Beazeley, Alexander

BEAZELEY, Alexander (1830–1905) was born at Brighton, England, son of George Beazley, formerly a Commander in the Royal Navy, and his wife Margaret Knowles, and baptized in the Swedenborgian Church. He was articled in 1846 to the civil engineer, John Wright (1799-1880) and while a pupil was employed on the layout of the Portsmouth Direct Railway. In 1852, he migrated to New South Wales where he joined the Colonial Architects’ Office under ET BLACKET as First Foreman of Works in 1853 working on lighthouses including a temporary timber tower at Gabo Island. During 1854 he worked on a new lighthouse and keeper’s quarters for Cape Moreton, which had been designed by the Colonial Architect, shortly before Blacket resigned. Beazeley visited Moreton Bay on several occasions to undertake surveys and investigate local stone for the lighthouse and in September 1854 he witnessed the contract for its erection. At the end of 1854 he was promoted to Second Clerk of Works and in 1856 to Clerk of Works at Moreton Bay, largely due to his local knowledge and familiarity with ‘the works about to be commenced’. Apart from the lighthouse, what little money voted for public works in the district was often not expended. In response to criticism, a local public works board was established by the Government Resident shortly before Beazeley resigned in 1857. As Clerk of Works at Moreton Bay, Beazeley was replaced by Charles TIFFIN. Thereafter Beazeley entered private practice for a brief time at Sydney, his work included surveys for ET Blacket’s University of Sydney but his charges were later deemed exorbitant. After the Dunbar was wrecked trying to enter Sydney Harbour, he wrote on the need for an additional light, preferring Outer North Head, but Alexander DAWSON’s Hornby light was built instead at Inner South Head. In 1858 Beazeley was re-employed as a clerk of works in the Road Engineer’s Office of the New South Wales’ Department of Public Works, overseeing erection of a bridge at Wollombi and designing the Bungonia Bridge. In 1860 he was elected a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and in January 1863 he returned to Britain where he married Roberta Nicholson Beazeley in London. After working as Resident Engineer on the Kidwelly Branch of the Cardigan and Carmathen Railway, Beazeley joined Trinity House as Assistant to the Chief Engineer. He was involved with lighthouse construction and became an expert on fog signals, winning a Telford Medal in 1871 for a paper he delivered to ICE. Soon afterwards, he was dismissed for having used Trinity House data without authority – a charge which he refuted in the London press. From 1873 he was Resident Engineer of the Halmstad and Jönköping, and North of Europe Railways in Sweden. He later published Notes on domestic buildings in southern Sweden. On his return to London he served as Librarian to the RIBA from 1879-96 contributingarticles to their Proceedings and Transactions. He was also author of Tables of Tangential Angles and Multiples for setting out Curves, The Reclamation of Land from Tidal Waters, and edited and largely rewrote GW Usill’s Practical Surveying. He was an accomplished linguist, fluent in French, German, Italian and Swedish and an early and ‘devoted friend’ of the Oxford English Dictionary, providing over 30,000 quotations and acting as consultant on terms in architecture and engineering. He died at Dorset, England. His journal 1848-1863, said to mostly relate to social events when he was in New South Wales, is held by the Institution of Civil Engineers, London. His only son, Michael Wornum Beazeley (1866–1918) was a mechanical engineer.