Faded glory …… and reflections of better times

Now, I have Brenda to thank for giving me permission to post her picture of the entrance to Cliefden.

Cliefden, 2022

She posted it on that excellent Facebook site I’m from S.E. London and Bromley, and commented that “I was in n Eltham High Street yesterday. Saw this interesting doorway with many windows above, a sizeable building, not in a good state of repair now”.

Cliefden, 1977

It was once an elegant 18th century property on the High Street, and is a building with a long history which over the years I have written about.*

For many it will just be the two shops either side of that tired looking door.

But in it’s time it was a family home and even a military academy.

Perhaps its long and fascinating history as a once fine Eltham home will embolden someone to give it a makeover.

We shall see.

Location; Eltham High Street

Pictures; Cliefden 2022, courtesy of Brenda Wilkinson and in 1977, from the collection of Jean Gammons

*Cliefden, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=cliefden

A military academy in the High Street and that other Eltham Lodge

Cliefden House, 1909

Mr Thomas Hopkirk ran his military academy from Cliefden House in the High Street during the middle decades of the 19th century.

This grand 18th century property is still there on the High Street opposite Passey Place.

It was built sometime around 1720 with an eastern addition dating from the mid 19th century.

Now I can’t be exactly sure when Mr Hopkirk opened his doors but it will have been around 1849 for that was the year he and his wife Charlotte baptized their daughter in the parish Church and it may well have been Mr Hopkirk who added the extension.

Together this made for a large 17 roomed house which could accommodate “The Preparatory Military Academy” with its 32 students.

They were aged between 11 and 18 and were from all over England as well as Ireland with a significant group from the empire.  Along with Mr Hopkirk there was another teacher, a cook, a nurse and three house maids.

Originally the house was fronted with a tall wall behind which was a small garden, all of which was swept away when the High Street was widened.

Behind those walls Mr Hopkirk set about the serious business of running “a school for young gentlemen.”*

His reputation may well have been made in the school he ran in Woolwich on Frances Street and with an eye to a good location this first “Preparatory Military Academy” was sited close to the barracks.

There were 500 of these academies in Kent in 1851 with 15,411 students and in the half century before the numbers had waxed and waned, a situation which pretty much carried on during the decade before Mr Hopkirk had established himself in Eltham.**

Now this period is still a little murky but the establishment was listed in Baggot’s History, Gazetteer and Directory for Woolwich in 1847 and it will just be a matter of trawling the directories for the years before that date to determine when it was opened.

What I do know is that six years earlier Thomas had been employed as “the mathematical master” along with a classics teacher and a writing master in a school in Totteridge which was once a village in Hertfordshire and is now part of the borough of Barnet.

Like his own academy this was designed for young gentlemen of whom there were 69 aged between 9 and 17 and all born somewhere else.  Nor were they alone for during the mid 19th century there were two other private schools in the area.

Both Thomas and his colleagues were aged just 20, and there is no indication of who the owner was, nor have I come across any details on his background which makes it difficult to work out how he raised the capital to start his academies.

The west end of the High Street,in 1844,  nu 305 is Cliefden House

As ever the answers will turn up as will the date when he closed the school and moved on.

It was still there in 1861 but had gone by 1871 and it may just be that we can narrow it to sometime between 1865 when he was registered to vote in Eltham and three years later when his address is given on the register as London.

But like all research this has to be qualified with the observation that he is still listed in the Post Office Directory in 1868 on the High Street.

What makes it more difficult is that he and Charlotte are missing from the 1871 census and don’t reappear until a decade later, by which time they are in Dulwich at the appropriately named Eltham Lodge.

Such must have been impact Eltham had on the couple.  It is of course just possible that the house had already acquired the name but I doubt it.

And it was here that Thomas died in March 1881 leaving a personal estate effects valued at under £30,000 and Charlotte in 1912.

All that is left is to record that he in 1865 he voted Tory and that he was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Pictures; Cliefden House Eltham 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 detail of Eltham High Street, 1844 from the Tithe map for Eltham courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx

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

**  Census of Great Britain, 1851 Education.  Along with a similar census in religious worship this was undertaken in the April of 1851 with the general census

Along time in the story of a house in Eltham

Cliefden House in 1909

Now I am back at Cliefden House.

This grand 18th century property is still there on the High Street opposite Passey Place.

