Lewis Cubitt

[This page is an early draft still under development with substantial materials still to be added to it]

Lewis Cubitt (29th September 1799 – 9th June 1883) was an English builder, architect & civil engineer in a period when there was little professional distinction and certainly no qualification between the disciplines.

He was the youngest brother of Thomas Cubitt, and of William Cubitt, later the Lord Mayor of London, with whom he worked on a number of developments and railway projects initially as a building partner and latterly as a well respected railway architect.

Training as a Builder

1814 his eldest brother, Thomas Cubitt (1788–1855) became a member of the Carpenters’ Company.

By 1815 Lewis was bound to Thomas as an apprentice

[insert image of binding certificate here – likely in London Archives CLC/LCC/C/004MD04337/002]

In 1822 Lewis became a member of the Carpenters’ Company.

[insert image of membership certificate here – likely in London Archives CLC/L/CC/C/002/MS04334/001 or CLC/L/CC/C/002/MS04334/002]

The records of the Carpenters Company show

CUBITT, Lewis – 0f Shire Lane, Fleet Street Carpenter

Freeman 3 December 1822, Liveryman 1825

Son of Jonathan Cubitt

Born 29 Sep 1799

Apprentice to Thomas Cubitt (his brother)

Translated to the Fishmongers Oct 1835

Shire Lane was not a salubrious address by then, although in earlier periods it had been quite respectable.

Hobhouse [Thomas Cubitt: Master Builder, Hermione Hobhouse, universal Books, NY, 1971 pg. 54] states that by 1822 his eldest brother, Thomas, had already placed him in charge of smaller jobs, such as the construction of two houses in Berkeley Square based on his signature on an application to the Westminster Commissioner of Sewers regarding building 80ft of new sewers for Berkley Square [Westminster Commission for Sewers, 177, folio 266].

[insert image here of WCS, 177, folio 266 – LMA WCS/177 Minutes: Committee of Works, vol. 21
Indexed – 14 Jun 1820- 29 Jul 1822 presumably items 266?].

Lewis Cubitt was a student of Henry Edward Kendall Snr. (1776 – 1875) who was in turn a student of Thomas Leverton and possibly of John Nash. This may have been instrumental in Thomas getting the commission to build Thomas Read Kemp’s Belgrave Square mansion which was designed by Kendall Snr.

His son, Henry Edward Kendall Jr. (1805–1885) was also an architect and, for a while, the two ran a practice together. In 1834, it was located at 17 Suffolk Street, London.

The Esplanade and Tunnel in Kemp Town, Brighton, dating between 1828 and 1830, was one of their notable works.

Lewis Cubitt (who married his daughter Sophia in 1830) was amongst those who worked at the practice before setting up on his own. Both were amongst the co-founders of what became the Royal Institute of British Architects.

1833 – Associate Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers

Lewis Cubitt of Grays Inn Lane Road, a builder and contractor for public works, became an Associate Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers [Elected Associate Member 30 April 1833 – ICE/S001 – CC/000292].

Lewis Cubitt married Sophia Kendall (1811-1879) on 23 January 1830 in Brighton.

[Add marriage certificate / church marriage records].

Professional Life: Builder & Developer with Thomas & William

Initially, Lewis worked with his brother out of their Gray’s Inn Road base. This was on such projects as the Calthorpe Estate which the Grey’s Inn Road premises were actually built on. You can see Lewis’ name appearing in the various Estate reports and accounts, for instance for the Calthorpe Estate, with leases in his name appearing from 1826.

By 23rd June 1827 the partnership of Thomas, William and Lewis Cubitt had been dissolved [Gazette June 1827 pg. 1404].

However, a partnership between Thomas and Lewis then appears to have continued until that too was dissolved in 1830 [Gazette, May 1830, pg. 1004].

At some point a partnership between William and Lewis Cubitt was formed.

Ultimately the partnership was dissolved on 10th January 1838 [The Gazette, No 19578, 1838 pg. 111, 10th January].

Professional Life: Builder & Developer with William

[1831 PAUPER LUNATIC ASYLUM, HANWELL, BY WILLIAM AND LEWIS CUBITT

Designs: signed dated 1830 LMA MA/DCP/005

Bills: LMA MJ/SP/1831/11/053]

1831 – New Buildings for Mr. Babbage’s Calculating Engine to Decimus Burton’s designs

November 1831, William and Lewis tendered successfully to ‘Erect and Finish the New Buildings for Mr. Babbage’s Calculating Engine in East Street Manchester Square’.

