Charles Hay Walker (1860-1942) was one of the three executors of the T.A. Walker Estate. The entry for him published at pages 627-629 of Volume 3 of The Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in 2014 (written by Owen Covick) is reproduced below, with some minor modifications. And a brief addendum to that entry has been appended. After R.W. Perks ceased in 1912 to be a director and significant shareholder in C.H. Walker and Co. Limited, Perks and Charles Hay Walker maintained their business collaboration in the Barry Estate Company Ltd. (with C.H. Walker’s descendants holding a combined total of 19.6 per cent of that company’s shares in 1957), but other than that they seem to have agreed to tread separate paths. In September 1909 the pair had established the Princes Street Estate Co. Ltd. (Company No. 104,994) to conduct property development activities in London. As at February 1912 this company’s paid-up capital was £93,800 – held exactly equally by its two shareholders, R.W. Perks and C.H. Walker. By March 1913 C.H. Walker had exited from the company and his seat on its board had been taken-up by Perks’s son Malcolm, then 20 years old. (TNA, B.T.31/19003/104994).
WALKER, Charles Hay (1860-1942), contractor, was born in New Brunswick, Canada, on 12 June 1860, the oldest of eight children of Charles Walker (1830-1874) and his wife Lydia Jane (née Fairweather). Charles Hay Walker’s father was the younger brother of Thomas Andrew Walker.** The two brothers were in partnership together as Railway Contractors, and at the time of his death Charles (senior) was supervising work on the firm’s contract for the Wapping to Shoreditch section of the East London Railway. C.H. Walker’s father left £6000, all to his widow. The bulk of this money consisted of his share in the partnership’s assets, and Lydia allowed that money plus some further savings to remain invested in the business. As part of these arrangements Charles Hay Walker, followed three years later by his younger brother Joseph Robert Walker (1862-1932), was articled to T.A. Walker and by 1881 both had proceeded to live with their uncle’s family. C.H. Walker’s first work for T.A. Walker was in the completion of the contract for the East London Railway (to 1876), followed by various surveys (including the proposed Birmingham and Lichfield Railway) and other Parliamentary work 1876-78. C.H. Walker then worked on the Dover and Deal Railway 1878-79, the Prince of Wales Dock (Swansea) 1879-80 and the Seven Tunnel 1880-84, where he was in charge of the eastern section of the work. In August 1883 he married Fanny, the second-eldest of T.A. Walker’s four daughters.
C.H. Walker was given responsibility as chief agent for his uncle and father-in-law on the Barry Docks contract 1884 to 1887, contract value £563,907.10s. In 1887 his uncle appointed him contractor’s agent for Section 5 of the Manchester Ship Canal but in February 1888 he was sent to Buenos Aires to take on the heftier responsibilities of supervising Walker’s contract for the Buenos Aires Harbour Works. His role on the Manchester Ship Canal work was taken over by his brother J.R. Walker, who managed Section 5 until 1892. Apart from short visits back to England, C.H. Walker and his family remained in South America until the final major section of the Buenos Aires Harbour Works contract was completed in 1898. Originally designed to cost £3,928,000 (The Times, 11 March 1887, p. 11), substantial additions to the original scheme led to the total project cost being £7,068,814 (MinProcICE, vol. 138, 1899, p. 199). To obtain stone for the work, a quarry was developed on the Uruguayan side of the River Plate at Conchillas, together with 5 miles of railway and wharf facilities. An estancia was also developed at Conchillas which became the Hay Walkers’ family home.
Upon T.A. Walker’s death in November 1889, responsibility for the overall management of the substantial Walker business enterprise passed to the three executors of his will: C.H. Walker; his brother-in-law L.P. Nott;*** and T.J. Reeves (who had been head of T.A. Walker’s office staff), supported by Walker’s erstwhile legal and financial advisor R.W. Perks. These arrangements continued until 1898 (see L.P. Nott entry) when the business activities of the Walker Estate were transferred into a limited liability company C.H. Walker and Co Ltd (registered 20 April 1898), in which C.H. Walker and R.W. Perks were the principal shareholders. The cash injected by Perks, together with borrowings via a debenture issue, allowed this company to buy-out the interests of the Nott family and of T.A. Walker’s two younger daughters in the business assets of the Estate, including its shipyard at Sudbrook.
