By Jerry Green
Palace Mag Jan 08
View of Church Road 1904. The gate on the right has now been replaced by Nightingale Court. From John Coulter’s Norwood in Old Photographs
In his book ‘The Great North Wood’ J Corbet Anderson says that no old church or ancient building of any kind has been found within the wide area known by the general denomination of Norwood. Alan Warwick, author of ‘The Phoenix Suburb’ says in a smaller work of his: “The truth is that Norwood has no real history before the beginning of the 19th century.” A map of the 1800 Enclosure Act for the borough of Croydon shows the area we now know as the Triangle as just common with the exception of two buildings on or near to the site now occupied by the Holly Bush pub on the corner of today’s Westow Hill and Westow Street.
In the 1850s two individuals moved into the area that would, much later, recall their early days in Norwood. Mrs. Elizabeth Louisa Dee published her ‘Memories of Norwood since 1852’ around 1909. Mr. William Farmer, editor and proprietor of the Norwood Review started his recollections in 1888 in an occasional column in the Review entitled ‘Bygone days in Norwood’.
ANERLEY HILL Mrs. Dee recalls how from Anerley station – at that time the only rail station in Norwood – there was nothing on the right hand side up Anerley Road but rough ground and fields from the station and Anerley Gardens until one reached the White Swan. On the left there were only fields until one reached Anerley schools then the wooded slope all the way up to the top of Anerley Hill until, on the site of the Cambridge hotel, stood the large iron gates of Aubin’s school which extended to and included St Aubyn’s Road right down to Stoney Buildings.
CHURCH ROAD TO ALL SAINTS CHURCH Aubin’s school had been founded by Frederick Aubin and his mother who first took charge of six boys. By 1852 Mrs. Dee, whose father-in-law worked there, recalled: “Many boys were employed there in the cultivation of vegetables for their own consumption, others were taught by competent workmen to make their own clothes or boots whilst others were taught the trades of painters and glaziers. “Everything that it was possible for the boys to do for themselves they did here but, the ground becoming very valuable later in consequence of the building of the Crystal Palace, the school was transferred to a farm at Acton, near Hanwell, my then father-in-law and his fellow employees going with the boys.”
After Stoney Buildings there were three or four very old cottages, which only had a ground floor with very long gardens. “They were very straggling and only wooden houses painted or tarred but of the houses themselves not much was to be seen on account of the lovely creepers and ivy. Next to them was the White Hart pub.” The tea gardens of the White Hart were on the other side to the left where Mr. Farmer kept a bookshop now W H Smith and Sons. The gardens were very beautiful. The signpost stood in the middle of the road capped with a large board with a white hart painted on it.
On the other side of Church Road from the top of Anerley Hill were “about three houses in the valley, almost hidden by trees then Mr. Edward’s nursery and shop. Mrs. Edwards was a Miss Sheldrick, daughter of our landlord and a friend of mine. It is now Mr. Walter Taylor, florist. At that time all rough ground extended to the top of Belvedere Road where some houses built like almshouses and called Spring Grove were situated. Some still remain.”
Mrs. Dee tells her readers she will not attempt to describe the main Church Road but will point out a few familiar spots: “Amongst the houses standing in their own grounds were Rose Cottage, then two at the corner of Fox Lane which have been brought out and enlarged with different windows. These were also Mr. Sheldrick’s, standing quite in fields then. The next one I remember quite well was a four roomed cottage, very large rooms but only a ground floor, with what they called a lean to, a kind of out-house attached to the house at one end with a loft over it. The front of the house was covered with a most beautiful fuchsia which, when it was in bloom was so attractive that everyone stopped to admire it. It had two windows on either side of the street door.” There was also a very large garden growing both fruit and vegetables, she recalled. “The house…stood where Newport Villa now is, but not so near the road. Another house I remember was the one before you reached the Queen’s hotel (not built then), falling right back from the road. By the side of this gate was this inscription: Street, Sharp and Hetley, Dr Frederick Hetley.”
