I don’t think I ever took a short cut and walked down Elizabeth Terrace.
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| Elizabeth Terrace between Boots and W. H. Smith, 2014 |
It’s that unimpressive thoroughfare sandwiched between Boots the Chemist on one side and WH Smith’s on the other.
If you do, and apparently a lot of people use it to get to the Community Hospital it leads onto Philipot Path which connects Court Yard with Passey Place.
But Margaret Huntley remembers “going to a friend's little house after school. There was a garden opposite which we thought was an orchard and we used to go scrumping in there. Really tiny little place”.
Soon after she recorded her memories of the place, Matt K Minch posted a picture of the terrace taken in 1911, which showed a long line of houses fronted by a row of gardens and decorated with bunting for the coronation of King Edward Vll.
The photograph was taken looking up towards the High Street and as still happened at the time , the arrival of a photographer brought everyone out of their houses.
The eight faces that stare out of us are a mix of grown up and children, and some at least it might be possible to identify, because 1911 was also census year, which means that by working back from the High Street end it should be possible to locate the people in their doorways.
But more of that later.
For now I know that the houses were two up two down and there were 25 of them.
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| Elizabeth Terrace, 1875, west of Park Place |
A decade earlier in 1901 these 25 houses were home to one hundred people who gave their occupations as laundresses, brick layer, dressmaker , and carpenter and even one agricultural worker, along with a “Telegraph messenger boy” and junior clerk.
So, a mix of jobs, and ones that span neatly Eltham’s rural past where farming had been an important activity, contrasted with the future, marked by the telegraph and the office.
Most of the residents in 1901 were from Eltham or close by, but there a few from Sussex, Surrey, and even the Midlands and Norfolk.
Not unsurprisingly there are some households which were living in overcrowded conditions, like James and Sarah Slopes who squeezed themselves and five children into the four rooms of their home, while at number 19 the family counted nine individuals.
And we know more about Mr. Slopes, including that he described himself as “a Sexton labourer”, raising the possibility that he worked at the parish church.
By contrast at number 2 Mary Tabley, and Ann Thorn shared the house. Both were widows, and both took in laundry, although Mary recorded that she worked on her “own account” and Ann was merely a “worker”.
There is more, and I rather think Elizabeth Terrace will become a research project, spanning the years back to 1851 and possibly back another decade.
The street was listed in the 1851 census although it is not clear yet whether we are dealing with the same properties.
We shall see.
Location; Eltham
Pictures; looking east up the High Street, 2014, with Elizabeth Terrace beside Boots, from the collection of Elizabeth and Colin Fitzpatrick, and the High Street in 1875, OS for Kent map 6inch
My mother's grandparents lived at 17 Elizabeth Terrace between the two world wars. My mother says that their house was not one of the two up, two down houses but was one of a small number of very old cottages, Elizabethan she thinks, at the end of the terrace. They were demolished just before WW2. I have never been able to find a photo of these cottages and I would love to see one as my mother remembers her grandparents' cottage with enormous affection.
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