Heritage Register
James Bay

130 Government Street (ex-65 Carr St)
Claremont

Built 1905
Heritage-Designated 1986

For: Jessie & Henry Martin

Architect: Samuel Maclure

ARCHITECTURE:

Claremont was named after a Newbury family home of Jessie’s in England. It is a two-storey Arts & Crafts Edwardian Foursquare with a bellcast hipped roof and a hip-roofed dormer on the front. The full-width front verandah wraps around the right side. It was originally open on the side but is now hip-roofed, continuous with that of the front; towards the rear it terminates in a second floor, crenellated balcony. The verandahs have pairs and triplets of heavy chamfered posts supported on shingled piers; the corner piers are battered. Rows of plain square balusters connect the piers. The front façade is balanced by a pair of full-height box bays with multipane-over-one double-hung sash windows. The side verandah has a matching bay in front of the main entrance which is below the balcony. The shingled balustrades of the entrance stairs, which lead to the side verandah, have been raised. The left side of the house has another matching bay in front of a deep, full-height box bay with a shallow hipped-roof. The upper floor and dormer are stuccoed and half-timbered; the main floor and bays are shingled. Only the front chimney remains. The cedar shingle siding was covered with asbestos shingles in the 1940s-50s; the asbestos was removed c.1985 and the house was gradually restored. In 1994 owner Tanya Darling won a Hallmark Society Award for her restoration of this house.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

This house was built for Henry J. “Harry” and Jessie Martin, although John Cowper Newbury, Jessie’s brother, paid the taxes from 1906 until 1909. Harry had the house plumbed in 1905 and Maclure signed the plumbing plan. Harry was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England, in 1858 and came to Victoria in 1883. He worked for Richard Carr & Co (207 Government St) until Carr’s death in 1888. In 1890, Harry married Jessie, eldest daughter of William and Jane Cowper Newbury. He worked for R.P. Rithet for 20 years, eventually becoming head salesman. Finally he worked for the Daily Times from 1908-17.

Harry had a keen interest in music, and appeared in the 1885 Victoria Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society production of The Pirates of Penzance. He was a leading player with Albion Cricket Club, and played rugby in the late-1880s. Harry died in 1939. Jessie, a life-long member of the Church of Our Lord, lived in this house until her death at 75 in 1940. Her youngest sister, Hattie Newbury, a spinster, had a upstairs suite from c.1935-36. Harry and Jessie’s daughter, Lillian, married Frank, son of Peter and Martha Shandley (51 Oswego St, James Bay), in 1921 in the house.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

By 1943, Henry Hesslein, a warehouseman at Spencers, was the resident. Retired couple Charles and Effie Utas lived here in the mid-1940s.

The Aitken family moved in by 1950 and lived here 18 years. David was born in Dundalk and Florence in Sault Ste Marie. David was mayor of Weyburn, SK, in 1929 and 1936, and an alderman for many years. He died at 63 in 1948, one year after retiring to Victoria. Florence lived in this house until her death in 1968 at 76.


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:

• James Bay History

• James Bay Heritage Register



• This Old House, Victoria's Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume Two: James Bay