Address: 3071 Washington Avenue
Built: 1912
1912 householder: Clarence Deaville, manager, house paint and decorative glass storeThis attractive 1 ½ storey Edwardian Arts & Crafts style home was built in 1912. The six-room house was erected at a cost of $2,400. Original building plans show side-facing steps leading to a half-width verandah, with a box bay window on the right front side. The plans also show right facing back steps with a small landing at the left rear corner of the house. There is a front gable.
This house was built by Washington Avenue entrepreneur Wesley Newton Mitchell, who built several other houses in the neighbourhood during this period.
The first householder at 3071 Washington Avenue was Clarence Bailey Deaville. He was born in England in 1876 and came to Victoria with his parents and siblings in 1898. His wife, Mabel Elijah Bailey Davey, was born in BC in 1881. They were married in Victoria in 1904 and their daughter, Phyllis, was born here three years later.
The Deavilles were a well-known family in the Burnside Gorge neighbourhood. The patriarch of the family, William Arthur Deaville, owned a large home on the Gorge Road and ran a successful grocery store on Hillside Avenue. Some of the Deaville boys followed their father into the grocery business, while others were involved with the salmon canning industry. Clarence Deaville was interested in residential building and decorating supplies. In 1912 he was manager of the Melrose Company, a large firm that dealt in house paints and varnishes, decorative wall papers, ornamental glass and leaded art glass windows.
In 1917, Clarence and Mabel Deaville, and their ten-year-old daughter Phyllis, moved across the street to 3070 Washington Avenue and into another handsome residence that Wesley Mitchell had built.
Afterwards, this house at 3071 Washington Avenue was the home of Mrs. E. Gillingham (1917), a widow; and Thomas Hammond, who was a clerk with Heisterman, Forman & Company, insurance and real estate agents (1918).