Elm Terrace ......... the picture and the story ...... Eltham High Street in 1905

Now, I have to say that this row of terraced houses is not what you expect to see off the High Street.

And I had to think for a few minutes just where Elm Terrace is, because I don’t remember the houses and I doubt few people today will either.

Elm Terrace is of course one of those narrow little streets off the High Street, opposite the Rising Sun.

As a kid I had no reason to go down there, and the last time I ventured down it was an unremarkable place with a Chinese restaurant and not much else, although there was a bit of a ghost sign which had been exposed after a sign board had been taken down.

It is on the side of the wall of number 23 which was once Four Paws Grooming Saloon, but has been empty for a few years.

Now as everyone knows I am attracted to ghost signs and this one intrigues me because all we have left picked out in giant red lettering is ASTEL, leaving me to wait for someone with a longer memory to tell me what it referred to.

So with that cleared up, I am back to the picture, which is dated around 1905.

I say 1905, but that was when the picture postcard was sent and so the actual date it was taken maybe earlier, but not much because, Margaret writes to her aunt “that I have put a cross by our house. Mrs Smith used to live by the lamp post - the house you see at the bottom is Mrs Masson”.

These were four roomed houses and there were 23 of them in the terrace.

Our own historian Mr Gregory writing in1909 said nothing about the properties and limited himself to a speculation on the origins of the name which he thought “in all probability is derived from two old elm trees which at one time stood at the end of the road remote from the High Street.”*

Now I don’t blame him for passing over a description of the houses, at the time they would have been familiar to everyone.

As it was nine years later they do not even warrant a reference in the 1918 street directory, which confined itself to listing just William Ryde & Son, farriers, and The Eltham Public Hall which was owned by R. Smith & Company.

The line of the roof of the hall is just visible at the end of the terrace. It dated from the 1870s and was the British School but with the opening of the school at Pope Street the building was “used for meetings, concerts and similar purposes”.

As for our houses, those “on left were demolished for the Arcade development in 1930 which was only half completed when the developer went bankrupt.  The Elm Terrace Fitness Centred (opened in 1931 as an indoor market) covers the site of most of the cottages on the right except the last three, which are now used for commercial purposes”. ***

I have to say I do like the picture and more because we can identify pretty much everyone who lived here during the early 20th century using electoral registers and the census returns.

And here I must pay tribute to Tricia, who sent over the picture and did much of the research on Margaret Pocknall from which I know she was a dress maker, born in Eltham in 1877, and her family moved around Eltham and settled just round the corner in Southend Road in Elm Villas.

But I will close with one simple observation and that  even back then, a gable end invited the idle to chalk on the wall.

To which Matt K Minch went one better and posted this picture with the comment, "'Astel' I think is the remnants of the sign that said Hardcastles, this being what became of the 3 houses that survived there."

And that really is it, with thanks to Matt and Tricia who did all the research.
Location; Eltham

Picture; Elm Terrace, courtesy of Tricia Leslie, and Elm Terrace from the collection of Matt K Minch, date unknown

*Gregory, R.R.C. The Story of Royal Eltham, 1909, page 286

**ibid, Gregory, R.R.C., page 287

***Kennet, John, Eltham a Pictorial History, 1995 image 84

Walking down the High Street sometime around 1907

Now I can’t be sure when this picture was taken.

The postmark records that it was sent at 11 am on September 20th 1907, but picture postcard companies did keep old photographs in the catalogue and reuse them long after they had been taken.

In some cases even over printing on what was a summer scene a Christmas greeting or retouching the picture to the point where it almost became a blur.

In this case we are on the High Street looking west down towards the church, and I am fascinated by the shop advertising “Eltham Steam Printing Works” which was on the north side of the street.

Given that the Castle is almost opposite I think our shop will be under the modern block which includes Marks and Spencer but I am finding it difficult to find the shop on the street directories.

It doesn’t appear in the 1914 lists, so may have gone by then.

Of course I may be looking in the wrong place and at present I don’t have access to earlier directories, but someone will, and the story behind the “Eltham Steam Printing Works” will come out of the shadows.

