942-45: Georgina Golby’s parents, George Alexander Cooney (b. Dublin, IRL 1887-1964) and Jane Anne (née Morrow, b. Wicklow, IRL 1899-1989) married in Dublin in 1915; at the time Cooney was overseas with CEF, 16th Btn. He was an auto mechanic when he signed on, later a federal government carpenter.
1947: Carpetorium Co foreman Hugo Ruthven Braden (b. Victoria 1905-1991) was a 35-year-old poultry man from Sidney, BC when he married widow Maggie Agnes Pratt
Heath (nee Clark b. Aberdeen, SCT 1900) in 1940.
Owners: 1948-61: John Gibson Cruickshank (b. Aberdeen, SCT 1891-1961) and Mary Minnie (née Aiken) retired here in 1948. John came to Canada in 1921 and was a general merchant in Saskatchewan.