The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*
I don’t suppose any of us really know that much about the history of the house we live in.
Unlike those grand piles which were the homes of the people of plenty with an unbroken story going back three or four centuries, Lausanne Road was a comparatively new home on the block.
It was built sometime between 1872 and 1881, and apart from the bomb that fell opposite can’t claim to have witnessed any great event.
But that is to ignore that it was home to a shedful of people including my family who lived interesting and productive lives and were as important in their way as any great politician, general or scientist.
And that brings me to Miss Jeannie Jeffery whose story tells us a lot about this bit of south east London in the last decades of the 19th and the first few of the next century.
Now I don’t know if she was the first resident of our house but she was there by 1881 and described herself as “Owner of House Property” which is just about all we do know about her, save that she was born in 1848, her father was a journalist and she died in 1912.
But there is one other detail and that is that in the April of 1888 she married Joseph Henry Wills. She was 39 and he 34 and Mr Wills was well known to Miss Jeffery because his father and brother had been living in
her house as “boarders” and I guess as these things do Henry and Jeannie fell in love.
He was a sea captain as was his father and brother which put them in the same social grouping of many of the others on Luasanne Road.
Next door Mr Roberts was “living on his own means” while further down the road was a Professor of Music, a teacher and Stockbroker’s Agent. Not perhaps the highest social grouping but comfortably well off people who knew they were cut above others in the area.
And the Wills were on to better places, for within less than two decades they had moved up the hill to a fine double fronted Victorian villa on the corner of Erlanger and Arbuthnot Roads with fine views down to where they had come from and across at the recently opened park.
Even now this is a pleasant spot especially on a warm summer’s afternoon but back at the beginning of the 20th century I suspect Mr and Mrs Wills must have been quite content with themselves.
The park opposite had opened in 1895 and the surrounding properties like their own were still only about 20 years old.
As late as 1860 most of this land was still market gardens and even in 1872 the roads and houses stopped at the foot of what is now Arbuthnot Road.
But in 1861 Haberdasher’s Company began to develop the area for residential use and between 1870 and 99 the roads around the park and down towards New Cross were cut and the houses built.**
Most were constructed in the 1880s, which I guess meant that Miss Jeffery’s would have seen them going up from her house in Lausanne Road and by one of those odd little twists may well have taken the same route up towards the park as I did just sixty or so years later.
Of course back in the 1950s as I stopped to cross the road at the corner of Artbuthnot and Erlanger I had no idea that that house had been occupied by the family who had lived in our house.
Such indeed are the twists of history.
Pictures, Marriage entry, 1888, courtesy of ancestry.co uk, Lausanne Road, 1872 OS London, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/
*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road
** A brief history of Telegraph Hill, © Malcolm Bacchus, Telegraph Hill Society 2004. http://thehill.org.uk/society/history.htm
 |
| Miss Jeffery of Lausanne Road marries Mr Wills, 1881 |
Unlike those grand piles which were the homes of the people of plenty with an unbroken story going back three or four centuries, Lausanne Road was a comparatively new home on the block.
It was built sometime between 1872 and 1881, and apart from the bomb that fell opposite can’t claim to have witnessed any great event.
But that is to ignore that it was home to a shedful of people including my family who lived interesting and productive lives and were as important in their way as any great politician, general or scientist.
 |
| Mr and Mrs Jeffery |
Now I don’t know if she was the first resident of our house but she was there by 1881 and described herself as “Owner of House Property” which is just about all we do know about her, save that she was born in 1848, her father was a journalist and she died in 1912.
But there is one other detail and that is that in the April of 1888 she married Joseph Henry Wills. She was 39 and he 34 and Mr Wills was well known to Miss Jeffery because his father and brother had been living in
her house as “boarders” and I guess as these things do Henry and Jeannie fell in love.
He was a sea captain as was his father and brother which put them in the same social grouping of many of the others on Luasanne Road.
 |
| Market gardens 1872 |
Even now this is a pleasant spot especially on a warm summer’s afternoon but back at the beginning of the 20th century I suspect Mr and Mrs Wills must have been quite content with themselves.
The park opposite had opened in 1895 and the surrounding properties like their own were still only about 20 years old.
As late as 1860 most of this land was still market gardens and even in 1872 the roads and houses stopped at the foot of what is now Arbuthnot Road.
But in 1861 Haberdasher’s Company began to develop the area for residential use and between 1870 and 99 the roads around the park and down towards New Cross were cut and the houses built.**
Most were constructed in the 1880s, which I guess meant that Miss Jeffery’s would have seen them going up from her house in Lausanne Road and by one of those odd little twists may well have taken the same route up towards the park as I did just sixty or so years later.
Of course back in the 1950s as I stopped to cross the road at the corner of Artbuthnot and Erlanger I had no idea that that house had been occupied by the family who had lived in our house.
Such indeed are the twists of history.
Pictures, Marriage entry, 1888, courtesy of ancestry.co uk, Lausanne Road, 1872 OS London, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/
*The story of one house in Lausanne Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road
** A brief history of Telegraph Hill, © Malcolm Bacchus, Telegraph Hill Society 2004. http://thehill.org.uk/society/history.htm
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