Charles Howard

05/05/1855

Despite his family’s connections, Charles Howard Marryat received only chequered patronage throughout a career of some 45 years which spanned the boom years of the early 1880s and the early 1920s.

Born in Adelaide into a high-church family, Charley, was the eldest of ten children. Augustus Short, the first Church of England Bishop in the colony of South Australia, was a paternal great-uncle; his maternal grandmother, Grace Howard (later Farrell), was the wife of South Australia’s first Colonial Chaplain. His Eton- and Oxford-educated father, a nephew of Captain Marryat who wrote 'Mr Midshipman Easy' amongst other novels, and brother-in-law of the Governor of South Australia, Sir Henry Fox Young (served 1848-54), was Rev. Charles Marryat (1827-1906) (ADB:Marryat).

Charley Marryat was taught at home by his parents, at various private boarding schools and, during his tenth year, in England and Ireland as well as on shipboard. From mid-1868, he spent a bare eighteen months boarding at St Peter’s College, Adelaide. His vocation may have been foreshadowed on his eighth birthday by his father’s gift of a rip saw (Diaries: CM). After studying Engineering & Applied Science at King’s College, London from 1874 to 1876, he completed articles under the British architects, Driver & Rew, in 1878 (KCL Archives; Brandon: Dedications).

Within a few years of his return to Adelaide, C Howard Marryat, as he liked to be known, entered a partnership with Henry J. Henderson (b.1856, London; arrived South Australia c.1857; d.1927, Victor Harbour), an architect said to be ‘a true gentleman’ (Advertiser: 14.6.1934, 16). Family friends such as the Harts of Glanville Hall, solicitors and politicians formed an initial domestic clientele. Peter Waite, the pastoralist, and Joachim Wendt, the watchmaker, diversified the list. Alterations to hotels became a speciality which led to the building of the new Norwood Hotel. St Aidan’s, Marden, and the lesser St Alban’s, near Kingscote, resulted from connections made naturally enough by the junior partner whose interest in the church extended to membership of the St Peter’s Cathedral Choral Society. Joining the Adelaide Philharmonic Society in 1885 confirmed a dedication to music which had already shown itself in the reconstruction of the Academy of Music, Rundle Street, (originally by E H Bayer, 1879). Although both Henderson & Marryat’s first and second rebuilding of the Academy would both be destroyed by fire, the architects were engaged by (Sir) Robert Barr Smith to decorate his private theatre at ‘Torrens Park’, Mitcham. Nor did bad press prevent them from building the town hall at Albany, Western Australia, following a winning competition entry in 1884 (Western Mail, 25 December, 1886, 23).

Anticipating further prestigious contracts, both men joined the South Australian Institute of Architects (SAIA) upon its inauguration in 1886 (Roll Book: AM). But that year brought a collapse in the state’s economy so severe that the pair decided to open an office in Victoria. Henderson would move to Melbourne (where his younger brother, Edgar, was practising); Marryat would stay behind. They would combine forces in one or other city should a substantial job arise. But between February 1886 and March 1893, they secured just ten joint projects, none of significance. The partnership was dissolved and Henderson returned to Adelaide. He abandoned architecture to take up the secretaryship of the Adelaide Club, a post he held for the ensuing 32 years (Morgan:45-6).

Marryat had not and, like Henry Henderson, was not to marry. Only one of his many siblings, Grace, did so; she married a clergyman (Biographical Index; Indices). The family lived in rectories attached to the churches where Rev. Marryat – promoted from Archdeacon to Dean in 1887 – held the living. Convinced of the worth of the Marryat pedigree, both Peter Waite and Robert Barr Smith entrusted more private and commercial work to ‘young Charles’. ‘Urrbrae’, Waite’s 35-room house which sported Arts & Crafts décor, rescued his practice (working in association with E.J. Woods) in 1890 after which time Marryat became, in effect, the architect ‘in-house’ for Elder Smith & Co. over the ensuing 25 years. One of his larger commissions involved doubling and redoubling the area of the company’s New Dock wool store at Port Adelaide. But his work remained patchy until the first decade of the 20th century.

Marryat’s link to Elder Smith & Co. caused him to be favoured by the Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Society for projects at the Wayville showgrounds, and by other prominent pastoralists to build homesteads and shearing sheds, for example M.S. Hawker of North Bungaree (Hawker & Linn: 160) and William Gilbert of Pewsey Vale. Similarly, his father’s position in the Church of England and his chairmanship of Cottage Homes Inc. (which he founded in 1871) brought commissions in the service of each, but they were neither major nor lucrative. For the most part, cottages were designed and their construction overseen honorarily.

Occasionally, a new house would enliven the unremunerative ordinariness of repeated alterations, additions, or decorating jobs. Eustace Grundy’s ‘Red House’ in North Adelaide closely followed one in the same suburb for his parents, himself and his spinster sisters. But it is likely that Marryat often had to rely on funds derived from (extremely modest) speculation in property (Lands Titles: Certificates) and (a fraction of) the rents owed to an uncle’s brother’s estate of which he was co-trustee between 1903 and 1919 (Will of G.S. Williams: 1-2). Opportunities tended to fall by the wayside. A dashed project of 1910, financed by Peter Waite, would have been the Kindergarten Union’s first free school.

In 1915, enjoying a period of relative prosperity, Marryat was elected a Fellow of the SAIA (Roll Book: AM). Not unfamiliar with ‘timber and tin’ – used for mission churches and wool stores – he preferred masonry and went so far as to experiment with concrete construction. One of two bungalows built in 1913 on adjoining sites survive in Seaton. This broad style characterises the Cottage Homes at Rose Park, most of which he built between 1909 and 1926 and which rounded out his working life.

All in all, Marryat appeared to shrink morally from taking advantage of his social and clerical network, never assuming the ascendancy of which he was capable.

Giles Walkley

Citation details
Walkley, Giles, 'Marryat, Charles Howard’, Architecture Museum, University of South Australia, 2014, Architects of South Australia: [http://www.architectsdatabase.unisa.edu.au/arch_full.asp?Arch_ID=136]