The story of one house in Lausanne Road .... number 52 ..... the neighbours

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

Our house and the one the Pott's lived in, 2017

Now even though we left Peckham almost 60 years ago, I can still remember our neighbours.

Some I admit are now shadowy figures, whose names I had completely forgotten until recently, while others like those who lived in the police flats do occasionally pop back into my memory.

Of all of them it is the Potts family who lived next door who still invade my thoughts from time to time, and that is mainly because three of the children were just a few years younger than me, and in those long hot summers which seemed to stretch on for ever we played together.

They were triplets and if I have got this right were called Susan, Brian, and Robert. There was an older sister, Helen who already was too old to mix with us, although I guess she will have not been more than five years older than me.

I have a few pictures of us together and can remember that they kept chickens and finally moved out to run The Earl of Derby on Dennett’s Road sometime in the late 1950s.

And then a couple of days ago someone posted on social media a picture of the triplets from the Associated Newspapers with the caption, “Circa 1952: Four-year-old Potts Triplets - Robert Susan And Brian - receiving their birthday mail from the postman at their Peckham London home”.** 

Me and two of the triplets circa mid 1950s

It was of course my friends, and it set me off looking for them.  

At first this was only to establish that the date was correct which seemed a little too early, given that I had been born three years earlier, and in 1952 I would only have been three.

So far, I haven’t been able to find a record of when they were born, but the search did lead me to their mum and dad who were married in 1934 in Lewisham.  For a while they lived in Lewisham before settling in Orpington sometime around 1939.

By 1947 they were in Mr. Pott’s old family home on Lausanne Road where he had lived in the early 1930s.

This I now know because he and then later his wife Ellen appear on the Electoral Registers which were compiled every year which allowed me to track them around southeast London.

Added to this there is the 1939 Register which was a mini census, carried out at the beginning of the Second World War.  It remains an invaluable document given that the 1931 census was destroyed and the first post-war one cannot be accessed for another 30 years.

Along with information on dates of birth and occupations it also offers up information on the voluntary activities of people, including their participation in Civil Defence roles.  

Mr Pott’s gave his occupation as a “Bus Driver for London Transport”, and along with Ellen and Ellen’s sister three others are registered.  But these three have been redacted which I suspect means that they were children who might still have been alive when the Register first went live earlier this century.

One of these may have been Margaret Potts who shows up on the 1957 electoral register and may have been one of their older children.  I vaguely remember her in their kitchen from sometime in the mid 1950s.

Me and Helen, circa 1953

All of which is fascinating and has brought me closer to our neighbours.

But the electoral registers also throws light on the dire housing conditions in the immediate post way years.  The houses on Lausanne Road were big and many appear to have had their share of lodgers.  

Our house did, with at least two couples sharing the property at certain periods. Likewise number 28 also had what appear to be non-family members, and while this isn’t the case with the Pott’s house I assume that is because of their larger family.

And that is it ….. I would like to have included the photograph which set me off on the journey but alas I don’t hold the copyright.

Leaving me just one slight niggle, which is that the photograph doesn't quite match with those houses on Lausanne Road, ..... a mystery which someone will offer an explanation

Location; Peckham

Pictures; me, the Pott’s children circa 1950s and our house on Lausanne Road, 2017 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The story of one house in Lausanne Road http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20story%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Lausanne%20Road

**I grew up in Peckham, https://www.facebook.com/groups/49819382463