C.H. Walker and Co Ltd completed the construction of warehouses and undertook dredging work at Buenos Aires Harbour 1898-1901, and went on to execute further large contracts in Argentina, Brazil and Chile including: Bahia Blanca Piers, Wharves and Grain Elevators with a total cost of £1,705,000 (The Times 28 Dec 1909, p. 53); Rio de Janeiro quay wall and harbour improvements 1904-1911, with contract value of £4,500,000; and the completion of the Summit Tunnel for the Transandine Railway 1908-1910, 3463 yards long at an altitude of 10,452 feet (MinProcICE vol. 195, 1914, pp. 151-158). But the company’s activities were not confined to South America. The Bermuda dockyard extension was constructed for the British Admiralty 1901-1906. Graving docks in Alexandria were built for the Khedivial Mail Steamship and Graving Dock Co. Ltd, a British-registered company promoted by R.W. Perks. And a series of contracts were completed in Britain including Chatham dockyard slipway for the Admiralty and extensions of the South-West India docks. C.H. Walker and his wife Fanny were members of the Perks syndicate that accumulated sufficient shareholdings in the Metropolitan District Railway to allow Charles Tyson Yerkes to take control of that company in 1901 (Barker and Robbins, p. 69). From 1902 to 1906 Walker, in partnership with T.J. Reeves and John Price*** constructed the Hammersmith to Holborn section of the Piccadilly Tube line for Yerkes’s Underground Electric Railways of London Ltd.
By 1913, C.H. Walker had become one of the wealthiest engineering contractors in Britain. In 1898 he had bought Falkland Park, a 34 acre estate on South Norwood Hill, Surrey as his family home. He also had a town house at 52 Prince’s Gate. In 1911 he added Frensham Hill, a 700 acre estate on the Surrey-Hampshire border. In 1912 R.W. Perks “terminated his connexion” with C.H. Walker and Co, selling his shares to Walker family members. Joseph Robert Walker, who had negotiated and then supervised the company’s Rio de Janeiro contract, soon joined the board, as did C.H. Walker’s eldest son Thomas Andrew Hay Walker (1889-1973), and Charles Robert Walker (1851-1921) M.I.C.E., a cousin.
The outbreak of World War I caused severe financial difficulties for the company. In May 1912 work had commenced on a £5,500,000 contract for Port Extension Works at Buenos Aires. The Walker company’s contract required it to accept Argentine Government 5 per cent bonds in payment for this work as it progressed. Walker’s pre-set arrangements for on-selling these bonds with underwriting by Baring Brothers (Financial Times, 16 April 1913, p5) so as to cover work-costs were subject to force majeure clauses and became void with the commencement of general hostilities in Europe. But there were no force majeure clauses in the company’s contract with the Argentine Government. The work was continued until December 1915, by which time the company was in severe difficulties (The Economist, 1 January 1916, p. 13). On top of this in at least one of the company’s major South American contracts, substantial orders for equipment had been lodged with German suppliers, and part-payments made prior to commencement of hostilities. These difficulties severely deflated the Hay Walker family’s wealth. Nevertheless, when C.H. Walker’s wife died in June 1918, her estate was valued at £119,312. After the 1914-18 war had ended, and following an arbitration process on the terms of the Buenos Aires Port Extension contract, the Walker company completed the work (The Times, 17 August 1925, p. xxviii), and executed further engineering contracts, principally in South America. But this was on a more modest scale than in the company’s pre-1914 heyday.
AICE 4 December 1894 (His brother Joseph Robert was elected AMICE 5 April 1892. His son Thomas Andrew, who had adopted the surname Hay-Walker by deed-poll in March 1919, was elected AMICE 2 December 1919 and transferred to Member 23 April 1929).
Charles Hay Walker died on 2 October 1942 at his home Wayside Woodcote near Reading. He was survived by his second wife Grace Hampden (née Inskip), who he’d married in 1922, and by five sons and four daughters, all from his first marriage. His estate was valued at £78,168 gross
C.H. Walker and Co Ltd went into voluntary liquidation in June 1948.
Known Works
1898-1901 Completion of Warehouses Construction, and Dredging of North Channel, Buenos Aires Harbour Works for the Argentine Government
1898-1899 Survey of St Petersburg-Vologda-Viatka (Kirov) railway, length over 770 miles, for Russian Government
c1899-1902 South West India Dock extensions for London & India Docks Company. Contract value £52,000 (The Times, 13 February 1902, p.12)
1900-1901 Chatham Dockyard Slipway for Admiralty, total cost £70,000
1900-1902 Graving Dock at Alexandria (“the Gabbary dry dock”) for Khedivial Mail Steamship and Graving Dock Co Ltd, total cost £95,000
1901-1906 Bermuda Dockyard Extension for Admiralty
1902-1906 (in partnership with T.J. Reeves and J. Price) Hammersmith to Holborn section of the Great Northern, Piccadilly and Brompton Railway for Underground Electric Railways of London Ltd
1903-1907 Watchet Harbour, Somerset. Contract value £16,183 (Western Daily Press, 22 November 1902, p.7)
1904-1911 Rio de Janeiro Port Improvements for Brazilian Government, contract value £4,500,000
1905-19XX Buenos Aires Dock Sud for Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway Co.