It was built sometime around 1720 with an eastern addition dating from the mid 19th century.

Together this made for a large 17 roomed house which could accommodate and it has been both a private residence, and a school and now shops and offices.

I have written about it in the past and have decided on a second visit.  Now this is mainly because I want to feature a then and now set of pictures, although strictly speaking they are both then pictures.

The first dates from 1909 and the second from 1977.

Cliefen House in 1977

In the space of that time the front garden and wall have been sacrificed to the widening of the High Street and with scant disregard for such an elegant old property Granada and Frisbys Shoes set about adding the most appalling signage to the exterior.

And we may just have caught the place on a bad year for the front walls look in need of a coat of paint.

So I suppose today we have to be pleased that the present two occupants of the downstairs shops have been a little more subdued with their signs and a fresh coat of paint has been applied.

Pictures; Cliefden House in 1909 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 and in 1977, courtesy of Jean Gammons

Who in Eltham owned a slave in the summer of 1831?

This is not such a sensational question as you might think.  

Slavery permeated deep into both our economy and our society and contrary to the popularly held belief it was not just the big cities of Liverpool, Bristol and London that benefited from both the Slave Trade and the produce grown and made by slave labour.

And even after the abolition of the trade in 1807 it would be another twenty-six years before slavery itself was abolished and on terms that saw the owners compensated to the tune of £20 million.

So, I am not surprised that “Eight of Eltham’s residents ‘owned’ slaves in 1833.  In total they held more enslaved people in the West Indies than the total population of Eltham then”.*

And these eight included familiar names, like Milne, Grant, Pitt-Rivers Currey, Lance Hill, and Warner, who between them were associated with properties like Cliefden House, Danson House, Eltham Lodge, and the Lord Chancellor’s lodgings.

I had always planned to follow up the story of the families who owned slaves in Chorlton-cum-Hardy where I now live, with a similar piece of research on Eltham where I grew up.**

But other projects intervened and now that story has been completed by Margaret Taylor and Sally Simmons, whose article appeared in the latest edition of the Eltham Society’s newsletter.

Never one to steal other peoples’ research or attempt a cack-handed version of their story which has been done so well, I will suggest you read the original piece, which will only require a subscription to the Eltham Society, the aims of which are enshrined in their motto: "Preserving the past, Conserving the present, and Protecting the future".

The article describes the eight families, their connection to slavery and the degree to which they were compensated after the abolition of slavery.

Now I had assumed that most of that taxpayer’s money went to a small group of large plantation owners based mainly in the West Indies, but the final settlement according  to Legacies of British Slave-ownership extended to  "over 45,000 claimants, and about 3,000 of them were living in Britain in the 1830s. ***

Although claimants living in Britain were in the minority, they tended to own the largest stakes of property; about £10 million of the total £20 million compensation was paid to these 3,000 people in Britain. 

Many were very wealthy but there were a wide range of claimants, from rich landowners to widows with children who wrote to the compensation commission complaining of their poverty." 

The site  and can be found at Legacies of British Slave-ownership, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/

It is the “umbrella for two projects based at UCL tracing the impact of slave-ownership on the formation of modern Britain: the ESRC-funded Legacies of British Slave-ownership project, now complete, and the ESRC and AHRC-funded Structure and significance of British Caribbean slave-ownership 1763-1833.

Colonial slavery shaped modern Britain and we all still live with its legacies. The slave-owners were one very important means by which the fruits of slavery were transmitted to metropolitan Britain. We believe that research and analysis of this group are key to understanding the extent and the limits of slavery's role in shaping British history and leaving lasting legacies that reach into the present. 

The stories of enslaved men and women, however, are no less important than those of slave-owners, and we hope that the encyclopedia produced in the first phase of the project, while at present primarily a resource for studying slave-owners, will also provide information of value to those researching enslaved people.

We are now tracking back to 1763 the ownership histories of the 4000 or so estates identified in that project. At the core of the completed project is this online Encyclopedia of British Slave-ownership containing information about every slave-owner in the British Caribbean, Mauritius, or the Cape at the moment of abolition in 1833. 

Entries include information about the activities, affiliations and legacies of these men and women, with a particular emphasis on the "absentee" owners based in Britain.

