This really is the last of Sidcup in 1961

Well just when I thought I wouldn’t post another Sidcup picture, here is the last in the series from Tuck and Sons.

They were marketing a collection of images of the High Street in 1961 and this one of the parish church was too good not to include.

Location; Sidcup, London


Picture; Parish Church, Sidcup, from the set Sidcup by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://www.tuckdb.org/,

Back in Sidcup in 1961, at the war memorial

I think this will be the last from the series of Sidcup in 1961.

This is the war memorial and our commercial photographer decided on just one more which was a close up of the parish church.

I have to confess I have never visited either but armed with this picture postcard I think I shall go looking for both next time I am home in Well Hall.

Picture; War Memorial, Sidcup, from the set Sidcup by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://www.tuckdb.org/

Lost on Sidcup High Street, looking for Boots the Chemist

Now I am on a roll.

Having recently wandered up Sidcup High Street in 1961  as far as the old ABC, I back again today.

It is another picture postcard from Tuck and Son but sadly without a message on the reverse.

Still it will bring back memories for some at least with that collection of shops which include Woolworths, K Shoes and Boots.

Picture; Sidcup High Street, from the set Sidcup by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://www.tuckdb.org/

Walking down Sidcup High Street in the August of 1961

Now it would be a full three years after this picture postcard of Sidcup High Street was sent before we settled in Eltham and a lot longer before I wandered down into Sidcup.

Well Hall had pretty much all I wanted back then and if I did feel adventurous  it was to Woolwich that I went.

So Sidcup in 1961was unknown to me and I haven’t been back since 1966, which means I have no idea to what extent the place looks like it did back then.

Of course the ABC cinema is no more.

It had a chequered history and lasted longer than most, having opened in 1909 as a concert hall, converted into a picture house five years later and getting an Art Deco make over in 1932.

It then went through a number of cinema chains, finally closing in 2000 and demolished three years later.

So had I ventured down into Sidcup in the 60s I could still have caught a film there but given the attractions of the Well Hall Odeon that was never to be.

All of which just leaves me to add that when Alf, Kath and Pauline sent the card on August 9th the weather “was rough but had been a scorcher” the day before.

Now I am hard pressed to remember the August of 1961 or what I was doing, but they may be those who do, and perhaps even what they were doing in Sidcup High Street all those years ago.

Picture; Sidcup High Street, from the set Sidcup by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://www.tuckdb.org/

Edwin Norman Harland, born in Sidcup and emigrated to Canada and the case of Dr Crippen

The young Edwin

Now, I always find it a privilege when friends take the time to write for the blog and so I was especially pleased when Jean added another chapter in the story of her family.

Unlike my uncle, Harold Morris the milkman, whose whole life was, spent living a stone's throw away from the house in Welling where he was born; his uncle was to live out his life
in Canada, thousands of miles away.*

Edwin Norman Harland (a younger brother of Maud, Harold's mother) was born in Sidcup in 1882.

His great-grandfather, William Harland, had been a brickmaker working in places such as Loampit Hill, Lewisham, and Whitewall Creek, near Rochester, where he was to die in 1832 as one of England's first victims of cholera- leaving a widow and several young children to be cared for by his eldest son, also a brickmaker.

Making bricks circa 1870

One of these children, aged eight at the time of his father's death, was Richard Harland.

He struggled to make good and in time became a Master Brickmaker, founding his Camden Brickworks on Whitehorse Hill, Chislehurst, in the 1860s.

Edwin was named after his uncle, Edwin Harland, whose own brickworks (Harland Brothers) were in Sidcup, where Harland Avenue is today and where young Edwin's father, George, had worked until his early death at the age of 35.

Young Edwin had undoubtedly inherited his dark, good looks from his grandmother: Eleanor Cooper, Mrs Page.

Maud

Unusually for a Harland, Edwin was destined not to become a brickmaker.

It is not known when he chose to follow this different path, but by 1901, when aged 17, he had become a Railway Booking Clerk in Mottingham, close to Eltham where his widowed mother, Annie Page, had opened a baker's shop in what today is known as Footscray Road.

At the same time, 1901, a young Devon girl -Maud Mary Westcott- was working as a general servant to the Read family at No. 73 West Chislehurst Park, Eltham.

By now, Edwin was using not his first name but his second: Norman.

“Norman” and Maud were to marry in January 1905.  He was 22 and she was 24.

They were to have two sons: Lloyd George (born in 1906) and Ronald Norman (born in 1907).

Maud and Edwin, 1905

It would seem that by 1910 they may well have been having dreams of a better life for their sons, perhaps in Canada, with a land grant that would enable Norman to become a farmer working his own land.

In July 1910, another couple had plans for a new life in Canada.

They were an American physician Hawley Crippen and his lover, Ethel La Neve, who fled England after the circumstances of Dr Crippen's wife's death in London, gave cause for questioning.

Hawley and Ethel embarked for Canada at Antwerp, sailing on the SS Montrose; but they were recognised on board and, by means of the Montrose's wireless apparatus, the police were alerted and the couple arrested upon arrival.

