British representation in Dakar 1872 – 1945 and the building of the British residence

Although Britain had occupied Gorée and St. Louis several times in the 17th and 18th centuries these islands were not finally handed over to the French until the Treaty of Paris, 1814. In the first half of the 19th century British interests along this part of the West African Coast were confined to commerce and stopping the Transatlantic Slave Trade with Royal Navy patrols along the Senegambia Coast line. The town of Dakar was founded in 1857 and a port was soon under construction opposite the Island of Gorée where the French Military and Administration were based. In 1898 the French decided to construct a naval harbour alongside the commercial port, following the gradual move of the garrison on Gorée to Dakar.

1872 – 1902: British presence established

In April 1872 Britain appointed her first Vice-Consul, a Frenchman, CléomenesPillot, to look after shipping interests in the port. The first two Vice Consuls were unpaid appointments. He was succeeded by three further Frenchmen. In October 1894 the first British national, Lt Col Allan Maclean was appointed HM Vice Consul, becoming Consul in 1896.Maclean set about trying to find a house to serve as a residence and consulate. He wrote to the Foreign Secretary, the Earl of Kimberley in December 1894 and again in January 1895 to explain his difficulties.Maclean asked for a rise of £150 per annum on account of the climate and the expense of life in Dakar on his current salary of £500. The only house he could find in a "fairly healthy situation" consisted of 3 bedrooms and 2 very small dressing rooms on the upper storey of the Villa Belle Vue, Rue Huart near the port. The rent on a 3-year lease was 3000 francs or £120 per annum. An opportunity had arisen to obtain by purchase or long lease the possession of the house he had taken. The Chief Clerk replied on 30 January 1895. Then followed a long reply to the Earl of Kimberly in which Col Maclean described the house, its dimensions, building materials (stone), locks, configuration, rent).In arguing the case for an allowance Maclean expounded on the difficulties of living in Dakar.A year later on 17 February 1896 Maclean returned to the charge. He reported to the Marquis of Salisbury (then Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary) that Monsieur E A Offret, the owner of Villa Belle Vue had decided to sell. M. Offret was persuaded not to sell.In Jan 1897 Col Maclean at last got posted to Santa Cruz, Tenerife. Captain Leonard Arthur succeeded him as consul until 1902, when Captain Charles Cromie was appointed.

1902 – 1907: Purchase of site and erection of residence

The arrival of Captain Cromie immediately reopened the correspondence on premises for a Residence/Consulate. The French Government would welcome the construction of a British Consulate and "they would do all in their power to facilitate the acquisition by His Majesty’s Government of a suitable site on the most favourableterms".He recommended buying a plot on the Plateau near the Hospital (built from 1880 onwards. So on 6 October Cromie wrote again to the Marquis of Lansdowne to commend the Hospital Plateau site "from a sanitary point of view by far the best as it is on the highest ground on the Dakar peninsula. Moreover M. Offret the landlord of Villa Belle Vue had clearly lost patience and planned to sell, giving notice to quit by 1 January 1904. The Foreign Office replied On 9 December that "the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury have sanctioned the purchase of a site at Dakar known as the Hospital Plateau for the erection of a Consulate at a cost not exceeding 36,000 francs or say £1450. They also approve the proposal to erect a Shipping Office on the sea front".       

Site of Consulate	£1450
Erection	£6000
Site and erection of Shipping Office	£550  £8000

The site measured 90m x 50m (4,500sq m). M Offret also offered a smaller site for 50,000 francs in the same area. There was an attempt by the Treasury to postpone the purchase to April 1905 but this was seen off by the Consul and the FO with the threat that the owner would sell to other contenders and that there were no other suitable sites at less that 50,000 francs.In October 1904 Cromie suggested that "the house should be built round an interior court, on the Hispanic Moorish plan, with interior verandas surrounding the court yard, with a good sized drawing and reception room; a dining room sufficient to dine 20 persons; a good bathroom; two water closets, one upstairs and one downstairs; a store room; kitchen; scullery and pantry.Designs were then sent out followed by letters concerning sewerage. The Consulate was finally built. Captain Cromie was succeeded on 1 January 1908 by Major John Baldwin and a new chapter in the history of the house opens – the start of complaints as to its construction and fittings.

