Maxwell Bury
Encyclopedia
Maxwell Bury was an English-born architect
Architect
An architect is a person trained in the planning, design and oversight of the construction of buildings. To practice architecture means to offer or render services in connection with the design and construction of a building, or group of buildings and the space within the site surrounding the...

 who was active in New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

 in the 19th century. He is best remembered for his buildings for the University of Otago
University of Otago
The University of Otago in Dunedin is New Zealand's oldest university with over 22,000 students enrolled during 2010.The university has New Zealand's highest average research quality and in New Zealand is second only to the University of Auckland in the number of A rated academic researchers it...

.

Life

Born in Nottinghamshire on 28 July 1825, Bury was the son of an Anglican clergyman and spent part of his youth in Cambridgeshire. He trained as an engineer near Derby
Derby
Derby , is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands region of England. It lies upon the banks of the River Derwent and is located in the south of the ceremonial county of Derbyshire. In the 2001 census, the population of the city was 233,700, whilst that of the Derby Urban Area was 229,407...

 and is thought to have been familiar with Aston Hall
Aston Hall
Aston Hall is a municipally owned Jacobean-style mansion in Aston, Birmingham, England. Washington Irving used it as the model for Bracebridge Hall in his stories in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon.-History:...

 near Birmingham which has been seen as the inspiration of some of his New Zealand work, notably the Nelson Provincial Government Buildings. He also served as an engineer in the merchant marine.

He married Eleanor Sarah Deighton on 11 August 1853 at Ellesmere in Shropshire and in 1854 sailed with her to Australia in the Zingari a steam-assisted ship he had had a hand in building. After a brief time in Melbourne the ship and the couple arrived at Nelson
Nelson, New Zealand
Nelson is a city on the eastern shores of Tasman Bay, and is the economic and cultural centre of the Nelson-Tasman region. Established in 1841, it is the second oldest settled city in New Zealand and the oldest in the South Island....

 in New Zealand on 12 December 1854.

Bury got a contract to provide a postal service between Nelson and Wellington using the Zingari while his wife ran a school in Nelson. He offered his services as an engineer and a land agent, played a role in public life and was involved in Nelson Anglican church affairs. No doubt this facilitated his being commissioned to design the Maori chapel at Wakapuaka. It is thought he may have been the first architect of the house begun by Bishop Edmund Hobhouse, Bishopdale. He designed the Nelson Provincial Council's principal building which was erected in 1859. In 1863 he moved with his wife and their children to Christchurch
Christchurch
Christchurch is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the country's second-largest urban area after Auckland. It lies one third of the way down the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula which itself, since 2006, lies within the formal limits of...

.

There he designed the Torlesse building in Cathedral Square, an orphanage at Addington and the church of St John the Baptist in Latimer Square, the latter in early 1864, as well as some private houses. He went into partnership with Benjamin Mountfort
Benjamin Mountfort
Benjamin Woolfield Mountfort was an English emigrant to New Zealand, where he became one of that country's most prominent 19th century architects. He was instrumental in shaping the city of Christchurch's unique architectural identity and culture, and was appointed the first official Provincial...

 in 1864, designing St Mark’s, Opawa, St James’, Cust and St Joseph’s, Lyttelton with him before leaving with his family for England in March 1866. Bury returned, but when he did it seems he was alone.

He resumed his architectural career in Nelson in 1870 and in 1877 designed the Chapel of the Holy Evangelists on the hill at Bishopdale. He won the competition to design buildings for the University of Otago in Dunedin
Dunedin
Dunedin is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand, and the principal city of the Otago Region. It is considered to be one of the four main urban centres of New Zealand for historic, cultural, and geographic reasons. Dunedin was the largest city by territorial land area until...

 and soon moved there. He did other work in Dunedin, including commercial premises for Smith & Smith in the Octagon, but returned to Christchurch. In 1883 Bury had more work from the University of Otago and, it seems, was in Dunedin again. About the middle of 1885 he moved back to Nelson.

After 1890 he went to Sydney, returned to England in 1908 and died there at Ledbury, Herefordshire on 9 September 1912.

Buildings

Time has not been kind to some of Bury's work. His Nelson Provincial Government Building was an ambitious structure for New Zealand in the 1850s. It was in the Jacobean style with an E-shaped plan like Aston Hall. It had ogee-roofed towers, bays and prominent nipped and curving gables and was made of wood decorated to resemble stone and was thus unusual as well as striking. Nevertheless it was demolished in 1969. Some of his churches have fared better but some commercial commissions have been demolished or obscured. His domestic work has not been much explored. But in his buildings for the University of Otago Bury produced one of colonial New Zealand’s most successful groups which became the core and template for a greater complex.(University of Otago Clocktower complex
University of Otago Clocktower complex
The University of Otago Clocktower complex is a group of architecturally and historically significant buildings in the centre of the University of Otago campus. Founded in Dunedin, New Zealand, in 1869, the University of Otago was the expression of the province's Scottish founders' commitment to...

, University of Otago Clocktower Building.)

Stacpoole considered Bury’s principal university building an improvement on what is usually taken to be its inspiration, Sir George Gilbert Scott
George Gilbert Scott
Sir George Gilbert Scott was an English architect of the Victorian Age, chiefly associated with the design, building and renovation of churches, cathedrals and workhouses...

’s Glasgow University, pointing to its livelier detail and better fenestration and tower. He called the main stairway “unquestionably the work of a very able designer” and said Bury’s professorial houses were “remarkably advanced for the 1870s”. The first buildings of the complex remain, substantially intact, as testimony to the architect’s ability.

Sources

  • Knight, H. & Wales, N., Buildings of Dunedin. John McIndoe Limited, Dunedin, 1988.
  • Otago Daily Times, Dunedin 1861- [ODT].
  • Stacpoole, John, Colonial Architecture in New Zealand, A.H. & A.W. Reed, Wellington, Sydney, London, 1976. ISBN 0 589 00930 3.
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