Charles Douglas Fox
Encyclopedia
Sir Douglas Fox (14 May 1840 – 13 November 1921) was a British
civil engineer
.
, Staffordshire
, the oldest son of Sir Charles Fox
and had two brothers and a sister. Sir Charles was a civil engineer and had designed, amongst other things, The Crystal Palace
in Hyde Park
. Douglas was educated at Cholmondeley School, Highgate School
from 1851 to 1854 and King's College School
from 1854 to 1855. He studied at King's College, London from 1855 to 1857 and was to have studied further at Trinity College, Cambridge
but the financial collapse of his father's contracting company in 1857 ended his education. Douglas was instead articled
to his father who had set up an engineering consultancy, Sir Charles Fox and Sons.
Douglas was a member of the Church of England
and was active in the Church Mission Society
as well as being the author of several academic papers.
He married Mary Wright in 1863 with whom he had one son and four daughters.
In 1863 Douglas was made a partner and by 1865 the firm was involved in major projects in Britain, the USA, Canada, southern Africa, India, Australia, and South America. From 1863 to 1866 Douglas and his father worked on the design of the railway viaducts and bridges at Battersea
which would separate the lines coming from Waterloo
from those from Victoria. This process also included the widening of Grosvenor Bridge
from two to seven tracks.
London Rifle Volunteer Brigade
and was commissioned as an Ensign
in that unit on 17 June 1861. He received promotion to Lieutenant
in that unit, since renamed the London Rifle Volunteer Corps, on 18 November 1863. During this period Douglas held several patents including one for "improvements in machinery for nicking and dressing the heads of screw-blanks" which was approved on 28 April 1868, one for "improvements in the manufacture of method of repairing railway rails and other iron in a permanent way and in the machinery to be employed therein" on 30 July 1868 and one for "improvements in screw cutting and threading machines and in the construction of screw nails and spikes" on 30 April 1866. The latter two patents expired after a seven year period for non-payment of stamp duty required for a patent extension. Douglas was also a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers
by 1873.
The family firm remained solely a father and son enterprise until Sir Charles' death in 1874 upon which Douglas became senior partner of what was now Douglas Fox & Partners. At this stage Douglas' brother Francis also became a partner of the firm.
Douglas was involved with the construction of the Snowdon Mountain Railway
and the extension of the Great Central Railway from Rugby to London including the terminal at Marylebone Station
. He worked on several of London
's early tube lines including the Great Northern and City tube, the Hampstead tube which linked Charing Cross
with Golders Green
and Highgate
, and the unsuccessful North West London Railway project. Douglas was, with James Greathead, joint engineer of the Liverpool Overhead Railway
which was the first electric elevated city railway in the world.
Further afield Douglas was involved with the design of much of the Cape Colony
railways, the whole Rhodesia
railway system, which included the 500 ft span Victoria Falls Bridge
, the Benguela Railway in Angola, and several railways in South America. The firm were consulting engineers to the Central Argentine Railway
; the South Indian Railway; the Southern São Paulo Railway and the Dorada Railway.
Sir Ralph Freeman, one of the firm's chief engineers, most notably worked on the Victoria Falls Bridge (1905) and the Sydney Harbour Bridge
(1932). Freeman rose to become senior partner, and in 1938 the firm changed its name to Freeman Fox & Partners, and later Acer Freeman Fox. Following several mergers, the firm is now part of Hyder Consulting
.
by Queen Victoria for his work with James Brunlees
on the Mersey Railway Tunnel and a railway linking Birkenhead
with Liverpool
.
In 1887 he was made an honorary fellow of his alma mater
, King's College London
and from November 1899 to November 1900 served as president of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
, at the home of one of his daughters; Mary had died the year before.
The firm became Freeman, Fox and Partners in 1938 after Ralph Freeman, who had worked for the firm since 1901, became a partner. In 1988 it became Acer Freeman Fox and is now known as Hyder Consulting
.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
civil engineer
Civil engineer
A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering; the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructures while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing infrastructures that have been neglected.Originally, a...
.
Early life
Douglas was born in SmethwickSmethwick
Smethwick is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sandwell, in the West Midlands of England. It is situated on the edge of the city of Birmingham, within the historic boundaries of Staffordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire....
, Staffordshire
Staffordshire
Staffordshire is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. For Eurostat purposes, the county is a NUTS 3 region and is one of four counties or unitary districts that comprise the "Shropshire and Staffordshire" NUTS 2 region. Part of the National Forest lies within its borders...
, the oldest son of Sir Charles Fox
Sir Charles Fox
Sir Charles Fox was an English civil engineer and contractor. His work focused on railways, railway stations and bridges.-Biography:...
and had two brothers and a sister. Sir Charles was a civil engineer and had designed, amongst other things, The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and glass building originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in...
in Hyde Park
Hyde Park, London
Hyde Park is one of the largest parks in central London, United Kingdom, and one of the Royal Parks of London, famous for its Speakers' Corner.The park is divided in two by the Serpentine...