This was the first time that Marconi’s wireless technology had been utilised at sea in this way, the couple's arrest making history. The value of wireless for life-saving purposes became so great that soon British ships of large size and carrying passengers were being equipped with the apparatus; and it was the summoning of vessels to the sinking Titanic in 1912 that brought home to the world the importance of wireless communication.

By 1914 nearly a thousand British merchant ships were using wireless. It was in that year that the Montrose was wrecked on the Goodwin Sands. With the outbreak of war, she had been sold to the Admiralty for use as a blockship at Dover, but she broke loose from her moorings during a gale, drifted out to sea and was lost.

By 1911, a year after Dr Crippen and his lover had fled from Antwerp in the Montrose,  Norman and Maud, with their two young sons (Lloyd aged 5 and Ronald aged 3) had made up their minds to seek a new life in Canada.  Joining the Montrose at Liverpool, they arrived safely at New Brunswick on 27 March.

The ship's log records show that their destination was Winnipeg, and that Norman's intention was to be a farm labourer.   Ten years later, Norman and his family were living in the municipality of North Star, in the district of North Battleford, Saskatchewan.

In Canada

Now aged 39, Norman's occupation was given as Farmer.  His two sons, Lloyd and Ronald, were now aged 15 and 13.

What happened next is best left to Carol, Norman's great-granddaughter....

Story © Jean Gammons

Pictures; from the collection of Carol Spencer, Edwin's great granddaughter













* The Harland Family, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/The%20Harland%20Family

That mysterious cottage in Chislehurst

The cottages in 1905

We are back with that mystery cottage on Perry Street and the firm who marketed the postcard.

It is a story that draws you in, presents endless avenues of research and still throws up dead ends.

Now the two cottages look as if they have been there on this twisting country lane for ever.

But when I engaged my new friend Jean who lives nearby in the search for the cottages it became clear that they were no more than a hundred years old.

I had asked Jean to identify them which with the help of another historian she was able to do.  They sit now behind a high brick wall on Perry Street as it snakes down to Chislehurst in Kent.

I was all the more confused because the postcard has the address of Sidcup on the front, but strictly speaking we are already in Chislehurst.

The cottages, date unknown

And independently of each other both of us began searching old maps to locate these cottages in the past.

I guess it’s the way the two of us look at the world.

Once you find a place it is automatic to track it back into the past.

But the search revealed that they were not there in 1874 and so the quest began.  Jean set off down the path of the census returns while I busied myself with the chap who had marketed the post cards.

Now the census records are a wonderful way of locating people and places, and while in the 1840s and 50s the enumerator did not always record properties in a logical sequence later in the century it is possible to follow him around a district and be confident that what is set down follows on house by house and street by street.

The lane north to Sidcup

So with that sorted Jean found the first reference to the cottages in 1891 and by 1911 they had been given the name "The Thatched Cottages".

It rather fitted Jean’s first thoughts that here were two houses which had been built to accommodate the families of farm labourers who might well have worked at the nearby Frogpool Farm.

The first reference to Frogpool Farm was in 1851 but earlier it had been known as Butts Farm.

Nor was this all for the same census returns identified the Adam’s family as living in one of the two cottages from 1891.  A decade earlier they had been in one of the cottages linked to a Sidcup farm.

So it all fitted.  The Adams had moved across to Perry Street sometime around 1891 and were to still be there when Daniel Brothers began marketing his postcard of the cottages in 1905.

Edwin Adams described himself variously as a farm labourer, agricultural labourer and cowman although this may have been the interpretation put on his return by the enumerator some of whom were not adverse to tidying up the responses given on the original forms.

An idlyic spot

But the 1911 census return is signed by Edwin Adams in a clear confident hand and so I think we can be sure that cowman at least was his occupation between 1901 and 1911.

And they were still there in the cottage in 1911 with its thatched roof, white walls and cottage garden.  Not that we should be fooled by this picturesque image on the postcard.

In 1891 there were just three rooms to their home which must have been a daily challenge given that there were six of them.

Along with Daniel and his wife Mary there were two girls aged between 15 and 9 and two boys aged five and two.  Later the records show that the cottage had four rooms which may mean an extra room was added or that they moved into the adjoining cottage which had been built with four rooms.

But back in 1891 this would have posed serious problems of how to fit all the children together under one roof.

Fifty years earlier official reports on rural accommodation highlighted the issue of overcrowding and reported on the various the strategies that were employed by parents in small cottages where there were large families of boys and girls.*

These often involved farming some out to relatives or coming to an arrangement with a neighbour which involved all the boys of the two families sleeping together in one house and all the girls in the other.  Failing this there was always the curtain strung across the room.

Caught by the camera

Having said this by 1911 the problem had resolved itself with only one of the sons still at home which in itself hides a tragedy, for Edwin and Mary had had six children of whom only three survived.