(ITALICS: William Farmer recalled the industrial school, then a row of little white cottages; Stoney buildings; a large detached house called Woodside then occupied by Mrs. Forsteen and afterwards by the Rev H Nelthropp and two wooden cottages next to the White Hart. A butcher’s shop on the corner of Westow Street and Church Road was kept by Mr. Rogers and next to it Rutland Cottage “a pretty country-looking building with creepers growing up the walls and palings and trees in front” which belonged to a Mr. and Mrs. Turner who let furnished lodgings and were “a rather peculiar couple given to quarrelling and fighting.” Between Rutland Cottage and the Queen’s hotel most of the present houses were there with the exception…of Silverton, Windermere, Argyle and Beaufort Lodges. The house immediately preceding the hotel known as The Cottage was a very pretty place with well-kept gardens and an abundance of foliage about it. There Dr F Hetley then resided with his mother, a dear old lady beloved by everyone. The Queen’s hotel, though not so nearly as large as now, was a most imposing building effectively arranged in three sections and commanding extensive views of open country back and front. Beyond the hotel came two or three detached villas and a little wooden cottage afterwards occupied by Mr. F Heron, late of the Crystal Palace.” Between there and All Saints church were the fields. William Farmer recalled the footpath, which was closed during haymaking time. “These fields were very popular with the numerous visitors and invalids who came to Norwood as also with the residents and on fine days many persons might be seen sitting about reading or doing needlework while the children played about, gaining health and vigour from the refreshing breeze. A footpath led to Beulah Hill passing a row of little thatched cottages and coming out nearly opposite Leather Bottle Lane. At the exit stood a baker’s shop kept by Mr. Wright, father of the builder now residing on the same spot.”
On the other side of Church Road he recalled that from the Crystal Palace hotel to Belvedere Road was a house called Cintra, occupied by a solicitor named Elmslie; “a house in which Dr Haughton lives; Swiss Villa now a florists; the other angle of the almshouses (now shops) with rails and garden in front; Izod the chemist and the Alma Tavern.” There were only two houses between Beaulieu, the residence of the late Mr. Welch; and Fox Lane. The old white house known as The Grove still remains as does also the other, the vicarage. The latter has yet the same occupier The Rev J Watson. Where the row of stately mansions now stands there was then only the fields and meadows attached to The Grove. There was one other residence, a little cottage just opposite the Queen’s hotel occupied by a plumber named Vinal. At the top of Fox Lane where Dr Hetley’s house now stands there was a one-storey rambling old house inhabited by a Mr. Gittings and his son. It lay behind a high fence and little of it could be seen except the roof. Two or three villas had just been built below this and then all was open fields and hedges till you reached the bottom of the hill where was Hayes farm, better known as Ruskin’s farm from the name of the occupier – a wooden house in which Mrs. Apted and her daughters lived and worked, and still occupied by some of the family and a nursery garden kept by Mr. Fox after whose ancestor the lane was named. Opposite the house of the Apted’s was Thorn Cottage, a rural dwelling, picturesque and interesting, as the occupiers were wont to keep numerous domestic pets. In this cottage for some time there resided a Mr. Strange, an enterprising London publisher, who obtained the right to cater for the workmen when the Crystal Palace was building. He was allowed to erect large temporary premises in the grounds in which he provided meals for the workmen of various nationalities.” END ITALICS
Mrs. Dee recalled: “The vicarage, now slightly altered, was on the other side of the road. Crossing the road again to church fields now called Upper Beulah Hill at this end there was an old waggon wheel meant for a stile. It was a short cut to avoid passing round the church to Beulah Hill. I remember quite well the beacon fires being lighted in the church fields when peace was proclaimed after the Crimean war.” Across the footpath and turning to the right “we reach in a very few moments, on the right hand side of the road, a few cottages. The first one, built out to the path with a half circular window…all the front doors faced the church with nothing but fields between them. They had long gardens with only a path between each garden to divide them, looking like allotment grounds, for vegetables were chiefly grown on them. All the houses had creeper up the front and a small flowerbed close to the house. The first one had a few apples, nuts, sugar sticks and bull’s-eyes in the window, and was occupied by a woman the name of Dyke. A little farther away there were three more cottages with the fronts to the road all built with a ground floor only, and detached, each with a lot of ground at the back. The last had a fairly large shed built away from the house and, plainly seen from the road, was a dairy kept by Mrs. Matthews who sold butter and milk, eggs, pork (fresh or salt), lard and almost any kind of vegetables and fruit in its season. Mr. Matthews had been the driver of the ‘bus from Lower Norwood to London for 40 years. He was an old man when I first knew him and his son, who lived a few doors off, took his place as driver. The old man attended to his garden, killed his pigs and was always ready for a chat while you waited to get your greens cut, your potatoes dug, parsley or mint gathered etc.
