Challands, Henry

CHALLANDS, Henry(1840–1891), builder and clerk of works, was born at Bottesford, ‘The Vale of Belvoir’, Leicestershire, third son of Joseph Challands, a builder, and his second wife, Rebecca Millns née Dickson, the second of his three wives. In 1851 Joseph Challands was employing 11 men and four labourers, and in both 1841 and 1851 the household included builder’s apprentices, two of whom were his third wife’s children. His father’s namesake and eldest son also became a builder. After Henry married Elizabeth Ann Garner in November 1863, they sailed for Queensland arriving at Maryborough in April 1864. Initially they lived there, and in 1866 acquired scrub land close by which they partially cleared possibly for cotton but by 1872 for growing sugar cane. They let the property before moving to Mount Perry probably not as a copper miner but as a builder. Closely associated with the Wesleyan Church, he may have built their church in 1872. When mining slowed with low copper prices, he returned to Maryborough, where worked as a civil engineering contractor and was clerk of works for WILSON & BESWICKE’s Wesleyan Church in 1882-3. He died at Maryborough. His great grandson, AL CHALLANDS enrolled in 1954 in the B Arch course at the University of Queensland.