. Douglas was educated at Cholmondeley School, Highgate School
Highgate School
-Notable members of staff and governing body:* John Ireton, brother of Henry Ireton, Cromwellian General* 1st Earl of Mansfield, Lord Chief Justice, owner of Kenwood, noted for judgment finding contracts for slavery unenforceable in English law* T. S...
from 1851 to 1854 and King's College School
King's College School
King's College School, commonly referred to as KCS, King's, or KCS Wimbledon, is an independent school for day pupils in Wimbledon in south-west London. The school was founded as the junior department of King's College London and occupied part of its premises in Strand, before relocating to...
from 1854 to 1855. He studied at King's College, London from 1855 to 1857 and was to have studied further at Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
but the financial collapse of his father's contracting company in 1857 ended his education. Douglas was instead articled
Apprenticeship
Apprenticeship is a system of training a new generation of practitioners of a skill. Apprentices or protégés build their careers from apprenticeships...
to his father who had set up an engineering consultancy, Sir Charles Fox and Sons.
Douglas was a member of the Church of England
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
and was active in the Church Mission Society
Church Mission Society
The Church Mission Society, also known as the Church Missionary Society, is a group of evangelistic societies working with the Anglican Communion and Protestant Christians around the world...
as well as being the author of several academic papers.
He married Mary Wright in 1863 with whom he had one son and four daughters.
Early engineering projects
Battersea
Battersea is an area of the London Borough of Wandsworth, England. It is an inner-city district of South London, situated on the south side of the River Thames, 2.9 miles south-west of Charing Cross. Battersea spans from Fairfield in the west to Queenstown in the east...
which would separate the lines coming from Waterloo
Waterloo station
Waterloo station, also known as London Waterloo, is a central London railway terminus and London Underground complex. The station is owned and operated by Network Rail and is close to the South Bank of the River Thames, and in Travelcard Zone 1....
from those from Victoria. This process also included the widening of Grosvenor Bridge
Grosvenor Bridge
Grosvenor Bridge, often alternatively called Victoria Railway Bridge, is a railway bridge over the River Thames in London, between Vauxhall Bridge and Chelsea Bridge. It actually consists of two bridges, both built in the mid-19th century...
from two to seven tracks.
Military service
Douglas served as an officer in the Volunteer ForceVolunteer Force (Great Britain)
The Volunteer Force was a citizen army of part-time rifle, artillery and engineer corps, created as a popular movement in 1859. Originally highly autonomous, the units of volunteers became increasingly integrated with the British Army after the Childers Reforms in 1881, before forming part of the...
London Rifle Volunteer Brigade
London Regiment
The London Regiment is a Territorial Army regiment in the British Army. It was first formed in 1908 in order to regiment the various Volunteer Force battalions in the newly formed County of London, each battalion having a distinctive uniform. The Volunteer Force was merged with the Yeomanry in 1908...
and was commissioned as an Ensign
Ensign (rank)
Ensign is a junior rank of a commissioned officer in the armed forces of some countries, normally in the infantry or navy. As the junior officer in an infantry regiment was traditionally the carrier of the ensign flag, the rank itself acquired the name....
in that unit on 17 June 1861. He received promotion to Lieutenant
Lieutenant
A lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer in many nations' armed forces. Typically, the rank of lieutenant in naval usage, while still a junior officer rank, is senior to the army rank...
in that unit, since renamed the London Rifle Volunteer Corps, on 18 November 1863. During this period Douglas held several patents including one for "improvements in machinery for nicking and dressing the heads of screw-blanks" which was approved on 28 April 1868, one for "improvements in the manufacture of method of repairing railway rails and other iron in a permanent way and in the machinery to be employed therein" on 30 July 1868 and one for "improvements in screw cutting and threading machines and in the construction of screw nails and spikes" on 30 April 1866. The latter two patents expired after a seven year period for non-payment of stamp duty required for a patent extension. Douglas was also a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers
Institution of Civil Engineers
Founded on 2 January 1818, the Institution of Civil Engineers is an independent professional association, based in central London, representing civil engineering. Like its early membership, the majority of its current members are British engineers, but it also has members in more than 150...
by 1873.
Douglas Fox & Partners
Douglas was involved with the construction of the Snowdon Mountain Railway
Snowdon Mountain Railway
The Snowdon Mountain Railway is a narrow gauge rack and pinion mountain railway in Gwynedd, north-west Wales. It is a tourist railway that travels for from Llanberis to the summit of Snowdon, the highest peak in England and Wales....
and the extension of the Great Central Railway from Rugby to London including the terminal at Marylebone Station
Marylebone station
Marylebone station , also known as London Marylebone, is a central London railway terminus and London Underground complex. It stands midway between the mainline stations at Euston and Paddington, about 1 mile from each...
. He worked on several of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
's early tube lines including the Great Northern and City tube, the Hampstead tube which linked Charing Cross
Charing Cross
Charing Cross denotes the junction of Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street, just south of Trafalgar Square in central London, England. It is named after the now demolished Eleanor cross that stood there, in what was once the hamlet of Charing. The site of the cross is now occupied by an equestrian...
with Golders Green
Golders Green
Golders Green is an area in the London Borough of Barnet in London, England. Although having some earlier history, it is essentially a 19th century suburban development situated about 5.3 miles north west of Charing Cross and centred on the crossroads of Golders Green Road and Finchley Road.In the...
and Highgate
Highgate
Highgate is an area of North London on the north-eastern corner of Hampstead Heath.Highgate is one of the most expensive London suburbs in which to live. It has an active conservation body, the Highgate Society, to protect its character....
, and the unsuccessful North West London Railway project. Douglas was, with James Greathead, joint engineer of the Liverpool Overhead Railway
Liverpool Overhead Railway
The Liverpool Overhead Railway was the world's first electrically operated overhead railway. The railway was carried mainly on iron viaducts, with a corrugated iron decking, onto which the tracks were laid. It ran close to the River Mersey in Liverpool, England, following the line of Liverpool Docks...
which was the first electric elevated city railway in the world.
Further afield Douglas was involved with the design of much of the Cape Colony
Cape Colony
The Cape Colony, part of modern South Africa, was established by the Dutch East India Company in 1652, with the founding of Cape Town. It was subsequently occupied by the British in 1795 when the Netherlands were occupied by revolutionary France, so that the French revolutionaries could not take...
railways, the whole Rhodesia
Rhodesia
Rhodesia , officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state located in southern Africa that existed between 1965 and 1979 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965...
railway system, which included the 500 ft span Victoria Falls Bridge
Victoria Falls Bridge
The Victoria Falls Bridge crosses the Zambezi River just below the Victoria Falls and is built over the Second Gorge of the falls. As the river is the border between Zimbabwe and Zambia, the bridge links the two countries and has border posts on the approaches to both ends, at the towns of Victoria...
, the Benguela Railway in Angola, and several railways in South America. The firm were consulting engineers to the Central Argentine Railway
Central Argentine Railway
The Central Argentine Railway was one of the Big Four broad gauge, , British-owned companies that built and operated railway networks in Argentina...
; the South Indian Railway; the Southern São Paulo Railway and the Dorada Railway.
Sir Ralph Freeman, one of the firm's chief engineers, most notably worked on the Victoria Falls Bridge (1905) and the Sydney Harbour Bridge
Sydney Harbour Bridge
The Sydney Harbour Bridge is a steel through arch bridge across Sydney Harbour that carries rail, vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian traffic between the Sydney central business district and the North Shore. The dramatic view of the bridge, the harbour, and the nearby Sydney Opera House is an iconic...
(1932). Freeman rose to become senior partner, and in 1938 the firm changed its name to Freeman Fox & Partners, and later Acer Freeman Fox. Following several mergers, the firm is now part of Hyder Consulting
Hyder Consulting
Hyder Consulting is a multi-national advisory and design consultancy with particular specialisation in the transport, property, utilities and environmental sectors. The firm employs approximately 4,200 people across the UK, Europe, Germany, Middle East, Asia and Australia and has been listed on the...
.
Honours and awards
On 8 March 1886 Douglas was knighted at Windsor CastleWindsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it...
by Queen Victoria for his work with James Brunlees
James Brunlees
Sir James Brunlees was a Scottish civil engineer. He was born in Kelso in the Scottish Borders in 1816.In 1850, Brunlees worked on the Londonderry and Coleraine Railway...
on the Mersey Railway Tunnel and a railway linking Birkenhead
Birkenhead
Birkenhead is a town within the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral in Merseyside, England. It is on the Wirral Peninsula, along the west bank of the River Mersey, opposite the city of Liverpool...
with Liverpool
Liverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
.
In 1887 he was made an honorary fellow of his alma mater
Alma mater
Alma mater , pronounced ), was used in ancient Rome as a title for various mother goddesses, especially Ceres or Cybele, and in Christianity for the Virgin Mary.-General term:...
, King's College London
King's College London
King's College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and a constituent college of the federal University of London. King's has a claim to being the third oldest university in England, having been founded by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington in 1829, and...
and from November 1899 to November 1900 served as president of the Institution of Civil Engineers.
Death
He died on 13 November 1921 in KensingtonKensington
Kensington is a district of west and central London, England within the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. An affluent and densely-populated area, its commercial heart is Kensington High Street, and it contains the well-known museum district of South Kensington.To the north, Kensington is...
, at the home of one of his daughters; Mary had died the year before.
The firm became Freeman, Fox and Partners in 1938 after Ralph Freeman, who had worked for the firm since 1901, became a partner. In 1988 it became Acer Freeman Fox and is now known as Hyder Consulting
Hyder Consulting
Hyder Consulting is a multi-national advisory and design consultancy with particular specialisation in the transport, property, utilities and environmental sectors. The firm employs approximately 4,200 people across the UK, Europe, Germany, Middle East, Asia and Australia and has been listed on the...
.