The majority of the papers survive in The National Archives [Work 12/62/8 Folder 2 ff 41-68] and these have been meticulously cataloged by C.J.D. Roberts [click on link for the full Babbage Difference Engine No 1 catalogue].

Folder 2 ff 41-68 contains, inter alia:-

William and Lewis Cubitt (Grays Inn Road) to [Major General] Stephenson 30th November 1831 willing to build for £1890

D[ecimus] Burton’s certificate of 2/3rds completion by the Cubitts February 2nd 1832, £1000 due to them.

D[ecimus] Burton to [Major General] Stephenson 6th February 1832

D[ecimus] Burton’s full “Specification for Erecting and finishing, building to contain Mr Babbage’s Calculating Engine, Workshops &c. and of Alterations and repairs to the adjoining house in East Street Manchester Square”: tender k document dated 12th November 1831.

The catalogue unfortunately notes that ‘Maps and Plans of the Building intended to house the Difference Engine have gone missing’.

We have not retrieved these files and this is an excerpt from the catalogue entry.

Later Lewis & William Cubitt moved into larger commercial works and both carried out considerable railway projects such as

1831-2 – St Michael’s Highgate

St Michael’s Highgate, designed by Lewis Vulliamy, was built by Willian & Lewis Cubitt in a remarkably quick eleven months.

However, due to a defective interpretation of the 1818 Act another Act was required before St Michaels could be consecrated and so sat empty and unconsecrated for nine months until an enabling Act was passed.

1835 – The Extension from Camden to Euston for the London and Birmingham Railway Company

Professional Life: Architect

Later in the 1830s, probably after the dissolution of his partnership with his brother William in 1838, Lewis set up his own architectural practice at 17 Great Russell Street, London, probably engaged in house building. In 1843 Lewis Cubitt’s practice address was listed at 17 Great Russell Street, London [Dover Telegraph and Cinque Ports General Advertiser – Saturday 16 September 1843].

The Builder Volume 1, 1842, pg. 154.

A splendid hotel is in the course of erection at the terminus at Colchester, and will be opened in about two months. It is designed in the pure Italian style, by Mr. Lewis Cubitt, and the builders are Messrs. Grisell and Peto. Tastefully laid out gardens will be attached, which, with the hotel, will cover about an acre and a half of ground. Mr. Osborne, the brewer, of Colchester, is, we understand, the proprietor ; but we are not positively informed by whom the hotel will be occupied.

The Builder Volume 1, 1842, pg. 315.

This building is much admired, and yet it is a mere conversion of a boat-building and shipwright’s shed — shewing how much may be done with the meanest materials by the hand of the man of taste. This title has been earned by Mr. Lewis Cubitt, the able engineer of the London and Dover Railway, who has contrived a complete establishment for travellers— refreshment-rooms, parlours, and bedrooms— within the despised carcase we have described.

The Builder Volume 1, 1842, pg. 487

Notices of Contracts

South-Eastern Railway Terminus, Dover. — Mr. Lewis Cubitt, 77, Great Russell-street ; the Chairman and Directors, London Bridge. Nov. 20.

[1842 – Kent History and Library Centre – Do/CEp1 – Plan and sections of deviation, extension and terminus (Mar 1842) and proposed extension and station at Dover (Nov 1842)].

[1842 – South Eastern railway extension and station at Dover scheme – Deposited on 30 Nov 1842 at half past 5 o’clock in the afternoon by Mr Henry John Toovey Hawley for Mr Fearon, solicitor, Temple – Q/RUm/228].

This resulted in this design for the Dover terminus but nothing this grand was ever built! However, they were widely used in publicity materials.

1844 – London Bridge Station

Plans for a large new station were drawn up, designed jointly by Lewis Cubitt, John Urpeth Rastrick and Henry Roberts [Cole, David (1958). “Mocatta’s stations for the Brighton Railway”. Journal of Transport History. 5 (3). Manchester: Manchester University Press: 149–157]. Drawings were published in the Illustrated London News [below] in 1844. It opened for business in July 1844, while only partially completed, but events were taking place which would mean that the bell tower would never be built, and the new building would only last five years. [A notable station centenary,” The Railway Gazette: 966–7. 11 December 1936].

1844 – The Bricklayers Arms Station

Text from Wiki

The terminus building was designed by Lewis Cubitt with an imposing facade of yellow brick and stone that was topped by a bell tower with an illuminated clock and colonnades to the platforms.[12] The design resembled his later design of King’s Cross railway station,[13] and cost £89,000.[6] From its opening, the SER transferred all of its services to this new terminus, whilst the L&CR operated services from both termini.

The station was never commercially viable as a passenger terminus due to its location in a poor working-class neighbourhood on the Old Kent Road and its distance from the centre of London. Its raison d’etre largely disappeared after the SER took over the operation of the L&GR……[14][a] The SER closed the Bricklayers Arms terminus for passenger traffic on 1 January 1852[15] and transferred all of its services back to London Bridge.

In reality, Bricklayers Arms Station was more of a netting tactic to force sensible access charges to London Bridge Station and in this it was ultimately successful even if the station itself was a commercial failure for passenger traffic.

From around 1850 his practice appears to have been at 52 Bedford Square, London [Daily News, London Thursday 04 April 1850 & The Builder Vol XIII Vol 625, Jan 27th 1855 pg. 2]. And judging by the volume of tender notices it was a very active practice from 1850 up to about 1855, when his bother Thomas died, when Lewis appears to have retreated from professional life.

Disaster then strikes in 1850 when in a shunting accident some of the cast iron pillars fail due to a collision and derailment and the whole roof collapses killing a number of people. It was fortunate that the ancient did not occur when the station was busier as the loss of life would have been far worse.

1850 – Maiden Lane Station [near King’s Cross] – date could be earlier – we have not inspected this item

ICE archives – shelf: TFV 5 M 625K – Barcode: 1850CUBCCS

Conditions of contract and specification of works (with ten accompanying drawings) prepared for the works to be done in the construction of iron roofing … station, Maiden-lane, near King’s Cross, London. With covering letter from Lewis Cubitt. Accompanying drawings 10 double page litho plates, signed by Cubitt, 55×40, shelved at 625K.

King’s Cross

King’s Cross station, built by William Jay and opened in 1853, was one of the crowning design achievements of Lewis Cubitt’s considerable architectural career. It is recognised as such as it is a Grade I Listed Building.

The land was acquired for £65,000 and the station cost £123,500 to build. The train shed comprises two vaults of clear arch construction. The ribs supporting the roof covering were originally of laminated timber but were replaced in steel [or is it actually iron? Steel seems unlikely at this time – check]. The roof spans are 105ft wide by 800 feet long.

Nicolaus Pevsner, London Vol, Buildings of England, 1952 states [he does not confuse the two Cubitt clans]:-

KING’S CROSS STATION, Euston Road, was built in 1851-2 by
Lewis Cubitt as the terminus of the former Great Northern
Railway, the line to Lincolnshire and Yorkshire constructed in
Euston, this station was also designed with a façade to the road,
1846-50 by Sir William Cubitt and his son Joseph Cubitt. Like
but the design is conceived in a spirit completely opposed to that
of Hardwick’s Euston front, where the connexion with the purpose
of the building was wholly associational. Cubitt looked at his job
with equal pride but no romanticism. The façade reflects the plan
of the station. Departure and arrival sheds are spanned by two
round-arched roofs (originally with laminated timber arch ribs,
replaced by ribs of wrought-iron plate in 1869 and 1887), each
wider arches where carriages were traversed between the two sides.
with a span of 105 ft. They rise from dignified brick arcades, with
The arches of the roofs are frankly displayed as the predominant
motif of the main (s) façade, separated by a clock tower 120 ft
high. At the foot of the arches there were originally two plain
three-bay arcades with segment-headed arches. A third large arch
(though much lower than those of the platforms) marks the former
covered cab drive on the arrivals side on the r[ight]. On the 1. is the
office and waiting rooms building. The former main entrance, in
the w[est] front, is marked by taller storeys and a wrought-iron-trussed
porte-cochère. This has the thin, somewhat debased, Venetian
windows of the classical revival on its last legs. The roof of the
clock tower marks the heyday in the 1840s of the contemporary
Italian villa fashion, already indicated at Cubitt’s Bricklayers’
Arms Station in South London (Southwark). The geometric
simplicity and functionalism of the rest may owe something to the
influential theories of the French architect J. N. L. Durand, a pupil
of Boullée. The architect was satisfied to depend, as The Builder
put it in 1851, ‘on the largeness of some of the features, the fitness
of the structure for its purpose, and a characteristic expression of
that purpose’. The E[ast] front on York Way is forbidding, but also
strictly honest. The two upper floors were added in 1869.
w of the station Cubitt added the Italianate GREAT NORTHERN
HOTEL in 1854, built on a curved plan to follow the former line of
Pancras Road.

