Wednesday 14 February 2018

One hundred years of one house in Well Hall part 21 ........... the unbroken chain

This is the continuing story of one house in Well Hall Road and of the people who lived there including our family.*

Now I think it will be rare that most of us can track all of the people who lived in a house from its construction to the present day.

But after a heap of research that is what we can do for our house in Well Hall.

The house has been home to thirteen families since it was built in 1915 and I know the names of all but one family.

What is all the more remarkable is that we lived there the longest, from the April of 1964 till 1994.

In that time the five of us grew up and eventually all but one of us left home.

It saw the death of mother, our sister Stella, and finally Dad.

But it was also a happy place and one that even now we all think of as home.

And that bond has been strengthened by a link to the present owners who have kindly taken pictures of the house today.

I have to say there is something odd about looking down on our back garden and seeing that the old tree at the back is still there.

It reminds me of the continuity that stretches far beyond our time at 294 and has made me look again at the stories of all the people who called the place home.

Searching for those stories will prove difficult.  The last census return that can be accessed is 1911 and while there are the electoral rolls and lists of births deaths and marriages these give little away.

So I know next to nothing about Mr and Mrs Nunn who lived there from 1915 until 1919 and only that the Rendles who followed them are buried in Sussex having died in 1946 and ‘54.

Slightly more promising were John and Leah Jarvis who occupied the house from 1929 through to 1947.

He was a “technical chemist", born in 1877 and she was ten year younger who gave her occupation in 1939 as “Unpaid Domestic Duties".

There was a son who may been living in Deptford a year earlier but by 1939 was back in 294.

It is a meagre set of information I grant you but in time there will be more.

I am guessing that Mr Nunn worked at the Royal Arsenal but there is no clue as to the occupation of Mr Rendle or Mr Jarvis.

They may have also worked there but the employment records seem lost.

Now that would be a useful piece of information as it would throw light on how long residents of the estate were linked to the Royal Arsenal.

But what we have is a start.

Location; Well Hall

Pictures; us circa 1970, from the Simpson collection

*One hundred years of one house on Well Hall Road, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/One%20hundred%20years%20of%20one%20house%20in%20Well%20Hall

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