c1907-1909 Piers, Wharves and Grain Elevators at Bahia Blanca for Buenos Aires Great Southern Railway Co, total cost £1,705,000 (The Times, 28 December 1909, p. 53)
1908-1910 Completion of the Summit Tunnel for the Transandine Railway
1911-1916 4.7 km Underground Goods Tunnel under central Buenos Aires (plus 1km passenger tunnel) for Buenos Aires Western Railway
1913-1914 Commencement of Construction of Bridge, Quays and Harbour at Victoria, State of Espirito Santo, Brazil, for Companhia Porto de Vitoria (C.P.V.). This work was suspended in 1914 after the outbreak of World War One. Contract value £4,500,000 (Project described in The Times, 29 March 1911, p5).
1912-19XX Buenos Aires Port Extensions, contract value £5,500,000 (The Times, 1 May 1911, p. 8). Work was suspended December 1915 (The Economist, 1 January 1916, p. 13), resumed on a limited basis for monthly cash-payments in gold in March 1916 (The Economist, 25 March 1916, p. 585), again suspended some time later and the subject of arbitration at the end of 1919 (The Economist, 20 Dec 1919, p. 1140). In 1925, C.H. Walker and Co were reported to be working on the completion of this project (The Times, 17 August 1925, p. xxviii)
1913-19XX Port Improvements at Rio de Janeiro
1913-19XX Woodhead Tunnel, enlargement of shafts.
Portrait: Pike (1908)
References
R.W.Perks (1936) Sir Robert William Perks, Baronet, Epworth Press, London
T.C.Barker and Michael Robbins (1974), A History of London Transport, Volume 2, George Allen and Unwin, London
MinProcICE: Vol.138,1899, pp.170-207 (Buenos Aires Harbour Works); Vol.195,1914, pp.151-158 and p173 (Transandine Railway); Vol.201,1915, pp.76-77 and pp.110-113 (Khedivial Dock, Alexandria); and Vol.205,1917, pp.165-214 (Buenos Aires Underground Tunnels).
The Times, 28 December 1909, p40; and 17 August 1925, p. xxviii (these being Display Advertisments for C.H.Walker and Co. Ltd, including photographs of projects)
Frank Smith Collection, ICE Archives.
Addendum
During the period that R.W. Perks was a director and significant shareholder in C.H. Walker and Co. Ltd., that company put significant resources into preparatory work for two substantial projects which it was never able to commence actual construction work on. These do not therefore appear in the list of projects set out in the Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers entry reproduced above. The bigger of the two was the Georgian Bay Canal project, which Charles Hay Walker was able to “escape” from in 1912, but which Perks was still fighting the Canadian government for financial compensation over through the 1920s. The second was the Monte Video Sea Wall (or “Rambla Sur”) project.
C.H. Walker and Co. Ltd. entered into an agreement on 2 February 1910 to execute the required works for the Rambla Sur project at “cost price plus 15 per cent”. The actual contract was signed on 17 November 1910, and on 30 November this was made public in The Times under the headline “Montevideo: A Great Embankment Scheme”. In February 1911, a new company, “The Rambla Company of Monte Video Limited”, was registered in London (Company No. 114,386) to take carriage of the project. That company issued a prospectus in June 1911, which appears to have successfully raised the funds required for the project to go ahead, with the subscriptions coming mainly from French investors (TNA, B.T.31/32089/114386). That prospectus stated that another newly-registered British company, “The Rambla Construction Company” (Company No. 116,300), was to be the contractor for the works, having been interposed via a contract made with the C.H. Walker and Co. Ltd., ratified on that company’s behalf by R.W. Perks on 7 November 1911). The Rambla Construction Company was half-owned by the C.H. Walker company and half-owned by the French Investment Bankers. The prospectus stated that the contract to construct the works was for U.S.$8.5 million. All appeared to be going well until there was a change in Government in Uruguay. The story from that point becomes complex, but it would appear that Perks ceased to be directly involved in the negotiations for compensation from the Uruguayan government once he exited from the C.H. Walker company. Those negotiations appear to have remained still unresolved in late 1924 (See The Times, 4 December 1924, p.23, column g).