The Builder

William Drown (1839 -1932)

William Drown was the only  builder of Vermont Road when houses were first built. William Drown was born in Brentor in September 1839, on the edge of Dartmoor, the son of a blacksmith. At 21 his profession was listed as a joiner and he moved to London on marrying Britannia Eliza Willmott on 17 October 1864 at St Martins in the Field. The family lived in north London before moving to Brixton where he was living when Rockmount Road was developed. The family by 1911 had moved to Carshalton and Drown was still employing people at the age of 71. He died in Epsom in 1932.

Ownership of 1 Vermont Road

Land Registry Document dated 1979 for 1 Vermont Road, Upper Norwood

1944

1. Street-facing gablesRe
2. Dutch gables
3. London stock brick/Red brick
4. Prominent decorative chimney  stacks with clay pots
5. Prominent recessed arched doorways
6. Hardwood timber doors and glazing panels
7. Feature dormer windows
8. Turrets
9. Decorative brickwork detailing, including soldier courses
10. Bay windows
11. Timber sash windows
12. Intricate window frames of bespoke designs
13. Stone/stucco detailing
14. Stucco/terracotta decorative panels integrated into elevations
15. Natural slate roofs

This short street runs steeply downhill, connecting Harold Road to Orleans Road.

The group of regularly spaced square red brick houses with elaborate timber porches share characteristics with those nearby on Harold Road. Vermont Road was
first mentioned in 1878 and therefore laid out prior to Harold Road.

Houses built from1878 onwards in Vermont Road

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  Double fronted Victorian houses - courtesy of R. Hibberd

External decorative features

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  1..5.11.

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  3.5.6.

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  4. Prominent decorative chimney stack

Post-war Housing following bomb damage from World War Two

Germany’s Operation Steinbock – the ‘Baby Blitz’  – running from January to April 1944 was the largest bombing campaign since the ‘Blitz’ of 1940/1.  It was a campaign founded on propaganda and revenge and mostly targeted London and Southern England, with 1,500 killed and 2,900 seriously injured, nearly all of them Londoners.  However, by 1944 the UK had improved defences compared to 1940/1- anti-aircraft fire, better ground radar and RAF night fighters using radar – and the Germans lost 329 of their 500 aircraft.  These losses were unsustainable and the campaign ended in May 1944.  The Luftwaffe bomber force was so depleted that it could do little to resist D-Day on 6th June 1944.

https://www.memorialflightclub.com/blog/operation-steinbock-%E2%80%98baby-blitz%E2%80%99-january-1944

Croydon’s Borough Engineer reported that a high explosive bomb fell on Vermont Road in the Steinbock air raid of 2 March 1944.  A crater in the garden of 12 Vermont Road led to the house being demolished. Numbers 10 and 14 were reported as being partially wrecked and unstable.  5 houses in Highview Road (adjacent to the Vermont Road bomb) were reported as unstable, with a 6th house reported as probably unstable.

During the same air raid one bomb severely damaged 4 houses in Central Hill with two of the houses being completely wrecked.  Another bomb fell on the Lambeth side of Central Hill.  The combined impact of the 3 bombs resulted in very extensive blast damage to properties over a radius of 300 yards.   This part of Upper Norwood had probably sustained some of the most extensive bomb damage in the borough in previous raids.

Mrs Evelyn May Sanderson of the Croydon Women’s Voluntary Service (W.V.S) reported:

THURSDAY, MARCH 2nd. Alert in the early hours and very heavy and prolonged gunfire. Soon after eight a.m. Mrs Denning rang me to say she had heard unofficially that there was trouble in Upper Norwood, though she had not been contacted by Control. She promised to pick me up after letting Mrs Turner know. I meantime got on to Mrs Cabban, District Leader (D.L.) for the area, and heard from her that high blasting power bombs had been dropped on the Borough Boundary, affecting Lambeth as well, shattering houses in Central Hill, Rockmount and Vermont Rd as well as widespread damage to glass and tiles. Casualties had been taken to Norwood Cottage Hospital and homeless to the Downsview Rest Centre. Mrs Denning and I went to the affected area and made enquiries, and then went to the Rest Centre and found some of the homeless without clothes and suffering in varying degrees from shock. We reported back to Wellesley Rd and Mrs Cooke arranged to take clothes over in the afternoon. I have not yet had Mrs Cabban’s report, but I know Housewives* were busy, and will let you have details later.

In April 1942 the Housewives’ service was established to take over the outdoor air raid work of the W.V.S. Its main responsibilities were to tend for the injured and distressed, to help with clean up operations and to ensure those who needed to were rehoused.  Mrs Evelyn May Sandison was the W.V.S. Deputy Housewives Organiser for the County Borough of Croydon.  https://archives.croydon.gov.uk/papers-of-mrs-evelyn-may-sandison-relating-to-the-w-v-s   

Also with thanks to the Croydon Archives and the Surrey WW11 Bomb Incident map project.

Vermont Road is included in the RAF Aerial Collection (1945-1949) – a collection of 24,000 aerial photographs of London taken by the RAF shortly after World War II 

https://www.layersoflondon.org/map/overlays/raf-aerial-collection-1945-1949#:~:text=A%20collection%20of%2024%2C000%20aerial,georeferenced%20by%20schools%20and%20volunteers

Select post-code SE19 3SR then tick use this overlay to view the post-war  photograph of Vermont Road.

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