Depree, Charles Lambert

DEPREE, Charles Lambert (c1845–1893) was the son of Charles Templer Depree, a London solicitor, and Ann Elizabeth Bennett. His father was wealthy, moving from a town house at 1 Regent Square, St Pancras, London in 1851 to one at 12 Bloomsbury Square in 1861. He received his engineering education in the Applied Sciences Department of King’s College in 1861-63 and as an articled pupil of John Arthur Wright (1841-1920) in 1864-67, while working on construction of the Kidwelly branch of the Carmarthen and Cardigan Railway and on the Doncaster and Gainsborough line. In 1868 Depree worked for W Banks (-) in France where he was in charge of a patented process for copper-plating iron armour plate. While there, he developed an interest in concrete. In May 1869 Depree married Ella Louisa Brown at Hull just before migrating to Queensland. He soon qualified as a licensed surveyor and in June 1870, to demonstrate the potential of concrete he erected a building next to Mecklenburgh Villa his residence at Fortitude Valley (named after the address of his family’s London home). As a result of the publicity it received, he worked on major projects later that year: as contractor for the refractory ward at the Woogaroo Asylum, ‘the first public work constructed of concrete in this colony’, and as sub-contractor for the concrete lining of an underground reservoir on Wickham Terrace for the Brisbane Board of Water Works. His patent application for an improved method of building in concrete – a system of movable formwork – was granted in November 1871. He had been in Townsville from July of the same year in charge of improvements to Ross Creek for the Marine Board of Queensland. In mid-1872 Depree went to Maryborough to superintend improvements to navigation on the Mary River, but his scheme for a system of locks was not realised. Upon joining the Queensland Railways in September 1872, he worked on the Brisbane extension of the Southern and Western Railway. From 1875 to 1877 he was resident engineer in charge of the Stanthorpe extension where he applied his knowledge of concrete to culverts, a tunnel – the first such use of concrete in Queensland, and a dam.

In March 1878 Depree was appointed District Engineer for the Railways in Maryborough, a successful and popular posting both for Depree and his wife. Throughout the Wide Bay District he was identified with the coming of railways, his appearance in a locality being a sure sign that “the iron horse would follow”. He was elected an Associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers, London, in 1881 and elevated to membership in 1889. As successor to George Phillips in September 1886, Depree was appointed Assistant Engineer-in-Charge of Surveys, a position in which he supervised the drawing office staff of the Railways and was third only to the Chief Engineer, HC STANLEY. On his return to Brisbane, Depree built as his residence, a concrete house using his patented system of moveable formwork on land which had owned at Toowong since 1874. A report of the construction of Goldicott in the Brisbane Courier was widely reprinted, but despite the contractors, Rose & James, experiencing no difficulties, Depree’s system seems not to have been used elsewhere. On stylistic grounds, the very accomplished design could have been influenced by John HALL sometime prior to its erection. Pressure of work and anxiety caused Depree’s health to fail, and in March 1890 he was granted a year’s leave of absence on half-pay to visit England. While travelling overland across America, he wrote to George PHILLIPS at Normanton, with observations which supported Phillips proposals for the Gulf, of railways: “narrow gauge, almost entirely on the surface, unballasted, undrained, unfenced and apparently very little maintained”. His health did not improve and he died at Southport, Lancashire on 30 August 1893. He was a pioneer of concrete construction in Queensland and possibly further afield. His siblings were also successful – Frederick Templer Depree (1849–1926) was the chairman of a gas contracting company, and his youngest brother, Arthur Oliver Depree, was a naval architect. His son, Charles Fynney DEPREE who trained in Brisbane, later practised as an architect in Liverpool.