Sir Charles Redvers Westlake (29 April 1900 – 17 February 1972) was a British
electrical engineer and industrialist.
Biography
Westlake was born in the hamlet of
Forton in Hampshire on 29 April 1900, to Colour Sergeant Harry Westlake and his wife Elizabeth.
In 1929 Westlake became County Electrical Engineer for Dumfriesshire,
and two years later Chief Engineer and Manager of the Electricity Board for Northern Ireland.
From 1935 to 1948, he was an engineer at the electricity generating station (established by the Finchley Electric Light Co. and subsequently acquired by Finchley Urban District Council) at Squires Lane in
Finchley, North London.
During World War II he served at the War Office, and at the same time was president of the Finchley branch of the
NALGO trade union.
In 1946 Westlake was appointed by the British
Colonial Office
The Colonial Office was a government department of the Kingdom of Great Britain and later of the United Kingdom, first created to deal with the colonial affairs of British North America but required also to oversee the increasing number of c ...
to recommend a site for a hydroelectric power station in
Uganda
}), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The sou ...
. His report, jointly produced in 1947 with the civil engineer E. V. Richards, recommended
Owen Falls as the location. Westlake, as chairman of the newly formed
Uganda Electricity Board
}), is a landlocked country in East Africa. The country is bordered to the east by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west by the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by Tanzania. The souther ...
, went on to direct the project (now known as the
Nalubaale Hydroelectric Power Station
Nalubaale Power Station, formerly known as Owen Falls Dam, is a hydroelectric power station across the White Nile near its source at Lake Victoria in Uganda. ''Nalubaale'' is the Luganda name for Lake Victoria.
Location
The dam sits across the N ...
) until its commissioning in 1954. Queen Elizabeth attended the opening of the dam and conferred a knighthood on Westlake. In 1955 he was reported as being President of the East African Association of Engineers.
Westlake retired from his post in Uganda in October 1955. In 1956 he returned to England to become chairman of
Metal Industries, Limited, where he remained until 31 October 1964, leading the group from a position of heavy losses to a profitable state. He went on to become chairman of the metal window manufacturer
Williams and Williams.
In 1969 he became chairman of the S. W. Wood Group, a non-ferrous metal merchant
Westlake married twice: in 1929 to Winifred Lucy Luxton Western, with whom he had two daughters (Patricia and Barbara), and in 1968 to Evelyn Isabel Aistrup. He died in Lisbon in 1972 of prostate cancer.
Bibliography
* ''Uganda Electricity Survey'', 1947
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References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Westlake, Charles Redvers
English electrical engineers
British industrialists
Knights Bachelor
1900 births
1972 deaths
People from Test Valley
20th-century British businesspeople