A towering heritage - the remarkable story of builder and philanthropist George F Nott Part 4

St Mary and Joseph Cathedral Armidale. Built by George Nott 1911-12, architect John Hennessy, the Cathedral required 1.1 million bricks with up to 30 men working on site This, the sixteenth in my series on New England's built landscape and architecture, is the forth and final columns on the remarkable life of builder George Nott.  

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Armidale, Friday 19 October 2012. Eight hundred people have gathered for a service to celebrate the 100^th birthday of Armidale’s Catholic Cathedral of Saint Mary and Joseph.

Among those in the congregation is 91 year old Peggy Becke, the only surviving daughter of George Nott, the Cathedral’s builder. She wore a gold chain, part of a gold chain and watch set presented to her father by the grateful parishioners.

George F Nott was a devout Anglican, but his relationships with all of Armidale’s groups were good at a time when sometimes bitter sectarian divides were still a fact of Australian life. He had built with care and even donated to the building fund.

The Cathedral was designed by John Hennessy from the Sydney firm of architects Sherrin and Hennessy. Hennessy was a prominent Roman Catholic architect and a good friend of Cardinal Moran. His buildings include St Patrick’s College Manly and St Joseph’s College Hunter’s Hill.

Cardinal Moran laid the foundation stone for the new Cathedral on 5 February 1911. This had been a major build involving 1.1 million bricks with up to thirty men on site at any one time. Its completion in barely 20 months was a major achievement involving close liaison between builder and architect.

Tower, St Peter's Cathedral Armidale. George Nott's last project. In addition to donating 150,000 bricks, he worked as honorary supervisor training builders and tradesmen in the now forgotten skills required to complete the project.

Twenty seven years later and just before his death, George Nott was involved in another church build that also left a major impression on the Armidale streetscape.

On 3 May 1939, the bell-tower of St Peter’s Anglican Cathedral was dedicated. The tower had been in the original plans by architect John Horbury Hunt, but had not been completed. It was now time to rectify that omission.

This time George Nott’s role was honorary supervisor. He also donated the 150,000 bricks used in the construction.

Newcastle architects Castleden and Sara had been commissioned to build the tower, following as faithfully as possible Hunt’s original plans and specifications. The difficulty was that the builders and other tradesmen of the 1930s Art Deco period, the period which gave us the new Tattersall’s Hotel among other buildings, were inexperience in the techniques that Hunt had prescribed all those years before.

This is where George Nott with his long experience came into his own. He knew how to do things that had been forgotten, how to explain to the builders and craftsmen involved.

George Nott died on 16 June 1940. Over his long career, he had built many of the iconic buildings in Armidale and Inverell. He had built a considerable business empire. His donations of material and money had played a critical role in bringing community projects to success.

His legacy surrounds us today. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 20 December 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017. 

Season's greetings to you all

I am shutting down for the new year. I will bring up my last Express column for the year next week, but other than that I am recharging, focused on catching up on other things and especially my writing backlog. For those who celebrate Christmas, have a lovely festive season. I look forward to meeting you once again next year

 To leave you, I was asked to do a short interview on my history column. I leave you with that.
 

Building a business empire - the remarkable story of builder and philanthropist George F Nott Part 3

Glen Innes Town Hall: Construction began in 1887, with George Nott responsible for the brickwork.This, the fifteenth in my series on New England's built landscape and architecture, is the third of four columns on the remarkable life of builder George Nott.  

Previous post: Building a place in history - the remarkable story of builder and philanthropist George F Nott Part 2

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As a regional historian, I am constantly frustrated by the lack of previous work on Northern history.

This is not a criticism of my colleagues. I stand in awe of the energy of historians such as Lionel Gilbert, John Ferry, Bruce Mitchell, Graham Wilson, Jillian Oppenheimer or John Ryan to name just a few. Without them, we would all be the poorer. I rely on their work all the time.

Writing on the history of Northern New South Wales, the broader New England, over the last 40,000 years has made me a bower bird historian. I do not have the time to research every town or every topic. Instead, I rely on the work of others, pecking around in the dirt to collect glittering pieces to bring back to my nest so that I can gather them in new displays.

