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Thomas Oliver of Tanbridge – Victorian railwayman
par excellence
Thomas Oliver was a highly successful man in one of
the great industries of Victorian England - he built a
big career for himself by creating railways all over
the country, and although not local, he also built a
big family house here in Horsham. Let us take a look
at his life and times.
Firstly, his background. He was the youngest son of
Cuthbert Oliver, himself a railway engineer and
contractor, who was in at the very beginning of the
transport revolution, and who was born and bred in
Allendale, Northumberland. Cuthbert retired to live
near Chesterfield about 1840 and died there in 1865.
Family tradition has it that he was at one time a
partner of his fellow Northumbrian George Stephenson,
who as it happens also retired to Chesterfield.
Thomas, however, was born in Lowton, Lancashire in
1834, when his father was then based there due to his
work on the construction of the Liverpool-Manchester
railway, and straightway after schooling he followed
in the family tradition. Firstly, around 1850, he was
articled to Charles Bartholomew, who was Engineer to
the South Yorkshire Railway and River Don Company, and
after having completed his articles he took up work
with a certain John T. Leather of Leeds, where he held
the position of Contractor's Engineer, working on a
project known as the River Nene Improvements, between
Wisbech and Peterborough.
He married Caroline, the daughter of William Michael
Gichard of Polwyn, Cornwall, in Sheffield in 1854; she
was three years older than her husband, and they had
five surviving children, three boys named Thomas,
Francis, and Frederick, and two girls, one of whom was
to marry Colonel Corrie Tonge DSO, and the other Harry
Savill, a London solicitor and great grandson of
Thomas Oliver's elder brother John. A fourth son,
Cuthbert, died while only eight years old. In due
course Francis became a partner in the aptly-named
firm of George Beer and Co., brewers of Canterbury,
while Thomas and Frederick carried on the family
tradition, and the family engineering business, when
their father retired in 1900.
But we are moving ahead too fast. Let us take stock of
some of Thomas Oliver's career highlights around the
country, and then take a closer look at his work in
the Horsham area, which first brought him to the town,
and must have put him in mind to settle here. He was
the resident engineer on the Shrewsbury and Welshpool
Railway, for example, and when the contractors fell
down on the job he took over and ensured the work was
completed to plan. His first big contract was for the
Midland Railway Company, and he completed many
assignments for them: the Cudsworth and Barnsley line,
the Mansfield and Worksop, the Wellingborough and
Sharnbrook and the Alfreton and Clay Cross. He was
proud to boast as well that his work on the Dore and
Chinley Railway involved the construction of the
second longest tunnel in England, upwards of three and
a half miles in length. In all his work for the
Midland Railway Company totalled something like 100
miles of track.
Again he created a second line for the Great Western
Railway between Bristol and the Severn Tunnel, and
with his sons engineered the Rugby to Woodford section
of the Great Central Railway Company's line to London.
There was much more like this, in what was clearly a
very active career: tunnels, branches and widenings,
second lines and loops (in the arcane language of the
railwayman), and commissions for a splendid roll-call
of railway companies past – but I think we now have
the general picture. The works of Thomas Oliver and
Sons was at Derby, to where Thomas travelled weekly,
from Monday to Friday, until his retirement in 1900.
It is said that Oliver developed a new and effective
method of tunnelling, and worked out a way to bore a
tunnel from both ends at once, and meet in the middle,
thus saving much time and money. Sceptics had wagered
that it would be impossible for him to achieve a neat
connection, as it were, but he proved them all wrong
and as a result, a family story goes, he made more
money by taking on the doubters than from his
contractor's fee.