1908 – 1911: Design problems and complaints

The house was ready in February 1908. Major Baldwin arrived in May and on the 28th wrote the first of a series of letters to Sir Henry Tanner complaining about the Residence. On 22 August Baldwin despaired again to Sir Henry:In April 1909 Mr Thrift Reavell, a representative of the Office of Works came out to Dakar to investigate the Consul General’s complaints and report on the building. He reported to the Principal Architect in London that "so far as the foundations, general structure and roofs are concerned the work is very sound, probably the best in Dakar, but the joinery, painting, ironmongery and general finishings leave something to be desired". MrReavell concluded that "in nearly every case the literal accuracy of the Consul General’s statements cannot be disproved, but it is in my opinion, very unlikely, in the event of a change of occupancy, that his successor would adopt quite such an extreme attitude. Major Baldwin left Dakar a few weeks later to become Consul General in Liberia.

1909 – 1928: Afrique occidentale Française – The Marseilles of West Africa

Baldwin was succeeded on 1 November 1909 by Major Charles Braithwaite Wallis as HM Consul General for French West Africa and the Sudan until 1920, though from 1915 to 1920 he was in Europe fighting in World War I. From August 1916 Reginald Charles Maugham was appointed Acting Consul General, having been Consul General in Monrovia. He succeeded Major Wallis in 1920 (adding Portuguese Guinea to his jurisdiction) and remained until 1928 when "he retired on a pension". The Consul General’s jurisdiction covered 2 ½ million square miles and 6 seaports, a large chunk of West Africa. Major Wallis undertook a number of extensive and prolonged tours. In his absence Wallis appointed Percy Hope Stormont, the Manager of Elder Dempster & Co and Lloyd’s Agent at Dakar to be an unsalaried acting vice consul for 3 months, both in 1911 and in 1913. Stormont became a salaried vice consul from 1 January 1914, whilst remaining Head of the African Steamship Co and the British and African Steam Navigation Co at Dakar.Maugham proposed to the Foreign Secretary that delegates from the British West African Colonies should attend the annual meeting of French Lt Governors in Dakar in order to secure a greater degree of harmony between neighbours the Foreign Office strongly approved.Governor General Carde in Dakar established an annual Anglo-French conference of colonial medical officers to study tropical diseases. The African Conference on Yellow Fever in Dakar, April 1928 paid tribute to the work of Dr Stokes (member of the West African Commission of the Rockefeller Foundation) and Dr Guillet, who had both died of yellow fever from experiments on themselves in search of a cure and tending the sick. Médecin-Major René Guillet died aged 35 on 17 September at Thiès. The cities of Thiès and Dakar decided to commemorate his name and the road (formerly Route duLazaret) that runs alongside the embassy and Hôpital Principal was renamed Rue du Dr Guillet.

Purchase of adjoining land

In 1924/5 Maugham extended the grounds of the Residence. Following his letter of 3 March 1922 to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Curzon about the need for more office space Maugham wrote to Mr Thrift Reavell (still at Works) on 30 June to warn that the French intended to build on the area between the boundary wall and the Route duLazaret which had been displaced some 50 yards away in 1909.The Foreign Office was about to appoint vice-consuls at Grand Bassam in the Ivory Coast and in French Guinea under Dakar’s supervision. Two of the large bedrooms of the Residence had already been filled with archives, forms and stores for all the subordinate posts, whilst the harness room in the stable-yard was full of Board of Trade forms. The new land would provide an ideal place on which to build an office. The Consul General's office was in what is now the 'Petit Salon' and the basement was also used as offices.The land was bought for 25 francs (£575 in total), not before Ramsay MacDonald, Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary commented on 5 April 1924 that there was no need to build extra office space as "the work at this post appears to be relatively light for two men to handle". In October 1924 the boundary wall was rebuilt further out. Maugham then argued (9.1.25) with the Office of Works for money to lay out the new gardens which were completed that year though not in time for a reception he planned to give for the visits of HMS Dublin, and the Governor of The Gambia.

