Burchett, Ernest Frederick

BURCHETT, Ernest Frederick(c1844–1935) was also listed as BOURCHETT, EF or HEF. He was born at Lambeth, Surrey, second son of Elizabeth Hitchens and Richard Burchett (1815–1875) who was an assistant master at the Government School of Design in Somerset House. After leading a student protest against the teaching system based entirely on copying, and subsequently giving evidence to a Parliamentary inquiry, Richard Burchett was appointed a master and became head-master of the school in 1852. The school relocated to South Kensington in 1857 when it was renamed the Central Training School for Art and from 1863 the National Art Training School, primarily for training teachers and renamed c1896 as the Royal College of Art. He died while on a visit to Dublin, Ireland in 1875. EF Burchett studied at the School of Design, South Kensington, while articled to or employed with unidentified architects. He married Louisa Coates at Lambeth, Surrey in 1876, before they migrated to Australia in March 1877. In August 1884 he arrived in Brisbane where he was an assistant inspector for Richard GAILEY and a valuator for the Permanent Benefit Building Society as well as calling tenders for civil engineering works. After being listed as an architect in Brisbane in 1886, he was employed by 1887 as first Clerk and Engineer of the Windsor Shire Council but by 1889 had moved to Southport where he practised privately as an architect and served as Shire Clerk and Engineer in 1889-91. His tenders for these positions proved farcically low: Clerk (£40pa) and Engineer (£26pa) and he was fully occupied with numerous tenders for clearing, filling, making roads and building works, including a bridge, extensions to the Shire Hall and improvements to the School of Arts, a new swimming pool at the Southport Pier, improvements to ferry approaches and sea walls. He also served as secretary for local groups: the school of arts, horse races, aquatic sports and painted new scenery for the Southport Minstrels. When he was slow in balancing the Board’s accounts, he was dismissed in December 1891 and moved to the Northern Rivers, NSW, where he practised in Lismore until 1894 when he was obliged to give up his office but could be contacted at his house at Goonelebah. A circumstantial case can be made that he designed the heritage listed Tulloona nearby as a residence at Panorama Hill for which he called tenders in May 1892. After leaving the district, Burchett moved to Sydney where he practiced as an architect and stood unsuccessfully for election to the Willoughby Municipal Council in 1898. He was bankrupt in 1908 but remained listed as an architect in Sydney. After Louisa’s death in 1930, he spent the last couple of years of his life living at the Little Sisters of the Poor, Randwick.