There is that temptation to delve deeper into their lives, and it is possible to identify at least one of their dead children but I rather think that is too intrude too deeply into their lives.

So for now I will just ponder on whether our man looking back at the camera from the door of the “Thatched Cottages” is Daniel Adams although judging from the appearance of the chap I think it may have been his 76 year old neighbour.

This was Charles Plail also a cowman who would be retired by 1911 and a man who the the simple skill of writing had passed him by.

And the evidence for that is his mark in place of his signature on the 1911 census which had been witnessed by J S Harries of 45 High Street Sidcup.

But then he was born in 1830 a full forty years before compulsory school attendance was introduced, would have grown up with access only to a National School if he was lucky and most certainly would have had his education interrupted by the seasonal demands of the farming year.

The mark of Charles Plail

Nor I suspect would his wife Mary have been literate, for she was a full ten years older.

This however is to stray into speculation which is never really good history although I do wonder why they married so late.  Charles had been fifty-six and his wife sixty-six and their marriage may have a second for them both, but that story is for another day as is the identity of our photographer.

*Report of the Special Assistant Poor Law Commissioners on the Employment of Women & Children in Agriculture in England, 1843

Pictures; the cottage on Perry Street, from a postcard owned by MARK FLYNN POSTCARDS http://www.markfynn.com/index.html and the R Tuck & Sons similar postcard courtesy of TuckDB, http://tuckdb.org/about

The Black Horse in Sidcup

I never went into the Black Horse in Sidcup.

It had stood on the High Street for 300 years and was demolished in 2011.

According to one newspaper report* it was knocked down on condition that the developers would “build a new facade reflecting the pub as it was in 1897.”

Well I will let you make a judgement on that, for here is the pub as it was sometime in the later 19th century and as my friend Jean photographed it earlier last month.

There is much more to the story which you can follow by reading the original newspaper report but I will leave you with Jean’s comment that this

“was supposed to have had a facade that was an accurate reproduction of the original.  

The new façade is so poor a reproduction that it even its windows were not traditional wood windows”

And if you want, then you can revisit the stories in the series on Sidcup.**

Now I am the first to admit that sometimes old and cherished buildings face huge challenges from changes of use, to the high cost of restoration, but there are plenty of examples where what was a long standing historic feature has been preserved even if it is just the façade.

It will be interesting to see just what people make of the sad tale of the Black Horse.


Pictures; the Black horse in the 19th century and today, courtesy of Jean Gammons

* Developer forced to recreate facade of former Black Horse pub in Sidcup,  Tim MacFarlan, News Shopper, July 10, 2013, http://www.newsshopper.co.uk/news/10537828.Developer_forced_to_recreate_facade_of_former_Black_Horse_pub_in_Sidcup/

**Sidcup, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Sidcup

Looking for Alice ...... 250,000 Bexley records now online and that postcard from Chislehurst

Now I would love to track Alice who sent this postcard of Sidcup Road on December 23 1915.

But while I have the name and the address of the person she sent it to, Alice will always evade me.

If only she had added her surname and then I might have been lucky and found her on the census return for the area and now also from one of the more than 250,000 parish records for the London Borough of Bexley.

Until now they were available from the Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre* but have been digitalised and can be accessed at Ancestry** and cover local baptisms, marriages and burial from1558 to 1985.

And along side these Ancestry has also released a set of Bexley civil cemetery records which include casualties of the Slade Green Munitions Factory disaster, which killed 11 female workers and a foreman in 1924.

Described by newspapers as a "‘tragedy that rocked the nation’, a memorial for those killed in the fire still remains at Erith Cemetery today" details of which have just been released by Who Do You Think You Are? ***

So for anyone in Eltham with an interest in Bexley there may well be a cornucopia of research opportunities.

Of course not everyone will subscribe to Ancestry but the  Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre is just a short trip away on Townley Road, Bexleyheath.*

And like all good studiy centres there is a huge collection of things to look at ranging from Electoral registers and poll books which start in 1833 to Kent local directories, rate books, Ordnance Survey maps from the 1860s and  school records, including admission registers.

And if you want more there are local newspapers dating from 1874, local council plans and photographic collections.

But if like me you live along way north of Watford Gap it will have to be Ancestry which offers up a route to Bexley’s past.

Sadly even here I will not be able to discover any more about Alice and as yet the person she sent the card to in Hereford is equally unwilling to come out of the shadows.

So I shall have to content myself with that card which I have written about in the past and which gives us a nice insight into how commercial picture postcards worked.

It is a pretty scene taken in high summer and was originally released in 1905 but with that eye to a profit the postcard company re released it in the December of 1915 with the addition of a Christmas message printed across the front.

Picture; Sidcup Road, 1915 from the series Chislehurst, marketed by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/

* Bexley Local Studies and Archive Centre, Central Library, Townley Road, Bexleyheath, DA6 7HJ

**Ancestry,

*** Centuries of Bexley parish records added to Ancestry, jonbauckham, 26 March 2015, Who Do You Think You Are?

**** That mysterious cottage in Chislehurst,