Address: 431 Hillside Avenue
Built: c. 1892
1912 householder: William H. Kettle, retired marine engineerThis building was constructed in 1892 or 1893. Now surrounded entirely by commercial and industrial premises, it is still a residential dwelling. Remarkably, the characteristic architectural elements of this late-Victorian structure are intact. The two-storey box bay is crowned by a tall gable. The front of the gable is covered with ornamental fish-scale shingles. Decorative brackets support the shed roof under the gable and the corners of the main roof; brackets also adorn the one-over-one sash window on the second floor. There is a one-storey box bay on the right side of the building. The front stairs and railings are recent additions, but the main windows appear to be original.
This was the Kettle family home. William H. Kettle, a machinist and steamboat engineer, was living nearby on John Street in 1891 when he received a building permit to erect a two-storey, wood frame dwelling at a cost of $1,800. The house was likely completed and occupied in 1893, because it appears in the 1894 city directory. Originally, the civic address for this residence was 33 Henry Street. After 1907, when the City of Victoria adopted a new system of building addresses, and when many streets were re-named, this residence became 431 Hillside Avenue.
William Henry Kettle and his wife Eliza Martha (née Perrin) Kettle were English and lived in Chatham, Kent before they immigrated to Canada with their son, William Alfred, in 1875. Mr. Kettle (b. 1850) was twenty-five years old, Mrs. Kettle (b. 1851) was twenty-four, and young William (b. 1871) was four years old when they left England. Before they settled in Victoria, they spent several years in San Francisco. Three of the Kettle girls – Eleanor (b. 1876), Grace (b. 1880) and Eliza (b. 1883) – were born in the Bay City. The youngest girl, Florence, was born in Victoria, BC in 1887.
Before he retired in 1910, William H. Kettle manned several Victoria-based ships. He was chief engineer on the steamer Earle when he moved into his new home in the early 1890s. His son, William Alfred, apprenticed as a carpenter at the Muirhead and Mann lumber mill on Store Street and later worked as an electrical inspector for the City of Victoria. Grace Kettle married an electrician, Henry Carter, in Victoria in June 1902; Florence Kettle married a pool-room proprietor, Frederick Rendell, in Victoria in January 1911. Flo and Fred Rendall were living with her parents at 431 Hillside when they were enumerated in June 1911. As yet, we have not found marriage records for Eleanor or Eliza Kettle. Perhaps they did not marry or they married outside British Columbia.
William H. and Eliza Kettle lived at this address until 1913, when they moved to 2407 Quadra Street. Mrs. Kettle died in Victoria in 1930 and Mr. Kettle died in Victoria in 1936. William Alfred Kettle died in Saanich in 1949. We have not yet determined when the Kettle daughters died.
In the 1890s, this part of Rock Bay was a neighbourhood of family homes, but in the decades that followed, industrial and commercial activities encroached. In 1912, the Moore-Whittington lumber company had already established a planing mill, office and warehouse on the corner of Hillside Avenue and Bridge Street, and a new commercial laundry had opened nearby. A surprising domicile survivor, 431 Hillside Avenue is a good example of late-Victorian house-carpenter craftsmanship. Under the right circumstances, it might be a worthy building restoration project, like the one undertaken at 2526 Government Street.