I doubt that Auntie Edith would ever have thought that her picture postcard sent from Looe in Cornwall in July 1933 would be the subject of a search through the historical records 90 years later.
So, not only Eltham, but Well Hall and the Progress Estate.
The comment on the back picks up on the message that holiday makers in Looe will not have to spend much money, with “we should come home with all our money. I don’t think.”
Miss Williams is still lurking in the shadows. I know that she was there in the house in 1933, but six years later it is vacant.
And back in 1921 the property was occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Lavin. William Earl was 57 years old, from Northamptonshire and described his occupation as a “Collector” for Saye Machine Co Ltd, while May Jane was a year older and was born in Birmingham.
The closest definition in the Ministry of Labour’s 1921 dictionary for a “Collector salesman” was a canvasser who also collects weekly or monthly payments for goods sold on installment system.
The firm appears to have employed four others but here it gets tricky because while each suggests that they were related to sewing machines, their listed employer has a different name.
But something will turn up it always does, sadly not today.
All of which takes me back to that house on Arsenal Road and what it might tell us about the early history of the estate. I have always wondered at what point those houses ceased to be homes for Royal Arsenal workers. The huge run down of employment at the factory in the immediate post wars years will have meant that new tenants were drawn from other occupations.
In time I will go looking for the electoral registers for Arsenal Road to see if we can track the residents of the property, but for now I am left with that picture postcard.
Location’ Arsenal Road, Eltham, London and Looe in Cornwall
Pictures; You Went Get Stung, 1933, from the collection of David Harrop
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