Every so often, more often than I like, I run across a gap that frustrates me. Builder, industrialist and philanthropist George F Nott is a case in point. He cries out for a biography and, so far at least, I have not been able to find one.

We  know that he was born on the Breeza Plains in 1865. We know that his father came to Inverell where he worked as a brick maker and established a brickworks.

We know from Glen Innes historian Eve Chappell that George was responsible for the brickwork on the Glen Innes Town Hall where construction began in 1887. Eve notes that George later moved to Armidale, but does not give a date.

We know that by 1901, George had taken over the Inverell brick works from his father and had begun to expand it. By then, he seems to have been living in Armidale and had built a significant business empire.

Part of the business empire: George Nott's mill and joinery, 1949, with the tower that became a central Armidale landmark.

I say a significant empire. In 1898, George had sufficient money to spend £1000 erecting a sawmill in his central Armidale joinery works.

In 1900, he extended this by adding an office and workshop. He also bought the Armidale brickworks from George Palmer for £4000, immediately extending it by adding a large chimney stack and three new kilns, each capable of taking 85,000 bricks.

The empire continued to grow, In 1905, plant was purchased from the Eleanora gold mine at Hillgrove, along with a 225hp boiler and woodworking machinery intended for door and sash making for the wholesale trade. In 1906, a new brick chimney was added to the timber works, a chimney that became an Armidale landmark. Then, in 1913, Nott took over Trim’s West End timber and joinery works including the Styx River hardwood mills.

If you add all this and the building work together, you have a large operation that provided a base for George Nott’s later contributions. My frustration is that we know just so little about the timing and process involved.

 Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 13 December 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017. 

Understanding the impact of sea level change in Aboriginal New England - a second note

This note briefly follows up on some of the issues I mentioned in Understanding the impact of sea level change in Aboriginal New England - a note.

Storegga Slides

In a comment on the post, JohnB referenced the three Storegga Slides, considered to be among the largest known landslides. Wikipedia states that they occurred under water, at the edge of Norway's continental shelf in the Norwegian Sea, approximately 6225–6170 BCE. The collapse involved an estimated 290 km (180 mi) length of coastal shelf, with a total volume of 3,500 km3 (840 cu mi) of debris, which caused a very large tsunami in the North Atlantic Ocean. In Scotland, traces of the tsunami associated with the last slide have been found, with deposited sediment being discovered in Montrose Basin, the Firth of Forth, up to 80 km (50 mi) inland and 4 m (13 ft) above current normal tide levels.

The Australian slides referred to in my note appear smaller, with the biggest one described as "several tens of kilometres across."  That would still have had a significant if more localised effect.

Climate Change and the Making of Britain. 

The last Storegga slide may have marked the final end of Doggerland (and here), the landbridge connecting England and the European mainland.

An brief article by Tate Greenhalgh and Lisa Hendry (The making of an island, Natural History Museum, 15 December 2017)  traces the interaction between climate, sea levels and Hominin occupation of what are now the British Isles over 950,000 years.

It's very simplified, but it is easy to read and provides an overview of the scale of change.

Post-glacial Sea Level Change in Australia

Following my earlier post, I found a very good review article, Lewis, S.E., et al., "Post-glacial sea-level changes around the Australian margin: a review", Quaternary Science Reviews (2012), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2012.09.006.

It's a very interesting article because of the way it consolidates the current state of the research on the pattern of sea level change and the reasons for  local variations over the period from the lowstand during the Last Glacial Maximum through to the Holocene highstand and then the relatively slight fall to the standstill sea level around the present level. It fills another gap in my research.

JohnB wondered if memories of landslip induced tsunamis might be found in Aboriginal oral history. I don't know. However, in an earlier article in The Conversation ( Ancient Aboriginal stories preserve history of a rise in sea level, January 13,  2015) by Nick Reid  and Patrick D. Nunn concludes that the memory of the impact of the sea rise was preserved in Aboriginal oral tradition.  

