Bedfordshire Archives Service Catalogue
  • Reference
    X1033
  • Title
    C A White, Builders of Bedford.
  • Date free text
    1919-2015
  • Production date
    From: 1919 To: 2015
  • Creator
    C A White
  • Admin/biog history
    CA White, builders appears to have started as a company of Christopher A White and T C Eckstein in 1919. Christopher Arthur White was born in Maidstone, Kent in about 1884. He was the son of a wheelwright and by the 1901 census 16 year old Christopher was a carpenter. He married in 1904 Harriet Eliza Farrier and by 1911 they had three children: Constance, Alice Maud and Ronald. The family were still resident in Maidstone. It is not known what brought Christopher to Bedford or how he knew Thomas Eckstein. C A White died on the 7th February 1924 and left an estate of £896 14s 3d to his widow, Harriet. Thomas Conrad Eckstein was born in Aston, Warwickshire in 1887. Thomas’s grandfather, William, had been an ironmonger born in Holborn, London in about 1829. His father, Thomas Key Eckstein, had been born in Smethwick in about 1857 and was a builder’s manager. By 1911, aged 23, Thomas Conrad was an architect’s assistant for the county council in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire. He married Dorothy Bibbs in 1912. Thomas and Dorothy had at least three children: Conrad Leslie, Gabriella (born 1918) and Robert (born 1921). By 1918 Thomas had moved to Bedford and was living at 6 George Street. He moved to 26 Landsdowne Road in about 1924 and remained there until moving to Shakespeare Road in the late 1950s. On the 1939 census Thomas is described as a master builder. Thomas died on 2 February 1970 at Lee on Solent, Hampshire. After Mr White’s death in 1924 Alexander Chrystal (1894-1965) joined the company and became a partner of Mr Eckstein. Alexander’s son Ian followed his father into the firm, while Ian’s brother, Alexander became an architect forming a partnership Chrystal and West with Bernard West. The Chrystal family were also involved in property management. Ian Chrystal passed away suddenly on 15th November 2010 aged 77 years, leaving his partner Maris, children Jane, Alison and Richard and grandchildren Hayley, Natalie, Charlotte and Edward. The company had offices at 40 Canning Street, Bedford and later a yard and stores at Elstow Road.
  • Archival history
    Through Chrystal family, deposited by Richard Chrystal, 2020
  • Level of description
    fonds
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