Henry Davey (1843 – 1928)
Engineer & inventor
Henry Davey was born on 6 March 1843 at Lewtrenchard, near Tavistock, Devon, a son of Jonathon Davey and Mary, nee Doidge.
His background and career are outlined by Graces Guide.
A drawing taken from A Henry Davey patent
Image courtesy of Graces Guide.
Some of his earlier numerous patents will be found listed in Bibliotheca Cornubiensis
On 4 October 1871, in Alderney, Channel Islands, Henry married Elizabeth Barbeson Le Ber.
About 1887 this well known civil engineer and inventor and his wife moved into Chatsworth, in Motspur Park , Surrey and where their son Henry Norman was born in 1888, to be baptised at Old Malden. They are recorded as living there in the 1891 census.
The family subsequently moved to Conaways, a house on Cheam Road which was part of a small estate developed by Lawson Robinson between the village and Ewell East Station. It had been advertised in the Morning Post on 17 April 1893, with
‘pretty grounds of about three acres, approached by a carriage drive, and containing seven bedrooms, dressing and bathrooms… entrance porch, good hall, drawing-room 22ft by 17ft (exclusive of bay), dining-room 18ft by 15ft (exclusive of bay), morning-room about 14ft by 12ft 9in… good cellarage, detached stabling for three horses, double coach-house’. … The attractive grounds were ‘planted with trees and shrubs, tennis lawn, kitchen garden, greenhouse, fernery in two compartments… with glass work skirting a shrubbed border’.
Henry Davey appears in Street Directories for Ewell at Conaways from 1899 onwards.
Conaways shown on the 1913 OS Map
Mr Davey is reported to have retired in 1908 but
‘retained until his death his intense love of mechanical things. Besides the differential pumping engine, he made many other inventions, most of which originated in his own private workshop, where he exercised his skill as a craftsman and mechanician‘.
Further examples of his patents are found dated 1 December 1911, Weir and floodgate, and to 1916 for a pumping engine of the compound condensing type .
Henry’s wife, Elizabeth Barbenson, died on 2 March 1917, aged 72, and was buried in Ewell churchyard. Henry continued to reside in Conaways at least until 1924 but expired at 1 Woburn Terrace, Tavistock, Devon on 11 April 1928 [Estate £11,351].
Brian Bouchard 2022
