The story of one house in Lausanne Road number 4 ............ a beginning and a family on to better things

Lausanne Road in 1872

The story of one house in Lausanne Road over a century and a half, and of one family who lived there in the 1950s.*

Most of us take our homes for granted.

We might become curious from time to time about the people who have occupied it and just occasionally come across a story or document which brings the place out of the shadows.

But that is about it.

The families, and their intimate stories set against the big events and the more personal ones go unnoticed.

And that is pretty much how I thought about our old home in Lausanne Road.

We moved into it sometime around 1951 and left thirteen years later for Eltham.

By then it had clocked up 80 or so years, had been much knocked about during the last war but still had some of its original features.

And until relatively recently I had given it little thought.

It was one of those tall narrow properties with a long garden and had been built to cater for the up and coming class of top clerical and professional people.

In time I will track down exactly when it was put up using the street directories which were complied every year and give the name of the householders.

Armed with that it will be possible to crawl over the census returns and begin to find out about the people who lived.

I know that it post dates 1872 because the OS map for that year shows just open land where our house was built and I also know that by 1901 it was home to the Stahlschmidt family who a decade earlier had lived in Deptford and were to move on by 1911 to Lewisham.

They had four children and employed 20 year old Florence Mary Harding as a domestic servant.

And that makes the story just that bit more fascinating for here in my house were this family occupying the same rooms as us, sitting in our garden and possibly enjoying fruit from the same trees that we played on just fifty years later.

The romantic in me pictures the young Miss Harding supervising the coal deliveries and no doubt listening to the noise the coal made as it thundered down into the cellar and just like me waited for the slow after noise as it settled mixed with that powerful smell.

But by 1911 they had a new servant and had moved to Halesworth Road which was quite clearly a step up the social ladder as befitted a man who described himself as a ship broker and employer.

Their new home was a substantial semi detached property with large front rooms and an impressive entrance and long garden.

All of which made Lausanne Road with its terraced houses a mere stepping stone.

By which time it was home to Mr and Mrs Carly and their seven children.  He was a catering clerk and either by choice or financial situation they did not employ a servant which I suspect will be the profile of the families who were to continue to live there until we arrived.**

Picture; Lausanne Road in 1872, from the OS for London 1872, 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

**Peckham, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Peckham