Louis Philip Nott (1858-1916) was one of the three executors of the T.A. Walker Estate. The entry for Nott published in Volume 3 of The Biographical Dictionary of Civil Engineers in 2014 (written by Owen Covick) is reproduced below.
Nott continued to be associated with R.W. Perks in a number of business activities during the years that followed the passage of the third Walker Estate Act in 1898. Nott and Perks were the trustees for a £60,000 issue of debentures by the Barry Estate Company Limited in 1910 (Financial Times, 15 August 1910, p.3). Nott’s six surviving daughters held a combined total of 20.5 per cent of that company’s shares in 1957 when it was reconstructed into Barry Estate Holdings Limited (Company No. 583579). The eldest of those six daughters, Jeanette Mabel Nott (1885-1969) was one of the four directors of that successor company. Perks’s son, Sir Malcolm Perks, was its chairman. R.W. Perks was among those who attended L.P. Nott’s funeral in Bristol in 1916 (The Western Daily Press, 8 July 1916, p.7).
NOTT, Louis Philip (1858-1916), contractor, was born in Portsmouth on 17 January 1858, Louis Philip Poore Linington, the only child of Jannette Annie Linington (c1840-1908). The birth certificate does not record the name of his father. In June 1863, his mother (now Jeanette) married Hollis Henry Nott, a Lieutenant in the Royal Marine Artillery who had been awarded the China Medal for his service in the Second China War from 1856 to 1860. In December 1867 the family moved to Glasgow when H.H. Nott (now Captain) was appointed Adjutant, 1st Lanarkshire Artillery Volunteer Corps, the post he held until going onto retired pay in April 1874. Louis Philip Nott was educated at the Glasgow Academy and then became apprenticed for a seafaring life with Messrs G. Smith and Sons, of “City Line”. But this was cut-short after two years by the illness and death of his adoptive father, who died at Gartnaval Royal Lunatic Asylum, Partick on 13 May 1875 aged 42. There is no record of any grant of probate. The Nott family’s Memorials, privately printed in 1879 records Hollis Henry’s death, but makes no mention of his marriage. From c1878 to c1882 L.P. Nott’s mother Jeanette was employed as matron in charge of the “Glasgow Magdalene Institution for the Repression of Vice and the Reformation of Penitent Females”, Lochburn, which had accommodation for 130 inmates. Louis entered the Glasgow business house of MacGill and Ferguson, but left this to become a travelling lay-preacher or “missionary”. It was evangelical work in this capacity that brought Nott into contact with Thomas Andrew Walker** and his family. This contact, established by 1878, led in turn to Nott’s career as a public works contractor.
Nott was authorized to do missionary work among Walker’s navvies working on the Severn Tunnel project. He also became a pupil of Walker’s working for him on the Severn Tunnel and the Kearnsey Loop of the Dover and Deal joint Railway for the SER and LCDR. He was then given responsibility as contractor’s agent for three major projects of T.A.Walker’s in succession: the East London Spur and Whitechapel Extension for the Joint Committee of the Metropolitan and Metropolitan District Railways (August 1882 to September 1884); Preston Dock (October 1884 to suspension of work July 1888); and Sections 8 and 9 of the Manchester Ship Canal (commenced December 1887). On 1st Feb 1883 he had married T.A. Walker’s eldest daughter Mary Elizabeth. 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 Walker’s will: L.P. Nott; his brother-in-law Charles Hay Walker;*** 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. To provide a firm legal base for this enterprise’s activities, Perks navigated a Private Act through Parliament, The Walker Estate Act 1891, which was renewed and extended by a second such Act in 1894. This is a unique example of a British public works contractor enterprise operating during this period as a trust authorized by its own Act(s) of Parliament. C.H. Walker continued to reside in South America and took responsibility for the management of the firm’s contracts there. L.P. Nott had equivalent responsibility for management of construction work within the U.K., and also of the firm’s shipyard at Sudbrook. Nott thus had responsibility for work on the Manchester Ship Canal as a whole from November 1889 until that work was suspended on 31 October 1890. A month later the Ship Canal company and the executors agreed to terminate the contract. Work on the Preston Dock contract had meanwhile resumed in July 1890 and Nott supervised this through to completion in March 1892.
During 1891 and 1892 the Walker executors were in negotiations to participate in the construction of the then-proposed Nicaragua Canal, but this project proved abortive. A third Walker Estate Act, of 1898, provided for the cessation of the trust’s business activities, via the creation of a limited liability company C.H. Walker and Co Ltd, in which Nott was not a shareholder. From 1895 Nott began undertaking contracts on his own account, commencing with new docks at Sharpness for the Gloucester and Birmingham Canal Navigation Company, followed by the deepening of Port Henry Harbour Peterhead, Llanelly Dock, Llanelly Reservoir, Prince of Wales Dry Dock (Swansea), Canada Branch Dock (Liverpool), Tranmere Bay Works (Birkenhead), the Princes Risborough to Grendon Underwood Railway, Wicklow Breakwater, Wick Harbour Improvements, Invergordon Oil Depot, Cromarty and Dingwall Railway, South Shields Graving Dock, Killingholme Jetty and Oil Depot, Blackfriars Power Station Inlet, Llwynon Reservoir (Cardiff), Abergale and Llanddulas Widening for LNWR, and Widnes Dock alteration.