“A little further on was a baker’s kept by a Mr. Wright, then the Beulah Retreat, a funny little straggling cottage…All on one floor it was kept as a beerhouse by Mr. Isaac Smith who afterwards kept the Eagle public house in New Town when the Beulah Spa Tap was finished and opened by Mr. Preddy.” Next to the Retreat was the ‘Rectangle’ and only a little way down from it was Mr. Day’s forge and blacksmith shop and a very pretty old cottage where he lived almost behind the Beulah Retreat, close to Harold Road.
“Now we will cross the road and stand at the top of Leather Bottle Lane. The view then in 1852 was most glorious. Looking over the few scattered houses to the left and right nothing was to be seen but cornfields and when the sun was shining on them they were so beautiful. On the left was the Beulah Spa. I never went into the grounds until 1858. Then I lived in the first cottage with two floors. The top house built with bricks was occupied by John Tanner, gentleman (as he was always called). This was one of two storeys. Then there was the one house in the middle of the garden with only a ground floor, next two houses attached adjoined by one unattached. They were all wooden houses painted black or else tarred, then two brick cottages. The one that I lived in was known together with the rest as Martin’s Cottages. Mr. Martin (our landlord) lived next door in a double fronted house with steps leading to the front door. He was also conductor of the ‘bus from Norwood to London. There were a few more brick houses but very much scattered and the Old Leather Bottle beer shop. Opposite where I lived in Leather Bottle Lane there were two houses not facing the road but looking down the lane. When I lived there we used to get over a ditch at the bottom of our garden into the Spa grounds, which at that time were all in ruins. The beautiful rosary running wild, the camera table (part of which I have in my possession) was falling to pieces. My husband Thomas took a piece of it, polished it, then drew the outline of Sir Charles Napier’s bust from a picture published in Bow Bells.
“To return to Beulah Hill I cannot attempt to describe it minutely as I have some parts of it. There were not many houses to be seen. They all stood in their own grounds mostly hidden by hedges and trees. Some little distance past Harold Road we come to a very quaint shop where almost anything you wanted was sold. It had a lot of outbuildings and was occupied by Mr. Howard the Norwood Carrier. Now cross the road a little obliquely and you come to two houses built out to the path with large bow windows at the corner, leading to Mr. Pringle’s nursery, then the Crown pond and on the other side of the road at the top of Crown Hill there was a shop kept by Mr. Rose who I understand was one of the oldest residents in Norwood and brought the first Mrs. Rose there, a bride on horseback, sitting on a pillion in front of the bridegroom through the Great North Wood to her home on top of Crown Hill.
(William Farmer, in another Bygone Days in Norwood column, recalled: “Continuing from Mr. Wright’s shop only two houses broke the line of fields to Crown Hill. One the cottage and stabling of Mr. Howard, the famous Norwood carrier, the other a cottage in a fruit garden where strawberries and other fruit might be bought and eaten in rustic arbours. Howard, with another carrier called Keen who resided in Westow Street, were then our principal means of our getting down the various supplies from London. Nearly opposite the baker’s was the Beulah Spa hotel that, after various vicissitudes, had hydropathic appliances connected to it by Mr. Sowter who for many years carried it on successfully as a hotel and hydropathic establishment. Close by is Westwood, now the reference of the Rev C H Spurgeon. It was formerly known as Beaumont and prior to that Beulah Spa Villa. On the other side of Beulah Hill “there were then, as now, a number of old houses with ample grounds and gardens. Perhaps the most interesting of these is The Priory, then occupied by Mr. and Mrs. Hayes and their daughter… At the time of which I am speaking none of the houses in Grange Road were built, the road itself being a semi-private one, entered by large old gates. On Grange Hill there were three houses and an entrance to the servant’s department of Admiral Carey’s mansion. The corner house facing Thornton Heath and commanding a lovely view of the valley and hills beyond was a young gentlemen’s school kept by the Misses Fletcher who afterwards removed their pupils to Brighton. The next house was occupied by a family called Nugent. The only other house was a wooden structure at the bottom of a garden, abutting close upon the servant’s apartments of Admiral Carey, the residence of a Mr. Morrison…who refused many offers of Admiral Carey to buy the place).
CROWN HILL TO GIPSY HILL
Mrs. Dee told her readers of the trip down Crown Hill. On the right hand side down to the junction of Elder Road “there was nothing but fields and woods to the Convent which was a very different building to what it is today. The other side there were a few houses falling back in their own grounds, then a row of very poor looking cottages, very much in want of repair. Two of them had nearly all the windows broken and of course they were called ‘haunted houses’.
After the convent wood there was one large field called Billy Wood’s field, four cottages until you reached the corner of Oxford Road then Bernard Villa in which a Mrs. Clarke lived where at the time of Mrs. Dee’s book three houses occupied the same ground. There were no houses then until one reached the Lion, the landlord of which was a Mr. Bond. Built by Mr. Masters who also built the Crystal Palace hotel at the corner of Church Road. The site of Essex Grove and Rockmount Road were then fields. Then came Essex Lodge “now altered into two houses, then occupied by Mr. Truscott, where we got milk before nine in the morning at one penny per quart.” More fields until one reached two cottages called Central Hill cottages “which have been enlarged but are not much different in appearance abut upon a narrow lane through which cows were driven down to their sheds.” Then came Effingham Lodge “much the same except for the absence of a very large tree which nearly hid the house from view”, Franklin Cottage was the property of Mr. Franklin who had a little shop with a high window adjoined where he used to sit mending boots and shoes “a typical cobbler, very little, thin and bent, with spectacles and leather apron fringed at the corners.” Then came a field “which is now Harold Road” two houses called 1 and 2 Rushmore, Central Hill Lodge “just the same now as then”, a young ladies seminary “that is not altered at all”, Rose Cottage, Cedar Cottage and then, on the corner of South Vale, a large high flat looking house including coach house, stables and garden. This “barn of a place” was pulled down and three houses built in its place, a ball being held in the original building the night before its demolition commenced. “Two lodges marked the commencement and end of the frontage of Scotland House now 23 Central Hill; to the other corner of South Vale. Then came the Baptist chapel and two houses owned by Mr. Bligh “Not much altered now, excepting the top storey has been made higher”, Mount Pleasant – “did not look very pleasant with high brick walls and a large iron gate always kept locked”; some very rustic cottages with lattice porches only one storey high; the Mission Room and then, on the corner of Westow Street, was a chemist shop owned by Mr. Ravis “with a long garden in front and a low wooden fence all round a gate at the corner with a path leading to the front door, the gardens each side being distinctly triangular. The shop itself had two very high bay windows, one in Westow Street, the other in Central Hill.”
Up the other side of Central Hill from Elder Road were the strawberry gardens at the end of Elder Road. After passing Salters Hill there was Bloomfield Hall, the residence of Mr. Joseph Tritton now that of Sir Ernest Tritton his son; Ainsworth’s school for young gentlemen (afterwards Pope’s) at the corner of Angels Lane, now Roman Road then open common right up to the top of Gipsy Hill.
ITALICS William Farmer recalled that between Salter’s Hill and Gipsy Hill there were Bloomfield, Mr. Pope’s school and Kilburn Villa. An anonymous correspondent of Mr. farmer’s said that some 60 years previously – around 1828 – Salter’s Hill had been known as Hamilton’s Hill after the family which had occupied Bloomfield before the Trittons lived there. END ITALICS
Sources: The Great North Wood by J Corbet Anderson (printed for the subscribers 1898); Some Glimpses of Norwood by Alan Warwick (Norwood Society 1961); Memories of Norwood since 1852 by Elizabeth Louisa Dee; Bygone Days in Norwood folder. All four items are available on request from Upper Norwood reference library. Thanks to Jerry Savage of UNRL for his help.
(Note: In 2008 Leather Bottle Lane is now Spa Hill, Fox Lane is now Fox Hill.) To be continued…
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