No. 27, 29 and 31 Albury Street. 1930's ?

This is a charming picture showing the young girl with her hoop staring at the weary labourer taking a rest from work and pulling that hand cart. 

This is a good photo of the original carved door brackets for these 3 properties. No. 27 on the left shows full length cherubs. An earlier posting on this site entitled "Unknown Door in Albury St" is now known ...its number 27. No. 29 did not have any cherubs (center) just intricate scroll and foliage work, but No. 31 did as shown here. When I was a kid I can remember always looking at the cherub faces and the wings on their backs.

The Unknown Door

History of Albury Street. Part 5.

Thomas Lucas had several different ways of raising money open to him. He had a small income from the rents of the plots, whether he had built on them himself or, as in the case of Reyalls and Pearce, assigned them undeveloped. The price of 8 pence per feet frontage charged by Lucas as annual ground rent has already been described as low compared with prices in the metropolis, but while each plot only brought in ten to fifteen shillings annually, the whole street could be expected to yield about £30.00. To increase this income, and it would be at the expense of his capital, he could let off the house as well as the plot rather than sell it.

‘The Swan’ (King of Prussia) for instance was leased in this manner rather than sold, but that was probably because Lucas wished to control its activities, not because he preferred to get an income from the building itself instead of a capital sum. At the time he drew up his will, he had an income from the ground rent of thirty plots, but in addition, he still owned 9 of the houses built on them and consequently may have had an income from their rents as well. The facts are obscured because some of these houses had been mortgaged.

The sale of each house which he himself built provided Thomas Lucas with a capital sum. No.4 Union Street on the south side was demised on the 10^th August 1711, for £125. This is the only example of a house sold directly by Lucas of which a record has been found. The low sum of money suggests that Lucas was only selling the carcass, roofed, but still to be fitted out inside. How much the dancing master, Mr Rowbotham, and the other people for whom Lucas built houses paid is not recorded, but it clearly was not enough. Lucas headed more capital still to continue the development of the street. It was not provided even by selling the houses freehold; although Lucas had sold the freehold of seventeen sites by the time he wrote his will. Raising money was a hazardous business both for Thomas Lucas and the other builders of Union Street. The earliest known deeds relating to Union Street, the recited ones of 1704, contain significantly, a mortgage. In 1710, Lucas mortgaged his own house together with its malt-house to Jon Goodwin of Chiswick for £200. Both Lucas and Goodwin were long dead before the mortgage was finally paid off in 1748. Then, the Bricklayer, John Bone, who took a lease of a site on the north side of Union Street, some 36 feet wide, on the 20^th February 1707/8 was obliged to mortgage the house he was building to John Frost of Deptford, a waterman, first for £53 on the 12^th March 1708/9, to be paid within a year, and then ‘having occasion for further money he borrowed a further sum of £50’ from Frost on the 11^th May 1708. By the end of September, Bone was in a position to sell one of the houses and its contents so not only was its carcass complete but it would have been panelled. 

Example of original panelling 29 Albury Street.

Originally No 19 now No. 34 Albury St.

 The other house was then described as complete and it alone had to bear security for the complete mortgage. The two houses have not been exactly identified but it seems from the frontage of the plots that they were No. 11 and 12 Union Street on the North side. Reyalls and Pearce who built No. 19 Union Street, South side now No. 34 did not need to raise money on it after they took a lease of the site on the 25^th July 1709. On the 23^rd February 1712/13, Pearce disposed of his share in the property to Reyalls for £240 and on the 4^th November 1715, Reyalls, doing rather badly out of the deal, sold the entire house to Thomas Leving, senior, for £210. 





Part 5 extract from A Quiney's paper on Albury Street 1979.    

Short Film on the Stratton Brothers Murder of the Farrows in Deptford High St 1905

Narrated by Shaw Taylor.

My thanks to the Guilfordghost for posting on Youtube.

John Maloney saves the future Queen Victoria 1822

Ashburton Guardian 21st October 1913

 

 

Visit to 127 Deptford High Street, Formerly Nolans Clothes Shop.

I had the pleasure to meet Terry the proprieter of the shop which was once called Nolans's. Terry has been present in Deptford for many years and it was great to talk to him about the people and places he remembers on the High St. We started discussing the story, listed below, regarding the tunnel beneath his shop. He kindly agreed to let me go down into the cellar and view the tunnel entrance. I was surprised when Terry lifted a hatch by the till in the shop, which was the cellar entrance! It was a bit of a squeeze but we both got down there and I took the following photos.

The cellar entrance

Entrance to the tunnel now bricked up

Any ideas what these curious hinge type fixings were for??

Shop Owner  "Terry" My thanks to him for allowing me to disturb his business and go exploring.

Reproduced original posting for infomation.