So let us now turn to Sussex, where much of his work
lay. But first it might be a good idea to sketch out a
little of the background. The early part of the
nineteenth century saw the beginnings and subsequent
development of the railway system in England, but it
was not until 1848 that a line came to Horsham. The
Surrey Iron Railway was open for business on 26 July
1803, and this marked not only the first line of any
kind in the south of England, but also the very first
public railway in the world. Of more immediate concern
to us, the London to Brighton line was fully open on
21 September 1841, and in order to benefit from this
new-fangled form of transport, Horsham residents had
to get to Three Bridges by horse power. The railway
then came to Horsham for the first time on 14 February
1848, under the ownership of the London, Brighton and
South Coast Railway, and from then on there was
piecemeal development of what was known as the
Mid-Sussex Line over the next twenty years. The object
was to keep the rival London and South Western Railway
out of West Sussex, in a race between the two
companies to provide the most direct route to
Portsmouth.
And so a Horsham - Petworth section was opened on 10
October 1859, and then a Horsham - Guildford link from
2 October 1865, followed shortly after by a Horsham -
Dorking route on 1 May 1867. (Readers might be
interested to note, in passing, that Christ's Hospital
station was not opened until 1902, when it was
anticipated that there would be major housing
development in the area. Thus it boasted seven
platforms and associated buildings, until this
incongrous scale was sharply reduced in 1973, to two
platforms).
Thomas Oliver was closely bound up with these
developments, and from 1857 until 1865 he worked with
Edward Woods, a leading civil engineer of the time,
and produced the working plans for the Petworth -
Midhurst and Horsham - Guildford stretches, and
supervised the completion of the work. He also drew up
plans for a projected line from Pulborough to Steyning
and later, on his own account, engineered for the
London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, their
Chichester - Midhurst line and their new main line
from Coulsdon to Earlswood.
Building railways was a tough old game, and Oliver
must have been a tough old character to get his
projects completed on time, on budget, and to the
right specification; the fact that he was so much in
demand speaks volumes for his reputation in the
boardrooms of the day. At one point in his career he
says he was responsible for almost 1,000 men, and this
is not surprising given the scale of operations.
Peaceful rural communities must have been shattered by
invading labour forces - we hear of 550 labourers and
their families settling in the hitherto quiet village
of Balcombe, and in 1840 over 6,000 men and 960 horses
worked on the main line at Merstham. Trouble occurred
there during the building of the tunnel, when the
labourers complained that the nearest supply of beer
was two miles away, and to prevent a strike boys were
paid 1/2d per journey to keep the men lubricated.
There is a family story that Oliver was in the habit
of keeping a revolver handy when out on site – just in
case. He knew his work force better than most, and the
best way to reinforce his authority.
It appears that Oliver moved to Horsham about 1857,
which would have been between completion of the
Petworth and Guildford lines, and certainly his
children Francis Gibbon and Caroline Anne were born in
the town in 1861 and 1863 respectively. The Directory
and Gazetteer of Sussex for 1858 gives his address as
Grove Cottage, Horsham, and he then moved to an
earlier Tanbridge, which he leased. (Tan Bridge Farm
was on the site, and in the sixteenth century the
house there was known as Cadman's). But in 1887 he
purchased the freehold and immediately demolished the
old house and built a brand new home – the house we
know today – on a site set farther back from the
Worthing Road. The 1861 Census records Tanbridge House
('Old Tanbridge'), with Sarah Brander with four staff,
but the 1871 record gives the Oliver family in
occupation.
He commissioned Thomas Redford to build the new
Tanbridge. The bricks were supplied locally (by
Nightingale's), as were other materials, and it is
likely, given his talents, that he designed the house
himself in conjunction with his builder. The
neo-Elizabethan style would no doubt have been to his
taste, and his (or perhaps his wife's) interest in the
arts was reflected in the fine painted glass windows
on the landings. He also made his mark with the
entwined initials 'TCO' and the date 1887, which were
carved above the front entrance, together with the
Oliver crest.
So this was where they were to live for the rest of
their lives. Thomas Oliver's wife died on 15 March
1904, aged 74, of cancer, 'after a long and painful
illness'. The local paper said that she 'was of a kind
and charitable disposition, and was greatly esteemed'.
