Gwynneth, John

GWYNNETH, Johnjnr(c1829‒1895), civil engineer and surveyor, was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the son of John Gwynneth snr, a stonemason, and his wife Ann. After serving his apprenticeship as a stonemason, possibly with his father who by 1841 was a stonemason in Liverpool, John jnr was articled from 1844 by the engineering contractors, Holmes, Brassey & Stevenson and later employed by them on construction of the London and North-Western Railway. Subsequently he worked on the Lancashire-Yorkshire, Newcastle-Berwick and Paris-Boulonge railways and as a mining engineer in Lancashire until he migrated to the Ballarat gold-diggings. He soon resumed engineering, working on the Hobson Bay railway under James MOORE, the Spencer St dock, Australian wharf, Hughes & Co.’s wharf, and the Yan Yean reservoir, under Joseph Martindale. In January 1858 he was appointed as Town Surveyor of Ballarat East Municipal Council, succeeding William COOTE. In 1859, Gwynneth and James Mulholland, the Town Clerk were charged with conspiring to defraud the Council. During the widely publicised proceedings which were augmented by correspondence in the Ballarat Star, Gwynneth was discharged but Mulholland was convicted. But after being dismissed, he sought damages for malicious prosecution by the Council through its chair, Richard Belford. Gwynneth’s case collapsed with new evidence suspiciously sourced by Belford from the imprisoned Mulholland. He worked with PETO, BRASSEY & BETTS on railways in New South Wales and in 1863 contracted for the Windsor and Richmond extension railway, before moving to New Zealand. In Waikato, he worked as a surveyor and served as Captain with the Bay of Plenty Volunteers in the Invasion of the Waikato, a major battle during the Maori Wars. After working on construction of Section 3 of the Auckland and Drury Railway, Gwynneth was a mining engineer in a gold rush to Thames, on the Coromandel Peninsular from 1867. Subsequently he practised privately as a civil engineer and surveyor, but after his son JG GWYNNETH, who was an engineer in the Chief Engineer’s Office of the Queensland Commissioner for Railways was transferred in 1887 to Cairns as District Engineer for construction of the Cairns Railway, Gwynneth snr also moved to Cairns where he was appointed Municipal Engineer in January 1888. At this time, the major work for the municipality was raising the level and draining the entire CBD, much of which was a swamp. Despite his extensive experience as a civil engineer, many councillors were antagonistic, rejecting his advice before he was again dismissed although he was respected by the Cairns Post and well regarded by the community. He returned to New Zealand where he practised until his death at Cambridge, Waikato, in 1895.