Horace Mayhew

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Horace Mayhew (20 June 1845 - 15 August 1926 [1]) of Broughton Hall, Flintshire,[2] was a British mining engineer and colliery owner,[3] JP Lancashire (1876), JP Flintshire (1888), Deputy Lieutenant (1900),[4] and High Sheriff of Flintshire (1904).[5][6] He was the son of John Mayhew Esq of Platt Bridge, Co. Lancaster, and Elizabeth Mayhew (née Rapley).[7]

In the early 20th Century Horace Mayhew and Thomas Lancaster founded the town of Broughton, Nova Scotia and established the Cape Breton Coal, Iron & Railway Company.[8] Mayhew was President of the company and President of the Canada Land & Development Corporation on whose land the town of Broughton was built. He was extensively involved in the planning of Broughton and invested heavily in the development of the town.

Construction of the town began in 1905, with streets laid out and a number of large official buildings constructed, including the general mining building, the Broughton Arms Hotel and the Crown Hotel. The town was one of the first planned communities in Canada and the Broughton Arms, a palatial hotel, was said to be the ‘best east of Montreal’.[9] The hotel boasted all the modern conveniences including the first revolving door in the Americas. The distinctive architecture of rounded towers and verandahs marked it as an upper-class hotel.[10]

Horace Dixon Mayhew Jnr came out to Cape Breton with his father, spending the winter of 1906 at Broughton. His untimely death on 12 August 1906 coincided with the decline in Broughton's success.[11]

The company went bankrupt in 1907 after it failed to secure rail transportation to get its coal to port, largely because of opposition from its Cape Breton competition, the Dominion Coal Company.[12][13] Mayhew returned to Flintshire to manage his business interests and died in 1926.

References

  1. ↑ Burke's Landed Gentry, 1965, 18th Edn pp 495
  2. ↑ Page 76, A History of the Old Parish of Hawarden. T.W. Pritchard. 2002. Bridge Books. Wrexham
  3. ↑ Source: 1923 Colliery Year Book and Coal Trades Directory. Published by The Louis Cassier Co. Ltd., from a copy held in the Scottish Mining Museum, Newtongrange, Midlothian
  4. ↑ http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/27301/pages/2300
  5. ↑ https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/27655/page/1538
  6. ↑ http://www.london-gazette.co.uk/issues/27377/pages/7367
  7. ↑ Burke's Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain and Ireland Vol 1 [1894] pp1368
  8. ↑ 'ACAP proposes takeover of Broughton ruins' Cape Breton Post, Sydney, July 23rd 2007.
  9. ↑ ‘Italian Lives – Cape Breton Memories’ pp 176. University College of Cape Breton Press, 1999.
  10. ↑ Nova Scotia Department of Communities, Culture and Heritage. A History of Mining Activity in Nova Scotia, 1720-1992, NSARM Map Collection: V7/239 Broughton http://www.novascotia.ca/nsarm/virtual/meninmines/archives.asp?ID=608&Language=English
  11. ↑ The St. John Sun, August 13th 1906.
  12. ↑ Cape Breton Post, December 12, 2012 http://www.capebretonpost.com/Community/2012-12-12/article-3138764/Book-tells-story-of-Cape-Breton%26rsquos-ghost-town/1
  13. ↑ ‘Broughton: A Return To Cape Breton’s Ghost Town’ By Eleanor Anderson, 2012.
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