The records of the Slave Compensation Commission, set up to manage the distribution of the £20 million compensation, provide a more or less complete census of slave-ownership in the British Empire in the 1830s. The individuals named in these records form the starting point of the Encyclopedia.

And the data base can be searched by name, or browsed through the subject headings of “commercial, cultural, historical, imperial, physical and political.”

So, there you have it, I thoroughly enjoyed the article on Eltham’s connection to slavery and share the authors conclusion,  that if a small group of “Eltham people were slave owners the other 2, 158 were not”.***

Leaving me just to post a link to the membership page of the Eltham Society.*****

Pictures; Cliefden House Eltham 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  in 1977, courtesy of Jean Gammons, and Cliefden House, 2014, from the collection of John King, and detail of Eltham High Street, 1844 from the Tithe map for Eltham courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx

*Coronavirus and the Lockdown, Margaret Taylor and Sally Simmons, The Eltham Society Newsletter 222, December 2020, The Eltham Society, http://www.theelthamsociety.org.uk/

**Slavery, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search?q=slavery

***Legacies of British Slave-ownership, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/

****ibid Coronavirus and the Lockdown, page 31

*****Eltham Society, http://www.theelthamsociety.org.uk/membership.html

One big House on the High Street

2015

Now I have written about Cliefden House on several occasions, and will go back again in due course.

In the meantime here are three photographs over a full century and a bit and each has it’s own story to tell.

The first was taken recentlt by Ryan and despite the changes of businesses it is not so different from Jean Gammon’s taken 38 years earlier.

1977

Step back another 60 years to 1909 and the transformation is pretty stunning.

Back then it was a private residence and in the middle of the 19th century had been a military academy.

It was built sometime around 1720 with an eastern addition dating from the mid 19th century and together this made for a large 17 roomed house.

In the 20th century the front garden and wall were lost when the High Street was widened and more recently with scant disregard for such an elegant old property businesses have set about about adding the most appalling signage to the exterior.

1909

Pictures; Cliefden House, 2015 courtesy of Ryan Ginn, back in 1977 from the collection of Jean Gammons, and in 1909, 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 

Trying to solve the “Thomas Brown of Eltham” challenge ..... a story from Edward Pick

Xmas 2020 was a good opportunity to try to respond to a puzzle about Thomas Brown, the 19th century butler from Eltham who was featured in Andrew Simpson’s blog post of 16 December 2020.

Kentish Mercury Friday July 24 1885

Brown had attracted Andrew’s attention because he was not just a butler, he was also an accomplished photographer. This was an expensive and perhaps surprising hobby for a servant. Brown’s pictures (“labelled as Thomas Brown of 2, Lorne Terrace, Eltham”) have been preserved in the National Archive in Kew, and they provide a fascinating view of a bygone Eltham, including a photograph which included a shop sign for “Thomas Brown”. 

Andrew wanted to know the approximate date of this photograph, and also wondered whether the photographer and business proprietor were the same person. He also noted another Thomas Brown living just off the High Street in Sun Yard who was a gardener and road worker and wondered if he was somehow related.

When I read the post, I wrote to Andrew Simpson with some newspaper cuttings which I had found in the Kentish Mercury, which are either advertisements for staff wanted, or servants advertising themselves as potential employees all with the response address being to Thomas Brown, Stationer, Eltham.

Local newspapers provide an enormous insight (even though they can be less reliable than official documents) and in the 1800s the local papers were an important source of communication for communities.

Andrew asked me to write a follow-on blog post about what I found.

38 Court Yard

As we chatted online, Eltham went into a second COVID-19 lockdown, and my original Christmas plans disappeared to be replaced by Andrew’s infectious enthusiasm for researching Eltham history.

Thomas Brown, the stationer

It seems entirely likely that Thomas Brown the stationer and Thomas Brown the Butler/Photographer are one in the same. But Thomas probably didn’t do the work despite the business being in his name. It seems more likely that his new wife did.

“Thomas Brown, stationer, Eltham” advertisements appeared from 1884 the year when Thomas Brown married Lydia Thomas, a one-time barmaid who had worked at the New Tigers Head in Lee. And they ceased in 1888 when Lydia gave birth to their first daughter Mabel.

This was a time of great change for Thomas who had lived with his employers, the Milne family in their grand house on Eltham High Street from childhood. He was a live-in 14-year-old page in 1871, and 24-year-old manservant in 1881.