In the early part of 1978 a survey was carried out at the request of Nolans Clothes Shop, No 127, by the proprietor Mrs Order. The purpose was to examine alleged tunnels under the shop which ran east to deptford Creek, or a Pub, or the place of Nelson's assignations with Lady Hamilton in Albury Street. A trap door at the front of the shop gives access to a series of cellars under the whole building, some of which were blocked and one which had a barreled roof and could be the begining of a tunnel leading directly under the street.It was described as being about 6ft high, with a stone rubble floor. There was a rectangular manhole leading to sewers beneath which were said to flood. The tunnel terminated in a brick wall at approximately the edge of the outside pavement. The bricks were of mixed stock and red bricks, with no obvious signs of great age, and were probably contempoary with the building which seemed from map and visual evidence to be c. 1844-50, contempoary with the adjacent Catholic church. It was noted  there was nothing on site on the 1844 tithe map but earlier maps 1800-33 may show buildings but were to small a scale to be confirmed with any certainty. There was a similar tunnel which had been blocked more recently and was said to lead from the indentical adjacent shop. It was discovered to have been blocked in by the owners of the shops across the street. The tunnel at No 127 seemed to be an extention of the cellars, and without pulling the wall down, there was no evidence of it going any further other than the edge of the pavement. If it did originally cross the street it would presumably join the cellars of the opposite shops. Does anyone know of underground tunnels in Deptford?

History of Albury Street. Part 4.

The original leases and recited leases show that eleven houses or sites mentioned, seven were probably built or developed by Thomas Lucas, and his will implies that he built another thirteen. Four were definitely by other craftsmen, two by the bricklayer, John Bone of Deptford, one by the masons Reyalls and Pearce, and one more apparently by Pearce alone. Lucas was building on his own account from first to last. Although described as a bricklayer, it is not quite clear where he physically built any of the houses himself. It is clear from the quantity of work on which he was engaged, especially after 1713 when his contract on the new church began, that he would have been forced to employ craftsmen to work under him.

St Pauls 1750.

In fact his time would have largely been engaged managing the development rather than physically building it. The craftsmen whom he employed, bricklayers, carpenters, and joiners remain anonymous, as so does the carver of the brackets supporting the hoods to the doorways. The three craftsmen known to have taken building-leases are known only by name and have not been found elsewhere. One or two other contemporary craftsmen are connected with Union Street if only tenuously. First is Matthew Spray who died in 1742 bequeathing his house in Union Street to his wife, Martha, who occupied it until 1755. Spray, a bricklayer, built the church of St Mary Magdalene, Woolwich, between 1727 and 1739.

St Mary Magdalene, Woolwich

One could speculate that his house, No. 4 Union Street on the North side and one of the smallest in the street was given to him by Thomas Lucas in lieu of wages for his work in Lucas’s employment on Union Street and the church of St Paul. At all events, Lucas had disposed of his house and the freehold of the land on which it stood presumably to Spray, by the time he wrote his last will in 1734/5. Another Deptford bricklayer, Nathaniel Carter, appointed Thomas Lucas and his wife as the executors of his will, but the will has not been found and nothing more has been discovered about Carter. For other craftsmen employed working on Union Street, one may speculate amongst those who, like Lucas, worked under Thomas Archer on the new church. James Grove, a carpenter, and John Gilliam, a joiner, both of Greenwich might have assisted Lucas. Grove was appointed carpenter only three weeks after Lucas was appointed bricklayer, and worked closely with him providing for instance centering (Turning Pieces) for the brick arches of the crypt. Gilliam, who made the alter piece, pulpit, reader’s desk and clerks desk for St Paul’s Deptford, should be considered as the maker of the carved brackets on the Union Street doors, but there is no evidence to support the theory. Tradition has it the brackets were carved by ships’ carpenters but there is nothing specifically nautical about them. The carving is of high quality and of a type which appears in churches of that date. Financing the building of Union Street must have been a complicated proceeding for Thomas Lucas. Having satisfactorily mortgaged his land, his most expensive items were materials and labour. In 1706, he is recorded as having a tile kiln and in 1713, as bricklayer for the new church he was, initially at least, responsible for the supply of bricks. The bricks probably came from a local field but it is not known who may have owned it. Even if Lucas acted as his own supplier, he still had to pay for labour, both for brick makers and for bricklayers, and although he must have at least partly paid for them in money, he probably paid them partly in kind. He had adjacent to his own house at the south west corner of Union Street, and lying behind the street, a Malt House. It abutted the rear of the public house known first by the sign of the Swann’ and later as “The King of Prussia” a building that Lucas never sold. Beer must have appeared large among his payments in kind to his labourers. But its is also significant that Lucas’s daughter, Sarah was married to one Thomas Cells of St Paul Deptford, a shipwright but more often described as a distiller, and he inherited from Lucas an interest in the malt house, so one may surmise that gin as well as beer may have helped pay for the labour. It ahs already been suggested that Lucas may have given Matthew Spray, the bricklayer, a house in Union Street in return for work done by Spray for him. The possibility of Lucas building a house and exchanging it for materials arises since as early as 1706 the lease hold of two houses on the north side of Union Street was owned by Elias Wood a lime burner. Wood paid Lucas twenty four shillings per annum ground rent and while this small sum of money was probably paid in cash it is likely that the purchase price of the house may well have been paid in supplies of lime for making mortar.

Part 4 extract from A Quiney's paper on Albury Street 1979.

Ann Arthur's Discourse with the Devil in Flaggons Row. 1685

The Dolphin Inn-Coach House 1841, Deptford- Where Was it Located??