History of a house

Our house was built sometime around 1905, I think I got this from the Homebuyer's Survey - it certainly doesn't appear on maps before 1911. Here is my living room lampshade made from a reproduction map of Upper Clapton from 1911 (map purchased here; lampshade kit here).

Using the UK census records on Ancestry.co.uk, I did some (enjoyably nerdy) detective work and pieced together the following:

Our house wasn't built at the time of the 1901 census but was owned in 1911 by Mr George Hall, Mr Hall was born in Ludlow, in Shropshire and, in 1911, was a concert hall steward. I'm guessing this might mean music hall as there were a couple in Walthamstow: the Palace Theatre on the High St - which opened in 1903 with a Fred Karno show and hosted performances by stars such as Marie Lloyd - and the Victoria Hall on Hoe Street, which later became the site of the Granada, frequented by local boy Alfred Hitchcock, which itself became the EMD Cinema, subject of the “Save Walthamstow Cinema” campaign. Mr Hall lived here with his wife Elizabeth (a Londoner, born in Cockfosters) and two sons, one of whom was a polisher in a furniture works and the other was an engineer in a fitters’ workshop. The youngest was born in "The Grapes" in Bermondsey in 1893: in the 1901 census, George Hall is described as an "unemployed publican" so maybe he had been the landlord or barman of a public house called something like The Grapes, but a trawl through Pub History turned up no results.

A lovely reminder that we “own” houses only in a temporary sense, holding them in trust for future generations.

St James Street, Walthamstow, c1912 | via postcardsthenandnow

One other cool bit of local history geekery: a friend unearthed in her back garden a fragment of enamelled metal reading "E AMBER ALE" and "BROTHERS", and some hasty Googling suggests it must have come from the Collier Brothers brewery which was a steam-powered brewery next to St James Street station, known for it's "Pale Amber Ale". The brewery changed its name to Essex Brewery around 1871, so the sign must pre-date that. (Source material here.)

Thank goodness for the interwebs and nice people sharing their meticulous research!

Right, I'm off to see what talks are on at the Walthamstow History Society ...

Paper memories II

New house, new renovation - more lovely paper histories... this time in the bathroom under some hideous pastel pink tiles with gold highlights. The tiles look very 1980s - what a design crime!

This paper is pink with forget-me-nots and a trellis pattern, the print is layers of thick ink but quite accurate, so I am guessing it is mass-produced screen-printed paper, maybe from the 1900s.

I'd like to frame it and hang it in the renovated bathroom - which will be Edwardian in style, although not slavishly"period" - as a bit of continuity with the past.

Illegible

Nice ghost sign in Walthamstow, near the William Morris Gallery.

I played around with it in Photoshop in an attempt to make it legible but to no avail...

While we were peering at the sign, the owner stopped in his car and wound down the window, to see if we'd deciphered it. He thought it had been a barbers or beauty parlour. This building stands alone on this corner of Forest Road, amid sixties council estates, lone survivor of what must have been pretty devastating blitz damage.

Any ideas what it says? Please post in the comments if you can make it out!

Paper memories

In a burst of doing-it-himself, the Boy has uncovered some very sweet old wallpaper in the communal hallway.

Of course, I love the idea of all those other lives remembered in the layer upon layer of paper. And those lovely bright red berries ... Or are they buds?

The Lion comes back to life?

How lovely! The Boy and I just wandered up the High Street and it looks like the lovely old Red Lion pub has been rescued. 

The Red Lion is a seventeenth century coaching inn, which was sadly crumbling into a state of disrepair, having survived many incarnations of various shades of repute. You can see what a splendid building it once was / could be again, and we were afraid it was going to disintegrate so badly that it could only be knocked down ...

But now it's sporting a huge banner, courtesy of the pub company Antic Ltd, who have taken it over. They list it on their website with a fantastic nineteenth century photo of the pub at the height of its glory:

via The Red Lion Leytonstone

This article on the Waltham Forest Guardian website shows the flavour of the reaction locally, both good and bad...

We look forward to it opening, both to see it saved, and because a decent local would be ace!

[http://thisbutterflymind.blogspot.com]

Kings, witches and lions ...

At Stirling Castle, the Historian and I end up gazing off the battlements into the highland hills with Frank, a Historical Scotland guide who had taken rather a shine to us on account of our insatiable interest and has given us an extended tour ... he is extremely well versed and we learn:

• Troop movements for the Battle of Bannockburn
• Mary Queen of Scots's favourite view
• How William Wallace booby-trapped Stirling Bridge
• The social effects of the Highland Clearances
• James I of England & VI of Scotland owned two Abyssinian lions
• Edward II wasn't up to much in warfare and statecraft, preferring thatching
• James I wrote Daemonologie and persecuted witches because he had issues with his mother

Most enjoyable ...