I suspect that Thomas moved out of his employer’s house because he married. It’s difficult to prove but he also seems likely to have stayed in their employ, continuing in a new and more important sounding role of butler which befits his married status, but from accommodation in Cliefden House. 

Thomas’ good relationship with the Milne family is suggested by his choice of second name for his daughter. Mabel Henrietta Brown is surely a friendly nod in the direction of Henrietta Milne his widowed employer.

Henrietta Milne died in 1892. Her son and daughter in law, who had moved in with Henrietta when her husband Alexander George Milne died, now moved out.

The son retired to a rather grand (from the outside at least) apartment in Court Yard next to Eltham Palace. 

Thomas also moved around this time to Lorne Terrace. Probably the two moves are connected. In the 1901 and 1911 censuses he continued to call himself butler and it is possible that he continued with the next generation of Milne family in their new home in Court Yard. 

38 Court Yard was home for the Milne family after they left their long term home in Eltham High Street.

Thomas Brown, the gardener

And what of the gardener living in Sun Yard? Well he was the butler/photographer/stationer’s father. 

I searched the newspaper archives and found an article from 1884 about Thomas Brown, the gardener from Sun Yard and wife Ellen who according to husband Thomas had given him a “severe blow on the head with a broom”. Thomas told the court that he “had had a great deal of trouble with her lately”. Ellen however said that he had hit her first with a shovel, and she had simply raised the broom in defence. Poor Ellen, who had history with the police was disbelieved and was fined £5. 

Death certificate Thomas Brown, 1911

Ellen died in 1895. She seems likely to have had a troubled life. After her death, her husband is admitted into Lewisham workhouse. In 1904 (there is no record of him in the 1901 census) his son is asked to pay for his care. He survives until 1911. 

Edward Peck © 2021

Location; Eltham

Pictures;  Kentish Mercury - Friday 24 July 1885, © THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, Court Yard, 2020, from the collection of Edward Pick and death certificate, General Register Office, © 2021 Crown Copyright

Walking up the High Street on a January day in 1914

Now there are many ways of recreating a walk up the High Street on a day log ago.

One of the easiest is to use photographs from the past, another is to look up the census record and today I am going to use a street directory.

That directory is the 1914 Post Office Directory listing the names of people and businesses from Well Hall Road east along the High Street.

At which point I would usually go off and dig deep into the records to uncover something of the lives of Mrs Dobell of Sherard house, Mr Rosselli of Mr Merlwood and Mrs Yeatman of Cliefden house, but all have appeared in the blog over the years as have the their homes.

And so has the blacksmiths and the London & South Western Bank ltd.

All you have to do to find them is use the search box on the right hand side of the story.

So that just leaves me to suggest you download the list of 1914 occupants and wander up to the High Street to check out who is there now.

Location; Eltham









Pictures; list of residents and businesses from the Post Directory, 1914 and the northern side of the High Street in 2015 from collection of Elizabeth and Colin Fitzpatrick

Looking down the High Street ....... revealing clues about the past

Down the High Street, 2015

This is one of those scenes of the High Street which will be so familiar as to warrant not even a second glance and give or take a few of the businesses along this stretch it is not so different from the one I remember, over fifty years ago.

But there are a few clues to an even earlier period and one helps tell the story of how this bit of Eltham developed during the last century.

It starts with that white fronted building which today is occupied by the pawnbrokers and Costa Coffee.

It dates from the 1720s and was Cliefden House which according to one source retains a fine carved staircase from the 17th century but long ago lost its front garden to a road widening scheme.*

It may have lost much of its more elegant past but at least it is still here unlike the even older and grander house just a bit further down the road.

This was Sherard House and I guess bits of it may still be there under the Nat West bank and in the just as  there might be the odd lumps of masonry from the Congregation Church which was replaced by Burton’s.

Sherard House, circa 1909

All of this I knew although I have to say in the time I have been away more than a few changes have broken cover and surprised me.

So I was unprepared for the news that the Greyhound pub had been partially rebuilt in 1978 or that Mr Burton had walked from the High Street to be replaced by a battery of people selling Big Macs assorted fries and apple turnovers.

Even more of a shock was the disappearance of Payne’s the outfitters, the demise of the Post Office on Passey Place and the demolition of the ABC cinema.

