Extract of the Croydon Allotments map of 1800

Howden Road was laid out on land originally owned Lord Gwydir and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

Extract from OS map of 1863

Howden Road was built after this map but followed the boundry line next to the ‘S’ of South Norwood Hill.

Extract from the 1894 OS map

By 1894 Howden Road’s Victorian villas on its northern side have been built and inhabited.

Howden Road looking north east circa 1910

Extract from the OS map of 1932

The semi-detached houses on the southern side of the road do not appear on the map published in 1930 but are clearly shown on the 1932 map.

View north east down Howden Road circa 1940

• 1880s 15 villas built on the northern side of the road
• 1891 Edward Markwick, 3 Howden Road, fined 16s 6d for keeping a dog without a license
• 1891 26 servants employed in Howden Road
• 1893 Numbers 1-9 Howden Road put up for sale due to death of freeholder; all with tenants
• Request for the road to be taken over and repaired by Croydon Corporation turned down
• 1901 22 servants employed in Howden Road
• 1904 Number 6 for sale
• 1905 John Doltry died of a heart attack whilst undertaking decorating work at number 15
• 1910 Henry Barrett & Edward Thompson charged with breaking into Rev Tipple’s house 11 Howden Road
• 1911 28 servants employed in Howden Road
• 1919 numbers 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, & 15 for sale by auction (let at £55-£65 per annum)
• 1926 Interwar houses built on the southern side of the road
• 1928 Croydon Corporation serve notices on residents to have the road sewered, levellled and paved in accordance with the Public Health Act, 1875

The northern side of Howden Road was developed during the early 1880s. 15 detached Victorian mansions were constructed for the nouveau-riche of Norwood. They were built mainly using redbrick imported from outside of Norwood. Local bricks,of London Clay were yellow in colour and used on the side elevations of some of the houses.

In 1904 number 6 was up for sale advertised as:

• well built detatched house
• three reception rooms
• seven bed rooms
• box room
• dressing-room
• kitchen, scullery, pantry, linen cupboards
• large cellar

Norwood News, 9 July 1904

Howden Road in 1894

THE VICTORIAN HOUSES

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  1 Howden Road, a post WWII replacement

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  2 Howden Road

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  3 Howden Road

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  4 Howden Road

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  5 Howden Road

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  6 Howden Road

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  7 Howden Road

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  8 Howden Road

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  9 Howden Road

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  10 Howden Road

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  11 Howden Road

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  12 Howden Road

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  13 Howden Road

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  14 Howden Road

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  15 Howden Road

INTER WAR HOUSES

The houses on the southern side of the road, numbers 16 to 39 were added before 1927. They are typical interwar semi-detached properties.  Unusually Howden Road’s houses remain numbered sequentialy begining and ending at its junction with Auckland Road.  Many have loft conversions and attached garages to one side.  Number 32 is the only one to have converted its garage to accomodation and to have two dormer windows to the loft.  These were added before Croydon Council sensibly prohibited them in an effort to maintain the street view.

Huge numbers of similar houses were built in the suburbs around London.  They were usually laid out in wide tree lined streets.  Those in Howden Road are not as grand as some but were still intended to attract the ‘better off’ as residents. (Yorke, 2018).  Howden Road was not sewered, levelled or paved in accordance with the Public Health Act 1875 in 1928.  The Croydon Road’s Committee decided that notices should be served upon the residents to pay for appropriate works to be carried out.  The charge would be £1 11s 4d per foot of frontage.  Som of the residents in the Victorian houses thought that this was an excessive charge and objected to the scheme. (Roads Committee, 1828).

Works Cited

Roads Committee. (1828). Norwood News , 5.

Yorke, T. (2018). British Architectural Styles. Newbury: Countryside Books.

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  Geometric red & black orginal porch tiles

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  Decorative chimney stacks, ridge tiles and finials. Gable end with plian bargeboards facing the street

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  Tiled elevation above square bay windows

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  Decorative panels. Original single glazed windows with stained glass inserts

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  Overhanging eaves

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  Basement, now opened up as a flat

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  New roof & dormer windows. Pebble dashed.

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  Servant's quarters in the attick. Original sash window frames

The houses vary in style, some are in matching pairs or threesomes, but all were constructed by the same builder. They were built on two main floors with gabled rooms for servants in their attics and have basements.  They have square bay windows on one or two floors at the front.  All have open timber framed porches with similar balustrades and fretwork decoration.  The 1911 census gives room numbers as varying between eight and fourteen.  This may well be down to how rooms were counted and it is likely that they all had at least eleven when built. Front doors originally had Art Nouveau stained glass panels, which remain at number 2.  Houses 8 and 12 have decorative stone panels above the front windows and a tiled panel below the first floor windows.  Originally porches were floored with red and black tiles in a simple geometric patterns.  Only three retain their original tiles. Bargeboards are plain but chimney stacks are typically elaborate in style of the late 1880s with London yellows interspersed with red brick.

It is thought that all the houses on this side of the road have basements, accessed from inside the house.  Those at 10 and 13 have been opened up to provide additional space for flats.  Of the original fifteen houses nine remain in occupation as substantial family homes with only six having been converted into flats.  Number 9 remained empty in 2018, several years after it was converted without planning permission!

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  Original front door

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  Glazed door panels

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  Arched doorway

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  Open porch

Art Nouveau style window panels in coloured glass at number 2 Howden Road.  These are probably original and typical of around 1890. They are the only ones extant others having been replaced with newer glass or new doors.  Coloured glass panes remain in the small panes in the original sash windows at numbers 6, 8, 11, 13 & and 15.

SERVANTS

Most Victorian households were run by servants. Over one million people worked in domestic service at the end of the 19th century. One in three of these were young women or girls under twenty years of age. A wealthy household might have employed several servants’ but even ordinary people such as shopkeepers’ teachers and skilled workers might have had a servant too.

The number of servants employed by the residents of Howden Road increased slightly between 1891 and 1911.  This does not follow the national pattern but is probably the result of several elderly residents moving into the road and employing nurses and companions in addition to the normal compliment of housemaids and cooks.  As the end of the century approached, the cost of servants had increased, and the number of people willing to do the work had declined; increasingly it was seen as a job rather than a vocation.

Mary Sloman, a 72 year old widow, at number 9 employed a companion, a maid attendant, cook and housemaid.

Servants attending Mary Sloman at 9 Howden Road

Maria Bowes, 78, also a widow at number 8, employed two domestic servants and a nurse.Spinster Claire Hartridge, 66, at number 1 employed a companion, lady’s help and a domestic.

Reginald Millar, 33 at number 4 employed a cook, housemaid and a nurse probably to attend to his two year old daughter Barbara.

In 1911 a quarter of the servants employed in Howden Road were local people.  A further quarter came from abroad including from as far afield as Australia and Ceylon; whilst the remainder came from the London area.

Number of servants per household in Howden Road.

House Names

Naming ones House is an old British custom which began with the gentry naming their manors, halls, and castles. The custom gradually spread to the masses and everyday folk began naming their homes as well.  Names often changed as householders died or moved, with new residents bringing their personal or family backgrounds into play.

Properties throughout the British mainland had just house names until 1765 when an act of Parliament decreed that all new properties must also have a house number and street name for better identification of properties and boundaries.  Odd numbers are usually assigned to the left side of the street and even numbers to the right side heading out of the town centre – usually from the town hall or other civic building (Guide to House Names, 1995).

1. Not Named
2. Sandon, Lansdowne
3. Illwara
4. Lynton
5. Not Named
6. Rosedene
7. Not Named
8. Tenby
9. Chagford
10. Naikban
11. Hill Croft (Hillcroft)
12. Glenhurst, Shalford
13. Stafford House, Raeburn
14. Chowringhee, Heath House
15. Kelsey House

John Horne named number 14 Chowringhee after the district of Calcutta in which he lived and married his wife Jane.

Theodore Oelrichs named number 15 Kelsey House after the former home of his wife Rose, which was Kelsey Hall, Spilsby, Lincolnshire.

Quite what association Edward Markwick had with Illwarra is uncertain as it appears only to refer to a location in New South Wales, Australia; with its derivation probably meaning ‘pleasant place near the sea’.

Other names chosen probably had some personal meaning to the residents but are all rather more mundane and less exotic.  Some, such as Lynton, Chagford and Tenby, are United Kingdom place names.   Others, such as, Glenhurst, Raeburn and Rosedene may have had family links or merely been plucked out of the air at the whim of the resident.

Works Cited

Guide to House Names. (1995). Retrieved April 20, 2017, from Your Signs.com: http://www.yoursigns.co.uk/housenames-rules.html