Heritage Register
Victoria West

1116 Catherine Street
moved in 1994 from 1017 Burdett St (ex-9 Bellot St)
Chichester Villa

Built 1884; 1994
Heritage-Designated 1994

For: Bedlington & Catherine John

Builder: attributed to Bedlington John

ARCHITECTURE:

This house was moved here in 1994 from 1017 Burdett St after a severe fire. It is a 1½-storey Victorian cottage with a hipped roof, a front gabled extention, and three gabled roof dormers, on the front and each side. The dormers have Palladian-like windows, sunburst decoration, dentils and small brackets. There are ornate Italianate eave brackets with drop finials. An angled bay is located on the left of the recessed entry, and a cantilevered box bay on the right side. The porch has turned fluted columns, spindles and a decorative balustrade. The house is clad in drop siding. J.C.M. Keith signed the 1895 plumbing plans as agent for owner, but didn’t design the house, as he only arrived in Victoria in 1891.

ORIGINAL OCCUPANTS:

1884-99: Bedlington Harold John (b. Marysville, CO, 1861-1943) and Catherine Janet (née Greenwood, b.Victoria 1862-1939) married in Victoria in 1882. At the time Bedlington was a carpenter and joiner, so he may have built the house himself. In 1887 Bedlington was an assistant draftsman and by 1895 chief draftsman in the BC Lands & Works Department. He became a real estate agent and was a broker when he retired. He came here with his family in 1863. Catherine was the daughter of Capt. John Kirk and Catherine Greenwood, who came to Victoria from England in 1861. When the Johns died they were living with their son, timber broker Harold Greenwood Palmer John (1890-1953), who had married Margaret Genevieve Hall in 1914. Bedlington was a life member of the Pacific Club.

OTHER OCCUPANTS:

Owners: 1899-1905: BC Land & Investment Agency.
1906-07: Robert E. Hall from Wolseley, SK.
1908-09: Carpenter then real estate and insurance broker Samuel Arthur Baird, who came to Victoria in 1898.
1910: William Thwaites Williams (528 St. Charles St, Rockland).
1911-16: John Brown (and Emma Landsberg in brackets: 106 Medana St, James Bay).

Tenants: 1901-02 & 1905: Robert “Edward” Gosnell (b. QC, 1860-1931), statistician and secretary to Premiers John Herbert Turner and James Dunsmuir. Edward had been a school teacher, then a journalist and by 1905 was editor of the Daily Colonist Victoria. His wife Agnes Theresa died in 1898 after they moved to Victoria. In 1910, in Vancouver, his daughter Veronica Helen “Vera” married master mariner Alexander James Hosken, 2nd Officer of the CPR’s Empress of Japan. Edward Gosnell was the author of: A History of British Columbia, 1906; The Year Book of British Columbia and Manual of Provincial Information (Coronation Edition), 1911; and The Story of Confederation, with Postscript on the Quebec Situation, 1918.

1909: George Walker and his wife, both nurses.
1910-12: Gertrude Barnett, widow of Charles, rented furnished rooms and called the house Chichester Villa: the name remained in city directories until 1917.
1915-17: Elizabeth Le Gros, the principal of St. Hellier School for Girls. 1918: Carpenter and builder Henry William Carss and Rosalie Pollard came to Victoria in 1913.

1920-21: Mrs. Margaret Isabella Seymour and her daughters Margaret, Mary and Vera; they moved to the Ritz Hotel, a residential hotel at 710 Fort St, where Margaret died.
1923-24: Frank and Mabel Brawn married in Vancouver in 1916. Frank was the area rep for Imperial Tobacco Co and the proprietor of Two Jacks Dope Ltd, cigars & billiards, 1313-15 Government St. He started the business after WWI with John T. O’Brien, who left by 1928.
1927-28: VMD plumber James and Agnes Crossman. Agnes was a waitress at Dairymaid Lunch. In 1929-31 James Crossman was the proprietor of U Eta Lunch at 1313 Douglas, and by 1935 he ran Two Jacks Lunch at 1313 Government, taking over from C.G. Walsh, formerly of the Bungalow Construction Co (423 Durban St, Fairfield); Walsh later ran the tobacco and billiards in the same establishment. Crossman ran the restaurant at 1313 Govt until the day he died.
1929: Frank Coomber, retired, and his son Albert, Union Club bellboy.

1933-34: Frank J. and Georgina Munroe. Frank was a machinist with a garage at 814 Fort St.
1935-39: Barber Augustus “Joseph” Bayntun (b. Tunbridge Wells, ENG, 1879-1957) and Florence Edith (née Webley, b. Pontypool, WAL, c.1895) married in 1924. [Note: In 1900 21-year-old Joseph had married 35-year-old Eliza Ann “Annie” Yale Manson (b. Victoria, 1865-1908) and they lived with her parents Aurelia and John Manson, a HBC fur trader. Annie’s grandfather was HBC Chief Factor James Murray Yale, namesake of the town of Yale]

1940-46: Florence Bayntun ran a rooming house here. Joseph lived in the Home for the Aged in Terrace, BC, for six years.

1946-c.72: Winnie Eva Shugren (née Downard, b. Winnipeg 1893-1953) then ran the rooming house. Winnie was married to Leonard Wilmot Carlow (b. Victoria 1889-1951) in 1911 by Baptist minister William Stevenson in the manse at 1449 Pembroke St (Fernwood), across from her home at 1444 Pembroke St. Leonard, a contractor, enlisted with the 88th Victoria Fusiliers for WWI in 1914. In 1919 their eldest son George Wilmot died of Spanish Influenza. Leonard left Victoria in 1928. In 1929 Winnie was working as a housekeeper for Benjamin Davis. She married Sooke fisherman Victor John Shugren in 1933. Following his death in 1946 she bought this house. She married her old boss Benjamin Albert Davis (b. Plymouth, ENG, 1879-1967) in the early 1950s. Ben, a mate with Island Tug & Barge, owned the house after Winnie’s death until his death. It was inherited by Winnie’s offspring, Francis Charles “Bubs” Carlow and his wife Goldie, and Clarence Wesley “Bud” Carlow, who sold it c.1972.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION & IMAGES:

• Map of Victoria's Heritage Register Properties

• Vic West History

• Vic West Heritage Register



• This Old House, Victoria's Heritage Neighbourhoods,
Volume One: Fernwood & Victoria West