Building a place in history - the remarkable story of builder and philanthropist George F Nott Part 2

Workers at Wade's brickworks Inverell: Sold to Ben Wade in 1909 and later moved, the brickworks was founded by William Nott before being extended by George F. Knott in the early 1900s. This, the forteenth in my series on New England's built landscape and architecture, is the second of four columns on the remarkable life of builder George Nott.  

Previous post: New England's built landscape - the remarkable story of builder and philanthropist George F Nott Part 1

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Builder and philanthropist George Frederick Nott was born on the Breeza Plains in 1865, the son of William Randolp (WR) Nott and his wife Mary Ann Northey. I do not know much  about the early life of the Notts.

WR was the son of ex-convict Thomas Edward Nott who had been transported on the “Elizabeth” in 1816. At Sydney Cove, Thomas had met and married currency lass Charity Evans, the daughter of former soldier and then free settler Thomas Evans and ex-convict Judith Francis Bidwell.

Thomas and Charity settled in the Lower Hunter where. WR was born at Maitland in 1839. There WR met and married Marry Anne before moving north, ending up in Inverell around 1878. 

WR was a skilled bricklayer with a love of the material and its application to building, something that his son George Frederick inherited. While timber still provided a core building material, the emerging commercial and professional classes in the growing New England towns demanded bricks, leading to the establishment of local brickworks.

WR prospered. He began making began making bricks on the banks of the Macintyre River at Inverell before establishing a site at nearby Goonowigall. Its not clear when George Frederick became involved in the business, but it seems likely that it happened at an early age.

By 1901, the now 36 year old was in charge of the facility. He had also established his own rapidly growing business empire in Armidale.

George Frederick was a skilled industrialist as well as builder. In 1901, the skilled brickmakers at Goonowigall could only make 1,000 bricks a day each, limiting production to 20,000 hand made bricks a week. Inverell was booming, and this was just not enough.

George Frederick began an expansion program, buying the adjoining Wellis’ brickyard and installing three new large kilns linked by a tramway. Production expanded from 20,000 to 70,000 bricks per week.

In 1909, George Frederick sold his Inverell brickworks to Ben Wade. He continued to build in Inverell, but his main industrial interests were now in Armidale. The brickworks he had established was moved to a new site in 1929, but continued to function until 1974.

In my next column in this series, I will look at George Frederick’s contribution to New England’s life and built landscape across three dimensions, as a builder, as and industrialist and as a philanthropist.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 6 December 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017.   

Understanding the impact of sea level change in Aboriginal New England - a note

Underwater landslip on the downward slope of the continental shelf off Byron Bay. New research shows a large number of such slips, many of which have occurred in the last 25,000 years. These were within the period of Aboriginal occupation of New England, a time of great changes in sea levels.    

Interesting article in The Conversation (11 December 2017) by Samantha Clarke, Hannah Power, Kaya Wilson and Tom Hubble, Scars left by Australia’s undersea landslides reveal future tsunami potential on evidence for sometimes large underwater landslides on the downward slope where the continental shelf  falls away to deeper water. This diagram from the article illustrates the process.

The focus in the article is on tsunami risk from future landslips. However, I was interested both in the undersea pictures and the reference to frequency over the last 25,000 year for this was a period of substantial sea level change.

Pattern of Sea Level Change

Without bogging down in dates,  the last ice age began about 110,000 years ago. Sea levels fluctuated, falling during glacial periods, rising during warmer interglacial periods. Around 40,000 years ago, sea levels were perhaps 50 metres below present levels. From around 36,000 years ago, the climate became cooler and drier. Then from around 25,000 years ago the climate deteriorated very significantly with spreading ice sheets globally. This climatic regime peaked during what is called the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), 21,000 to 15,000 years ago.

As more water turned to ice, sea levels fell significantly, bottoming around 18,000 years ago at perhaps 120-130 metres below present levels. At this height, parts of the continental shelf slope break line could have been 20-30 metres above water.

The LGM began to ease around 15,000 years ago. The North American ice sheets melted. Around 12,000 years ago, the Antarctic ice sheets began to shrink. The Holocene with its higher rainfall and warmer temperatures had begun. The seas rose and rose again, reaching present levels around 6,000 years ago, a total sea level rise of 120-130 metres over 9,000 years.  .

