Cecile Oxall
On Wednesday 8th November 1932, Alderman John Malcolm Dossor JP and his wife Edith Kate Dossor (née Brittain) of 135 Westbourne Avenue attended The Guildhall for what was to be the culmination of his career in civic life: his installation as Lord Mayor of Hull for 1932 and hers as Lady Mayoress.
They had been living at 135 Westbourne Avenue for twenty-seven years. Also on that avenue were some houses that were reminders of another career of the new Lord Mayor; as a professional architect and surveyor, he had designed those houses and others in The Avenues. Although he had not designed the house in which he was living, it had 'many internal features of his design.") He was also the architect and renovator of many buildings in other parts of the East Riding of Yorkshire and in Grimsby and Scunthorpe, North Lincolnshire.
John Malcolm Dossor was born in Hull in 1872, the youngest son of Frederick Dossor and his wife Isabella. Frederick was a master mariner who rose to become a Captain and then Senior Captain in Ellerman's Wilson Line and Commodore of the Fleet. John Dossor attended Hull and East Riding College, Park Street, a private school which was opened in 1867 in order to enhance the provision of secondary education, increasingly demanded by the middle-class. An advertisement for the college stated that its object was to prepare boys for their work in life, by giving them a liberal Education of a modern type. Primary importance is assigned to mental improvement and culture, but preparation for professional examinations is at the same time a recognised part of the college course.
During Dossor's time there in the 1880s it is described as having,'... an all graduate staff [through whom] advanced work developed, notably in science: the school had an impressive record in public examinations, and in nine years claimed 30 university scholarships and exhibitions. Corporate activities flourished...'13) Dossor remained in Hull for his professional training. From1888 to 1893 he was an articled pupil of the important firm of architects, with the largest practice in EastYorkshire, Messrs Smith and Brodrick (Richard George Smith and Frederick Stead Brodrick) and became an assistant there for the following year 1893- 94. He then undertook further training out of Hull: he was an assistant to the architect Maurice Hunter of Belper, Derbyshire for the following year; then for three years, 1895-98, he was an assistant to Benjamin Septimus Jacobs of Hull as his Resident Representative on the Isle of Wight, supervising the erection of the County Asylum. While he was there he qualified in 1896 as an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects. He returned to Hull and was an assistant in 1898 to the architect William Alfred Gelder, for one year. It has been claimed that Gelder'...did for Hull what Sir Christopher Wren had done for London The new town plan seems to have been largely his and was certainly for the most part carried through during his mayoralty:(4)Gelder was elected Mayor in 1898 and for four successive years and was awarded a knighthood in 1903. During the years of his training at these leading architectural firms, Dossor would have learnt about the design, the surveying of the sites and the overseeing of construction (or alteration and renovation) of a wide variety of buildings in differing styles: Council buildings, banks, insurance companies, merchants' and solicitors' offices, public houses, mansions and churches. For example, Brodrick built his own house, St Heliers (now the Pearson Park Hotel) during the time that Dossor was articled with the firm, which also reconstructed West Lodge (at the Princes Avenue entrance to Pearson Park). The firm added a chantry and vestry to the church of St John (Newland) on Clough Road and re-designed the windows on the south side of the church. In 1898 Gelder's firm designed The Premier Store, Nos 152-154 Hessle Road, featuring 'Flemish Renaissance gables, brick with stone bands and decorative frieze, squat Tuscan colonnade to second floor and an octagonal corner turret with cupola: (5) It was a somewhat extravagant corner shop..the most showy piece of shop-building in the town...'(6)
Dossor started an independent practice in Hull in 1898. He collaborated with W SWalker -Walker & Dossor (Bridlington & Hull) - to carry out alterations to The Imperial Hotel on Paragon Street, Hull, in 1898. Walker later designed the rebuilt Spa Theatre and Opera House in Bridlington in 1907. In 1898 Dossor also designed the redevelopment of an old pub Victoria Vaults, on Anlaby Road, afterwards renamed The Victoria Public House. One relative commented in a letter: ... Dossor's ancestors were brewers and yeast dealers in Hull (perhaps this is why he seems to have designed so many pubs!) (7)
St Augustine's Parish Hall (1900) at the junction of Princes and Queen's Road: The first designs for the church, planned for the residents of Pearson Park and The Avenues, were by George Gilbert Scott junior in 1887. The plans were modified and the work carried out by Scott's assistant Temple Lushington Moore in 1896. The church was demolished in 1976. The former vicarage (designed in 1897 by Temple Moore) and Dossor's parish hall remain. Dossor is listed in the magazine St Augustine's Church Monthly, July 1900, as subscribing E2 2s Od to the church's campaign to raise funds for building the parish hall; and he was to design it, to stand alongside the work of two important church architects In England in the late 19 century.