Location; Eltham High Street

Picture; Eltham High Street, 1907, courtesy of Tricia Leslie

Looking for Dad at Eltham Fire Station in 1908

We will never know whether Lizzie’s aunt appreciated this picture postcard of our Fire Station.

But as she had been receiving regular such pictures of Eltham, I rather hope she did.

The added bonus was that there in the photograph was Lizzie’s Dad, which prompted Lizzie to ask “Do you recognise dad?

There is lots more detail but I rather think I will leave that up to you to search out.

Location; Eltham Fire Station











Picture; Eltham Fire Station,1908, courtesy of Tricia Leslie

Be careful what you say ….. Elizabeth Terrace and that apology

I have been unkind to Elizabeth Terrace for which I am sorry.

Elizabeth Terrace, 1911

It's that tiny thoroughfare that runs from the High Street down to Philipot Path.

I had described it as an “unimpressive thoroughfare sandwiched between Boots the Chemist on one side and WH Smith’s on the other” and assumed that the set of cottages in this 1911 picture had vanished, which is a lesson in checking your facts and a warning about scholarly arrogance.*

Some of the cottages do still exist, and for this I have our Theresa and Valerie Daniels to thank.

Elizabeth Terrace, 2021

Theresa has told me that “when l left , there were still about 10 house left”, and intrigued by the story Valerie walked down the Terrace and took a picture of the cottages.

In my defence I left Eltham in 1973 and apart from occasional trips back have not really spent much time in the place I grew up, all of which leaves me realizing that Street Google is not in itself enough to base conclusions about an area.

Added to which when you are writing about Eltham it is a good idea to go back to our two historians, R.R.C. Gregory, and John Kennett.  Mr. Kennett has written a series of books on the district as well as being a regular contributor to SE Nine.

And yesterday during a conversation with him where I was asking for permission to reproduce the 1911 photograph he alerted me to his article on Elizabeth Terrace in the September edition of SE Nine.**

The article confirms my research that some of the cottages date back to the 1840s and numbers 18-22 were demolished a century and a bit later because they were “unfit for human habitation”.

So mindful of that simple rule that if someone has done it already, and done it better it would be daft for me to attempt to represent Mr. Kennett’s work, so I shall just point you to the link to his article.

But the census returns do offer fresh avenues of research, one of which is the possibility of identifying individuals in the 1911 picture.

Looking for Mr. Foot, 1911

Of these I am intrigued by the two men staring out at us.  The elder of the two might be Samuel Foot who described himself as a “Jobbing gardener”, while the younger of the two could be one of his four sons, who were Ernest aged 26, Hebert, 19, Percy, 16, or Reginald 13.

I say might be, because I cannot be sure that the house is number 19 where the Foot’s lived in April 1911, or that they were still there in July when the photograph was taken.

But I can be a little more certain of the composition of Elizabeth Terrace a decade earlier.

In 1901 there were 25 houses which were home to one hundred people whose occupations were a mix of skilled and unskilled jobs. 

These included a variety of different labourers, including one agricultural farm worker, a number of laundresses, and the new jobs of the 20th century including a “Telegraph messenger boy” and junior clerk.

Above all it was a place of youth, with 31 of the inhabitants under the age of 16.

That said some were already at work.  Louisa Griffiths at number 6 Elizabeth Terrace was assisting her grandmother taking in washing while others were working as messenger and errand boys, or holding down junior clerical posts.

Elizabeth Terrace, 2014

In time I will go back thought the census returns looking at those that called the street home in 1851, but for now that is it.

Location; Eltham

Pictures; Elizabeth Terrace, 1911, by permission of John Kennett, Eltham A Pictorial History, 1995, Elizabeth Terrace, 2021 courtesy of Valerie Daniels, Occupations of the residents on Elizabeth Terrace, 1911, and Elizabeth Terrace, 2014, from the collection of Elizabeth and Colin Fitzpatrick

* Lost and forgotten streets of Eltham …… no. 1 Elizabeth Terrace, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2021/03/lost-and-forgotten-streets-of-eltham-no.html

**Elizabeth Terrace, John Kennett, SE Nine Magazine,  https://indd.adobe.com/view/04c8920d-0f5e-4317-8247-1416287e88da