Reveley, Henry Willey |
| CIVIL ENGINEER (GREAT BRITAIN) |
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BORN c1788, Reading, Berkshire - DIED 27 Jan 1875, Reading, Berkshire GRAVE LOCATION Reading, Berkshire: Reading Old Cemetery, Cemetery Junction |
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Henry Willey Revely was the son of the architect Willey Reveley (the designer of the Church of All Saints at Southampton) and Maria James, later known as Maria Gisborne, the friend of the Shelleys. After the death of his father in 1799 his mother married John Gisborne and the family went to Italy in 1899. He graduated as a civil engineer from the University of Pisa. The Shelleys liked him a lot and Shelley invested in his project to realise a steamboat line between Leghorn and Marseille. This project eventually came to nothing. In 1823 he returned to England, where he probably sutied under John Rennie, the architect of Waterloo Bridge. On 20 Jan 1824 he married Cleobulina Fielding (b.1790, also known as Amelia Fielding), the sister of the painter Copley Fielding. In 1826 they left for South Africa, where he worked as a civil engineer. In 1828 he was dismissed by governor Richard Bourke who called him incompetent. They moved on to Western Australia in 1829. There he was the very first civil engineer and architect and he built most of the important buildings in what would become known as the city of Perth (the jail and the courthouse were still there in 1956). In 1838 he left Perth for New Bedford and he returned to England with his wife. Little is known of him from then on, but he lectured on arts and science and he published a few articles before he died in Reading in 1875. Family • Mother: Gisborne, Maria Related persons • knew Shelley, Mary • knew Shelley, Percy Bysshe |
Sources • Kingston Stocking, Marion, The Journals of Claire Clairmont, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1968 • Biography - Henry Willey Reveley - Australian Dictionary of Biography |