His architectural legacy in The Avenues area is important:
St Augustine's Parish Hall (1900)
73-75 Park Avenue (1901)
34.40 Westbourne Avenue (1904)
12-18 Victoria Avenue (1905)
Ebor Lodge, 92 Westbourne Avenue (1905)
In 1907 Dossor became a member of the firm Wellsted, Dossor & Wellsted, architects and surveyors. In that year the firm designed a new school and parish hall for St Mary's Church, Sculcoates Lane, Hull. Colonel W H Wellsted (1845-1920), twenty-seven years older than Dossor and a prominent figure in Hull, was head of the firm. He was not only an architect and surveyor but also a professional engineer identified with many sewerage and waterworks schemes, and .. engaged by various authorities on matters concerning navigation on rivers and water supplies. He often acted as an arbitrator and umpire in the compulsory acquisition of land for railway, water and sewerage works. (11) From 1866 to 1873 he worked in the Borough Engineer's Department in Hull and for six years, 1884 to 1890, was a leading member of Hull Town Council, serving on its principal committees. He rose to high positions in numerous commercial and professional organisations and achieved a national reputation as an authority on the valuation of property. His son C G Wellsted (1884-1944) was the third member of the firm. Like his father, he was a civil engineer. He became an important figure in the business and civic life of Hornsea and Hull, and a member of East Riding County Council.
The firm designed:
• 60-64 Marlborough Avenue (1908)
• 22-28 Richmond Street (1920) ...with leaded windows, pebbledash, overhanging eaves and cast-iron ventilators, are particularly notable in a 'garden village 'style. (12)
"The Avenues houses designed by Dossor all show influences of the English Arts and Crafts Movement, which was at its peak during the years 1900-1910. Another architect and designer, born in Hessle, was Charles Francis Annesley Voysey (1857-1941), who, to this day, has received national acclaim? His family left Hessle in 1859 and eventually settled in London, Voysey did not design any buildings in this area, but Dossor and other local architects would have been aware of Voysey's works through architectural publications and were inspired by his ideas. Many Arts and Crafts architects, notably Voysey, favoured an architectural style linked to the English cottage tradition, which stood for honest design, workmanship and expression of materials rather than originality of style at any price. Principal features were its rough-cast walls with mullioned windows, timber-framed walls, tile-hung gables, strip first floor windows, wide doors with strap hinges, stained glass windows, cast iron downpipes and guttering etc. The design qualities of these features can be seen in Dossor's houses in The Avenues. (13)
Dossor also designed houses in Newland Park:
• Nos. 22-24 (1906) have the 'Arts and Crafts style!
. At Nos. 46-48 (1907) are' another competent pair by Dossor!
• The firm is credited with the design of Nos 8-10 Newland Park (c 1908) : rendered with gables [which] have an Arts and Crafts feel!
. 'The corner plot of the loop [the street layout] is filled by West Garth (Number 132), 1910 by Wellsted, Dossor and Wellsted, almost certainly the work of John. M Dossor. He utilised the fashionable 'butterfly plan' the revolutionary layout pioneered by E S Prior at The Barn, Exmouth Devon in 1896, with wings set at an angle of 45 degrees, leading off a central hall: (14)
By the 1910s Dossor had established himself as a very accomplished architect. A design historian wrote of Voysey, 'A spell in an important office is always a good way in which to begin a career: (15) If so, Dossor's spell in Mayor Gelder's office must have been a source of many ideas and contacts. Moreover, he became a member of a firm, Wellsted, Dossor & Wellsted, headed by the very successful and influential CoW HWellsted, In Dossor, Hull had produced an architect who was very alert to current ideas in architecture, locally and nationally, and applied them in a personal style, sensitive to the site and remit of each of his buildings.
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