Second World War: The Dakar expedition

On 13 July 1940 Victor Cusden, the Consul General left Dakar and the post was closed following the appointment by the Vichy Government of a new Governor General (Pierre Boisson). Nine days earlier the Consul General had reported that the Mayor believed "that a show of force should be made by the British fleet; arrival in force in the near future might have the desired effect without much bloodshed. Black population would back action but lack own leaders." De Gaulle was already in London at work persuading Churchill that a joint British and Free French expedition should be sent out to take Dakar. It was assembled in Liverpool in August 1940 and arrived off Dakar at 5 am on 23 September. It was a large if motley armada under British command and included 31 British and 4 French vessels, General de Gaulle and 2,400 French troops and 4,270 British¹. The purpose of 'Operation Menace' was to persuade the Governor General that French West Africa should join de Gaulle. Boisson refused. Dakar was strongly fortified and its six batteries were able to keep the fleet at bay despite 3 days of heavy bombardment by the fleet. By 26 September it was clear that the expedition could not take Dakar and it was forced to retreat to Freetown. The six Danish sailors killed on board the British Merchant Navy vessel SS Tacoma that was in the harbour and caught in the cross fire are buried in Bel Air cemetery.

US occupation of residence

On 15 September, one week before the attack the Americans reopened their consulate (closed in 1928 for economic reasons) in order to keep an eye on wartime developments. The new consul, Thomas C Wason moved into the British Residence. He also represented British interests. Under American "occupation" the Residence became a listening post where the Consul assisted by two vice consuls and a clerk (Donald Dumont²) reported on the movement of shipping, on the French forces and kept an eye out for any German activities (none). The Americans had several sympathetic sources in the Governor General's office and in the French military. When British ships were sunk by German U-boats the French would go out to search for survivors. By 1942 Dumont was taking care of about 400 British prisoners in various camps. For 15 days he and his colleagues were kept under house arrest in the Residence while the Governor General decided whether to join the allies. He did so with the entire French West African Administration and armed forces following the Allied landings in North Africa in November 1942.

The British return

So in early 1943 the Americans vacated the Residence and the British Consul General returned. Later that year a one-storey office building (replaced in 1958/9 by the present Chancery) was erected on the land acquired in 1925 to cope with the much-increased activity generated by the war. Ernest Meiklered, the new Consul General took up the question of the piece of land on the other side of the Residence gardens between the perimeter wall and the Corniche. The Governor General indicated that the authorities intended to buy the land between the Corniche and the Residence and to construct gardens. This never happened but in 1973 the land was bought by DenzilDunnett, the then Ambassador and incorporated into the gardens. A swimming pool was constructed on part of this land in 1976.*Footnotes:(¹)Also on board (HMS Barham) was the future Marquis of Lansdowne and Minister in the Foreign Office (1958-62) and grandson of the Lord Lansdowne who was Foreign Secretary at the time of the purchase of the Residence site.(²)Dumont left in early 43 and returned to Dakar as the last US Consul General in 1958.

• David Snoxell, 1999

Development of residence site

1908	Residence completed.
1911-12	Central courtyard roofed over and tennis court laid.
1916	Gardens laid out.1920 Veranda to east constructed (extended 1960s).
1924/5	Grounds extended and boundary wall rebuilt along Avenue de la Liberté/ Route duLazaret (now Avenue Pasteur/Rue du Dr Guillet). Drive re-designed and gardens completed.
1943	One-storey offices built on the new land.
1958/9	Present Chancery building constructed to replace the offices.
1973	Land between Residence garden and Corniche acquired and gardens extended.
1976	Swimming pool constructed.
1989	Texaco House adjoining Residence garden bought (built 1952-59; extended 1983).
1992	British Club built between Chancery and Hôpital