Such sneaky things seem to go on when you leave home.

That said the parish Church is still there its spire just visible on the sky line in the distance.

And if I wanted to be a show off I can reflect that what was Payne’s and is now delicio was occupied by Mr George F Benjafield, clothier in 1918.

His near neighbour at the the Greyhound Ernest Elms and across the road Mrs Dobell was stillliving comfortable in Sherard House.

Picture; looking west down the High Street, 2014, from the collection of Elizabeth and Colin Fitzpatrick and Sherard House, 1909 from The Story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 

*Discover Eltham and its Environs, Darrell Spurgeon, 1992

Walking along the High Street in the spring of 1851

Sherard House in 1909 from the garden

This is one of those walks I wish I could have made in the spring of 1851.

It would have started at the church and finished up just past the smithy by Eagle House and along the way we would have seen some fine old houses including Sherard House, Merewood House and Cliefden House, poked our noses into Sun Yard behind the pub of that name at the collection of wooden cottages and perhaps passed the time of day with some of the residents of Jubilee Cottages which were also tucked away behind the High Street.

Now Jubilee Cottages have quite caught my imagination.  They had five rooms with three up and two down looked east across the fields and had longish gardens at the rear.

The High Street, 1858-73

I often wonder how John Fry who owned them felt about the fact that despite being known on maps as Fry’s Buildings they were by common consent called Jubilee Cottages a name which had stuck from when they were built in 1833 and continued in usage on the census returns.

I have to confess that I am drawn to these along with the cottages of Sun Yard and those of Ram Alley, more perhaps because the big houses are well known as are their occupants.

And so starting tomorrow I rather think I will dig deep into their stories, while not ignoring those fine houses.  After all more than one of them while they may have looked to the casual passerby as an 18th century property were really much older.

Pictures; detail of Eltham High Street from the OS map of Kent, 1858-73 First Edition, and Sherard House 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

Revealing the history of Eltham High Street behind its buildings in the summer of 1977

I like this picture which was taken in 1977 of the northern side of the High Street looking down to the parish church.

And the reason why I like it is that it is a good starting point to learning a little of the history of this bit of Eltham.

Of course you have to look and be aware that some of what you see in not what it seems.

So the building which is occupied by the Market, Frisby’s and Granada was built around 1720 with a later addition on its eastern side dating from the mid 19th century.

This was Cliefden House and has been variously a home, a school and now a mix of shops and offices.

According to that wonderful guide, Discover Eltham* “The original upper floor windows remain, apart from the first floor window above the entrance which is modern.  The interior incorporates some 17th century structure, including a fine carved wooden staircase.  Next door at no 103 is the mid 19th century extension”

Until the 1920s it was set back from the High Street behind a wall and front garden, but these vanished I think when the road was widened.

As did the two fine houses which stood a little to the west where the low bungalow shops and the Nat West Bank now stand.

Here were Sherard and Merlewood Houses which in the case of Sherard House dated back to 1634.


Now I am not someone who will defend the retention of every old building which through a combination of age, neglect and size is no longer viable, but the loss of these two seems criminal.

Of the two I suspect Sherard House was the more interesting. It retained many of the original features including “the handsome mantelpieces of carved oak, oak panelling which surrounded the library and the quaint old open fire places. ** 

I would have loved to walk through its 20 rooms and sat in the garden which extended north to the footpath known as the Slip.

But its demolition and replacement by the shops and the bank says much about how Eltham was changing in the early decades of the 20th century which for me was characterized by that big building on the corner of the High Street and Well Hall Road.

Today it is a McDonalds but it was built as a Burtons, dispensing good affordable clothes for men, from readymade jackets and trousers to the “made to measure suit.”

It was opened in 1937 and was about that new style of consumerism which was beginning to make what we now take for granted affordable to a whole new group of people.

And just beyond the shop is the spire of the parish church, pointing us back to Eltham’s rural past.

Picture; Eltham High Street, courtesy of Jean Gammons, detail of Eltham High Street,  1844 from the Tithe map for Eltham courtesy of Kent History and Library Centre, Maidstone, 
http://www.kent.gov.uk/leisure_and_culture/kent_history/kent_history__library_centre.aspx

*Spurgeon, Darrell, Discover Eltham, 2000
** Gregory, R.R.C., The Story of Royal Eltham, 1909