In June 1896, Nott had appointed Robert Brodie*** his agent for the Peterhead works. Brodie continued to be employed by Nott, supervising contracts for him until Nott’s death. The firm’s business was then carried on under the title of “Exors of L.P.Nott” with Brodie at first one of two executors but then sole executer following the death of Nott’s eldest son Thomas Walker Nott in 1917(see below). In January 1922 the firm was incorporated as “Nott, Brodie and Co. Ltd”, Brodie having injected capital to become a co-shareholder with the Nott heirs.
Throughout his adult life, Nott remained an active supporter of various religious and philanthropic organizations, this culminating in his serving for over ten years as honorary lay pastor of the Gideon Chapel in Bristol (of which he published a centenary history in 1909). In politics he described himself in a letter to the Manchester Guardian, 22 May 1899, as “anxious to see a thoroughly Liberal programme carried out, but … determined to do nothing to support Home Rule.” He served briefly on Bristol Council (for the District ward).
AICE 7 April 1908 (MinProcICE, 174, 1908, p157. Note that an incorrect date is given in Nott’s MinProcICE obituary). His son Thomas Walker Nott (born 1888) was elected AMICE on 9 March 1915.
Nott died from heart disease at Stoke House, Stoke Bishop, Bristol on 4 July 1916, at which time he was still engaged in business. His estate was valued at £129,708. The eldest of his seven daughters predeceased him and the youngest of his three sons was killed in action in France in April 1916. Both of the older sons (Thomas Walker Nott and Louis Cameron Nott) were killed by a mine with a delayed fuse in France on 18 April 1917. None of his daughters married, although one adopted a son.
Works
1895 Sharpness Dock Extension for Gloucester and Birmingham Navigation Company
1896-1899 Port Henry Harbour Deepening, for Peterhead Harbours Trustees [Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 5 June 1896]
1897-1902 Swansea South Dock Improvements, contract value £80,000 [Manchester Guardian, 11 Oct 1902]
1897-1899 Prince of Wales Dry Dock for the Prince of Wales Dry Dock Co., Swansea, Ltd (registered 9 August 1897 with Nott, C.H. Walker, T.J. Reeves and Perks among its initial subscribers). This dock was designed by Charles Robert Walker, MICE, son of T.A.Walker’s older half-brother (Western Mail, 4 May 1899)
1898-1903 Llanelly North Dock
1900-1901 Canada Branch Dock No 2 for Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, contract value over £250,000 (Bristol Mercury, 29 August 1900).
1900-1902 Upper Lliedi Reservoir for Llanelly WaterWorks
1902-1905 Princes Risborough to Grendon Underwood Section on the GWR and GCR joint line [RAIL 239/41]
1903-1906 Tranmere Bay Development Works for Tranmere Bay Development Company [MinProcICE, 171, 1907, pp. 127-150]
1906 Oban Drainage Scheme
1908-1914 Harbour of Refuge rebuilding for Wick Harbour Trustees [Brodie], contract value £106,819
1908 Dry Dock at Birkenhead for Cammell Laird
1908 South Shields Graving Dock [Brodie]
1909 Harbour Improvements for Wicklow Harbour Trustees [Brodie]
19XX Invergordon Oil Depot [Brodie]
19XX Blackfriars Power Station Inlet [Brodie]
1910-1915 Llwynon Impounding Reservoir and associated works for Cardiff Corporation, contract value £201,077 [The Times, 19 October 1910]. Work was suspended in November 1915 due to the war and the project was completed by Cardiff Corporation using direct labour 1919-1927
1913 Llanddulas and Abergale Widening for LNWR [Brodie], contract value £14,770
1913 Widnes Dock Alterations and Lock gates [Brodie]
1914 Cromarty and Dingwall Light Railway for HR [Brodie], contract value £96,000.
1914 Killingholme Jetty and Oil Depot, Immingham for Admiralty [Brodie]
Portrait. There are three photographs of Nott and his family on the Website of Trinity Theological College, Bristol (https://www.trinitycollegebristol.ac.uk). Trinity College occupies Stoke House, Nott’s family home from 1900 to his death.
References
HLRO: HL/PO/CO/1/321; HL/PO/CO/1/333; HL/PO/CO/1/349; HL/PO/JO/10/9/1349/paper379;
HL/PO/JO/10/9/1457/Bill187; HL/PO/JO/10/9/1617/Bill345.
MinProcICE, 171,1907,pp127-150; 202,1915-16,p454. RAIL 239/41.
R.W.Perks (1936), Sir Robert William Perks, Baronet, Epworth Press, London
Robert Brodie (1943,2nd edition) The Reminiscences of a Civil Engineering Contractor, John Wright and Sons, Bristol
Jack M. Dackres (1986) The Last Tide: A History of the Port of Preston, Carnegie Press, Preston
Louis P. Nott (1909), Gideon,1810 to 1910: The Vicissitudes of a City Chapel
Sue Ryan (2007)”The Nott Family Tragedy in The Great War”, The Clifton Magazine
Western Daily Press, 5 July 1916, 8 July 1916
Frank Smith Collection, ICE Archives