Laminated roof trusses used on the King’s Cross project

A slight digression onto laminated arched roof trusses which were widely used at the time. They were even used on railway bridges for a while. The main issues with them are unsurprising: workmanship and deterioration. Workmanship is critical on any laminated structure and deterioration cause by weathering or the improper use of fastenings greatly weakens the structure. Bear in mind that these are not modern full glued or coated beams but beams formed by screwing and clamping plants together so it is inevitable that moisture is drawn along the junctions either by capillary action or purely by gravity. After some spectacular failures the use of them ceased. Glulam and other modern types of beam get over this by precisely cutting graded timber which is then glued together at substantial temperatures and pressures to eliminate the voids.

A part of Lewis Cubitt’s drawings for King’s Cross entitled ‘Great Northern Railway. London Terminus Passenger Station’: transverse…survive in the National Archives [below].

1850 – King’s Cross Goods Shed[s]

Lewis Cubitt is credited with the design of what is termed The Midland Goods Shed at King’s Cross.

The signed drawings for the roof survive in the Insiture  of Civil Engineer’s archives [ICE archives – shelf: TFV 5 M 625K – Barcode: 1850CUBCCS].

Other projects

The Cubitt family connection with the Barings clan, started through Thomas, continued with Lewis carryout design works for their London offices.

It is also stated in a number of sources, without any references, that Lewis built a large number of bridges in his career, most of them being in South America, Australia and India. It could be that these are conflations with the works of Sir William Cubitt FRS [the engineer] and his son. It is hard to be certain without reference to the contractor or contemporary reports.

Common Misattributions

Cast iron railway bridge over the River Nene: Built at Peterborough, this is the only cast iron bridge in the UK to carry a high-speed train line. Wrongly attributed as it was actually designed by Joseph Cubitt – see https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nene_Viaduct

Brick viaduct over the River Mimram: Located near Welwyn, this viaduct is 475 meters long and has 40 arches up to 30 meters high. The Engineers for this line were undoubtedly Sir William Cubitt and his son Jospeh Cubitt.

It is possible that the full and final answer to this riddle lies in either:-

Hertfordshire Archives – DEPOSITED RAILWAY PLANS [R]

or

TNA RAIL 236/282/19 [1858] – Hertfordshire. ‘G. N. R. Welwyn Viaduct’. Plan and elevations showing cracks and the places where a tie bolt is used. Scale: plan 1 inch to 2.2 feet; elevations 1 inch to 8 feet. Originally enclosed in a report by W M Brydone, Chief Engineer, Great Northern Railway, 15 January 1858. It is possible that this file contains copies of the plans or the originals marked up. 

Various Bridges: It is also stated in a number of sources, without any references, that Lewis built a large number of bridges in his career, most of them being in South America, Australia and India. It could be that these are conflations with the works of Sir William Cubitt FRS [the engineer] and his son. It is hard to be certain without reference to the contractor or contemporary reports.

Mentions in Cubitt Lease books

Part of the set of Cubitt Lease books [the link provides more detail and analysis of the extant volumes] is available to study at The London Archive.

Various sample pages from Cubitt’s lease book covering what became known as Pimlico [London Archive LMA/4608/01/02/003] show that Thomas Cubitt transferred considerable property to Lewis Cubitt [7th December 1855] shortly before his death shortly before Christmas 1855.

Death and Will

Lewis Cubitt, who died on 9th June 1883, left a surprisingly small sum of £77,900 10s 10d in his personal estate. This is suggestive that most of his funds were in a family trust by this stage as the property that he was known to have owned was likely more valuable that this in itself. Lewis’ full will is here [click to open PDF]. The original notice of probate is here [click to open PDF].

Very curiously, there does not appear to be an obituary for Lewis Cubitt in The Builder.

Further work

Agreement for performance of works, with plans (signed by Geo. Rennie)