One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 25 ……. where did all the Royal Arsenal workers go?

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family. *

294 Well Hall Road, 2014

Now pretty much everyone will know the old Progress Estate was built for Royal Arsenal workers, was completed in under a year, and remains a fine example of a Garden City Suburb.

We lived at 294 Well Hall Road from 1964 and continued to call it home for over 30 years.

And as you do I have long wondered about the story of our “Progress House”.  

A few years ago, using street directories and electoral registers I tracked those who called it home from when it was built till, we moved and occasionally have talked with more recent residents.

But what has always interested me was just how long the estate remained primarily the home of Royal Arsenal workers.

Some I guess remained there particularly with the outbreak of the Second World War, but others will have moved on.

The Bullet Shop, Royal Arsenal, circa 1914-1918

So, I know that the Nunn family who lived in our house in 1916, had moved on four years later returning to Ipswich.  

Mr Nunn was a blacksmith and with the end of the Great War, he moved back to Suffolk where he died in 1946.

The task of discovering subsequent occupiers of 294 will always be a tad more difficult, mainly because while we can find their names, their personal stories are blocked by considerations of data protection, which means some records are closed for 100 years.

But the 1921 census came online at the start of the year and we now know more about Mr. and Mrs Rendle and their children.

Looking down Shooters Hill, 1909

They moved in to 294 in 1919 and it was at this point that the link with the Royal Arsenal was broken, because Alfred Rendle was a Police Detective at Shooters Hill Police Station.

We can follow his career from when he left Gosport in Hampshire in 1910 for Stratford in Essex where his last two children were born in 1914 and 1918.

 Around 1916 the family were in in Leyton in east London, and in Cray in 1939 where described himself as a “Retired Police Officer”.

Our house in 1974

It would be interesting to find out if his children stayed in Eltham, and equally when other houses on the estate severed their links with The Royal Arsenal.

And that last thought might be assisted by people who have access to their deeds and who can offer up names which can be checked against the 1921 census.

We shall see.

Pictures; 294 Well Hall Road in 2014 courtesy of Chrissie Rose, inside the Royal Arsenal from the collection of Mark Flynn, The Bullet Factory, W H Kingsway, http://www.manchesterpostcards.com/index.html and from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall