CUTHBERT, Charles Davenport

Architect

Born on 28 December 1866 at St. Kilda, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, a son of the Irish architect Charles Davenport Cuthbert and Sarah Jane (nee Cunningham). The family must have been in or near Ballarat, Australia by 1877 as his father designed the sanctuary in of St Peter's Church in that year as well as having designed St. Andrew's Kirk and Craig's Royal Hotel there (See St Peter's, Ballarat). Cuthbert was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne (1881-83) coming to Scotch from Rai Rai, Suva, Fiji, and at Melbourne University. He trained as an engineer and architect with Nathaniel Billing in Australia, and then practised on his own for seven years in Melbourne, New South Wales and Fiji. He was an associate of the Royal Victorian Institute of Architects. He came to South Africa in 1900 with the Australian Bushmen Corps and later served with the Johannesburg Mounted Rifles. After his service during the Anglo-Boer War he remained in Johannesburg and established himself as an architect and engineer. He married in 1903 and won the competition for the Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk building in Braamfontein in partnership with GOODWIN & SMALL in 1903 (cf GOODWIN, SMALL & CUTHBERT). As Goodwin, Small & Cuthbert they were successful in the competitions for the Town Hall and Market in King William's Town in about 1904 and were placed second in the competition for Harrismith Market building. The last known record of Cuthbert is his working as a draughtsman in the PUBLIC WORKS DEPARTMENT of the Orange River Colony. He was appointed to this post in 1905 and still with the department in 1907. He returned to Australia and died at Petersham, a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, on 6 December 1945.

ARVIA. (CSL ORC 1907)

This entry has been updated by Paul Alexander Mishura, Assistant Archivist to Scotch College.

List of projects

With photographs
With notes

Corporation Market Building: pre-1905. Qonce (King William's Town), Eastern Cape - Architect

Town Hall: pre-1905. Qonce (King William's Town), Eastern Cape - Architect

Books citing CUTHBERT

Picton-Seymour, Désirée. 1977. Victorian Buildings in South Africa. Cape Town: AA Balkema. pp 353

Transvaal Publishing Co. 1905. Men of the Times : Pioneers of the Transvaal and glimpses of South Africa . Johannesburg, Cape Town and London: The Transvaal Publishing Co. pp