Visiting the past

A few weeks ago, I was doing some family tree research and discovered that my great-grandfather's youngest brother Harry Mitchell had been living in London in 1901.

It was quite exciting to see that the address he'd been living at in St Panras was still there and I thought I'd pop along one day to take a look.

So today, by chance, my colleague Laura Jones and I had a meeting at Johnston Press which has a new office in Charlotte Street. My ancestor's address was just down the road, so I wandered down there with Laura after the meeting to take a look.

The house was 18 Colville Place and Harry was living there at the time of the 1901 census as a 20-year-old with his uncle Samuel Peck (57), his aunt Anna (56), cousin James (23) and cousin Amelia (16). Harry had come from Hales in Norfolk and was clearly trying his luck in London. His job was listed as an agricultural labourer and London must have seemed a massive, smokey place after living in a small Norfolk village.

His uncle was a self-employed plumber and his cousin was also a plumber. Perhaps Harry had been promised some training and to join the firm? 

There were three other people living in the house as lodgers - Bruce Miller (a musician), Joseph Dronet (a hotel porter) and Ulrich Bergamim, who was described as a hotel worker/porter (I wouldn't trust the spelling of that name). Bruce was American, Joseph was from France and Ulrich from Switzerland. It was clearly very cosmopolitan and must have seemed very exotic to a young agricultural labourer from rural Norfolk (and it doesn't get much more rural than Hales - even in 2012).

Today the street is a very pleasant mews property. No 18 is an end-terrace and it looks as if part of the street has been demolished and a small park/play area created next door. You can still see the chimney place of the next house, so it clearly didn't start off as an end-terrace. There's every chance that the rest of the street was demolished after bomb damage in the Second World War. We're lucky that No 18 survived.

By chance, the house had a sold sign on it from Hudsons estate agents. I looked on the site and the asking price was £1,850,000! It is described as a traditional terraced mews house with four bedrooms and five floors (including a cellar). I wonder what Harry Mitchell would think about his old lodgings changing hands for £1.8 million?

I took the street shot (top) on my Blackberry phone and Laura took the one of me in front of the house.

Next week, I'm on holiday and I'm hoping to visit some of the homes in Norfolk where the Mitchell family lived. I also have some Norfolk relatives on my mother's side and I have one or two addresses from their past too.