One senses that these words were not just there for
form's sake. We know, for example, that she played her
part in the Grand Church Bazaar of 1885 (see January
2004 Newsletter), when the stalls of 'Mrs Oliver and
Mrs Lintott were resplendently and tastefully arranged
in dull red and peacock blue hangings respectively,
and offered a most effective apppearance, loaded as
they were with every sort and kind of wares'. The
Olivers also gave generously to local causes, with
donations to such as St Mary's, St Mark's and the
Pioneer Working Men's Club. She was, of course,
mourned by her children, and her grandchildren were
also at her graveside to pay their last respects:
Wilfred and Sibyl, Violet, Freddy and Arthur. Her
husband lived on for another sixteen years, until
death caught up with him at the ripe old age of 86.
Shooting and cricket were the family's great leisure
interests, and since 1880 Oliver had leased a Scottish
sporting estate on an annual basis; every year he
transported his family and household north in a
special carriage attached to the Scotch Express. He
died on 9 October 1920, after a fortnight's illness,
while at Gilkersclough, in Abington, Lanarkshire, and
was brought south in a polished oak coffin to be
buried alongside his wife and young Cuthbert in
Horsham's Denne Road cemetery.
As might be expected, there was a good crowd at the
service, both the town's great and the good – Godmans,
Rawlisons, Lintotts, Padwicks and Hunts, together with
his many staff from Tanbridge, including Mr Hickman
the butler and a raft of below-stairs folk. Among the
floral tributes was one from Sir Henry and Lady Paget-Cooke
'in affectionate memory of a fine sportsman and one of
the best of friends, from Grace and Paget'. His staff
also cared for him, clearly, just as they had his
wife. Their contribution read, simply, 'in
affectionate gratitude to a good master, from the
servants at Tanbridge'.
Sir Henry Paget-Cooke, incidentally, was a particular
friend of Francis Oliver's, and had been since their
schooldays at Cheltenham. He was a solicitor who acted
for King George V, and a frequent family guest in
Scotland.
For Tanbridge it was the end of an era. Thomas Oliver,
who had built it, seen his children grow up in it, and
lived his life there for 33 years, was now gone. His
son Francis declined to move to Tanbridge from his
home in Kent, and his wife, whose father the Rev CJ
Robinson had been vicar of Horsham from 1887-1894, did
not like the house. Thomas Oliver's eldest son, again
called Thomas (but known as 'Willie') had predeceased
his father, but the other son, Frederick – who
remained a batchelor – and the two daughters survived
him.
The future of Tanbridge was to be as a school, and not
a private house. After some difficulty in finding a
buyer it was bought from the family by a consortium of
local businessmen and then sold on to the county
education authority. From 1924 until 1994 it was a
centre of education, firstly as the Girls' High School
and later as a comprehensive. Then there was much
debate as to whether the house should be preserved in
the face of development, but in the event, thanks in
great part to some vigorous campaigning, it was spared
and converted into flats, and its grounds developed
for houses, with the pleasing result that we see
today. English Heritage had refused to list the
building, declaring sniffily that most of the internal
decoration 'was fairly standard for the period, and
not of outstandingly good craftsmanshp' – just as well
Oliver was not around to hear this. But the Victorian
Society took another view, and claimed that the house
'was a fine example of the Wealden tradition
fashionable in the last two decades of the nineteenth
century, using local materials'.
The Oliver monument is in the Denne Road cemetery (and
there is a commemorative window to both Caroline and
Thomas in the north wall of St Mary's in the Chapel of
the Holy Trinity). It has been carefully restored by
Thomas Baxendale and Professor Michael Oliver, two of
Thomas Oliver's great grandchildren, and is by far the
best preserved of the graves there, solidly made of
marble, while others around have crumbled and
splintered.
This is a revised and updated version of the
profile originally published in the February 2005
Horsham Society Newsletter, with brief additions in
the April 2005 issue. Many thanks to Thomas
Baxendale, Thomas Oliver's great grandson, for family
photographs and much helpful information. |