The erosive effects as the sea rose onto and then submerged the continental shelf must have been very considerable. I wondered what the connection might be between the number of identified slips and this sea level rise. Whether triggered by earth movements or erosion, the bigger slips could have had significant localised impacts.

Discussion

My own research focuses on the broader New England. At the moment, my best estimate is that the Aborigines reached the area perhaps 31-32,000 years ago. We do not have hard evidence for this, but the time is consistent with the pattern of dates that we do have. This means that the climatic and sea level changes described above are of considerable importance. However, we need to understand the local pattern of change if we are draw tentative conclusions about their impact on Aboriginal life. The absence of relevant local material has been a considerable frustration.

The Clarke et al article provides another little building block. In checking the latest material, I also found a 2010 paper that I had not seen before: Alan Jordan, Peter Davies, Tim Ingleton, Edwina Foulsham, Joe Neilson and Tim Pritchard,  Seabed habitat mapping of the continental shelf of NSW, Department of Environment, Climate Change and Water NSW, Sydney 2010. This focuses on the current seabed habitat along the NSW, but it contains some of the best local descriptions that I have seen of the shape of the continental shelf.

I have not had time to absorb this properly. I am referencing it here as a record for later study.

New England's built landscape - the remarkable story of builder and philanthropist George F Nott Part 1

University of New England graduation. In April 1936, opponents to its establishment had the numbers in the NSW Cabinet to strike it down. They would have succeeded without instant financial support for the proposed College from builder, industrialist and philanthropist George F Nott. This, the thirteenth in my series on New England's built landscape and architecture, is the first of four columns on the remarkable life of George Nott.  

Previous post: Remembering our stories: Drummond family wedding in Armidale

Next post. Building a place in history - the remarkable story of builder and philanthropist George F Nott Part 2

The built landscape we have to today reflects the combined effort of owners, architects, trades people and their supporting workers and the builders who coordinated the construction process. Of those builders, George Frederick Nott was arguably the most important as a builder and as a philanthropist.

It is late April 1936. Fund raising for the proposed New England University College is lagging, opposition to the concept increasing. The NSW Stevens-Bruxner Government is being affected by internal rivalries within the United Australia (now Liberal) Party as Deputy UAP Leader Eric Spooner begins to move against Premier Bertram Stevens.

At a Cabinet meeting, a minister suddenly moves out of the blue “that the item – a University College for Armidale – be struck off the Cabinet list”. We do not know who the minister was, but it seems probable that it was Spooner.

The College’s main protagonist, Education Minister and member for Armidale David Drummond, had been ambushed. Stevens was on leave with Country Party Leader Bruxner acting as Premier. Bruxner was in a difficult position trying to manage the increasing factional divides within the UAP, as well as relations between the UAP and Country Party.

Recognising that if the motion succeeded the university college proposal was dead, Drummond desperately talked out time until the lunch break. But what to do?

Knowing that George Nott was in town, Drummond went to him for help. If this resolution is carried, Drummond pleaded, “not only Armidale, but the whole of the north would lose the greatest opportunity it had ever had.

Nott’s reaction was swift and generous. “Is £1,000 any good to you? I will give you £500 in cash, and another £500 in bricks the day the job is started.”

When Cabinet resumed, Drummond’s colleague took up his papers with an air of finality, and said, “Well, Mr Chairman, I think we had better settle this matter now”.

“Pardon me”, Drummond interposed, “but within fifteen minutes of leaving this room I raised £1000. If the Government will give a firm undertaking to go ahead, the northern people will do their part. I am sure we can get the rest of the £10,000”.

Battles still lay ahead, there would be other threats, but the day had been won.

While critical to the final establishment of the New England University College, George F Nott’s quick and generous reaction was only part of his contribution to New England life, including its built architecture. That contribution was truly remarkable.

Over the next few columns, I will take the life of George F Nott as an entry point to further explore New England’s built landscape and architecture and the life that created it.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 29 November 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here  2017.