Edward Mountcastle, hatter

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hats

Street View: 1 and 18 Suppl.
Address: 41 King William Street

In 1825, Edward Mountcastle, the son of Montague Mountcastle of Bedford Court, Covent Garden, was apprenticed to William White of Cheapside, Citizen and Feltmaker. Edward obtained his freedom from the Feltmakers’ Company after the regular term of seven years in August 1832. His address is then given as 23 Gracechurch Street which was the address of his cousin Sidney Harman Mountcastle, also a hatter.⁽¹⁾ Only a couple of months later, Edward married Frances Harris Weeks, who was probably a relation of William White’s wife Susannah Weeks. We can follow the subsequent addresses of the couple from the baptism records of their children, although the story is not as straightforward as at first may appear:
1833, September – Gracechurch Street: Montague Edward baptised at All Hallows Lombard Street
1834, July – King William Street: Fanny baptised at St. Magnus the Martyr
1839, July – King William Street: Emma baptised at St. Magnus the Martyr
1845, October – St. George’s Street: Charles Edward, Alfred, Walter baptised at St. George, Camberwell
1848, June – Albany Road: Mary Ann baptised at St. George, Camberwell
1851, June – London Street, Greenwich: Frank baptised at St. Alphage, Greenwich

1831 plan for King William Street

For the purposes of this blog, the King William Street entries are the most relevant. A whole neighbourhood had been razed to the ground for the construction of the new approach road to London Bridge, named after King William IV. The plan above shows what happened. The darker area is the outline for the new King William Street and outlined in red is the property that became Mountcastle’s hat shop. If we look at the Land Tax records for 1833, the houses in the area are bracketed together and listed for the New London Bridge Committee. In 1836, however, Mountcastle’s name appears as one of the occupants of the “redeemed” properties. In one of their advertisements, Mountcastle’s neighbours, George and John Deane, ironmongers at number 46, display their new shop and say that their “present premises” were erected in 1833, so presumably that was also the year in which number 41 was erected as it is situated in the same block of houses.

In 1841, Edward and Frances are listed in the census with their 3-week-old baby Charles. Although the three children who were born after the 1841 census were all baptised together in 1845 in Camberwell, it does not necessarily mean that Mountcastle gave up his shop in King William Street. In the 1843, 1848 and 1851 Post Office Directories, 41 King William Street is still the address for the hat shop. And Tallis in his 1847 Supplement also still listed Mountcastle at number 41. Only in the 1856 Post Office Directory was he listed at 22 Cannon Street. And at some point, he even had a shop at 10 London Street, Greenwich. The census returns for 1851 shows the family living in Greenwich, while at King William Street we find William Haldin(?), a carpenter, which seems conclusive, but the tax records tell a different story. There, Mountcastle is only listed for King William Street till 1844. There is a gap in the records, so the next year available is 1847 and Mountcastle is no longer there, but one Robert Wass is paying the tax. However, in 1852, bankruptcy proceedings are started against Mountcastle and he is still described as of 41 King William Street and London Street, Greenwich. At some point in 1852, he signs over his leasehold properties for the benefit of his creditors. I am guessing that Mountcastle rented out (part of?) his 41 King William Street property and tried to raise money that way when things got tough in the 1840s.

The London Gazette, 21 May 1852

As we saw in the 1856 Post Office Directory, Edward could next be found in Cannon Street where, at the end of 1856, he dissolves a partnership with one William John Rushby. The gentlemen had been trading as hatters under the name of J. Jenkinson and Co.⁽²⁾ In the 1861 census, Edward, Frances and four of their children are found at 276 Albany Road. This may have been the same property as the one listed in the baptism record of Mary Ann, but as that does not give a house number, it may be a different house in the same street. At some point Mountcastle must have had a shop on the corner of King Street and Bedford Street, Covent Garden. It is, however, unclear when and for how long that was, but it was certainly after he had been at King William Street. Edward died in 1867 and the registration district is given as Strand, so he was possibly still living in Soho.

Source: fotolibra.com

I tried to find out what happened at 41 King William Street after Mountcastle left, but as the tax records do not provide house numbers, that it is not so easy. We saw that the 1851 census for the parish of St. Magnus the Martyr listed Harlin the carpenter, and in 1861, it is one Edward Hart, a hosier, who occupies the premises. Ten years later it is Alfred Hayward, a customs officer, who lives at number 41, and in 1881 one William Taylor, a tobacconist’s manager, but none of these people seem to appear in the Land Tax records, so presumably they were all renting. Goad’s insurance map of 1887 lists the property as a ‘studio’, and it still looks as small as when Mountcastle lived there. The northern end of the block, that is, number 46, was taken over in 1890 by the City and South London Railway Company for their King William Street Station, but it was not to last. The station was closed in 1900 (see here for more information) and Regis House was built on top of the station, not just obliterating the station entrance, but the whole block of houses from numbers 40 to 46. The Regis House you see today is a modern replacement from the 1990s, but they have retained the access to the platforms of the station which was used as an air-raid shelter in the war (more information and photos here).

Goad’s insurance map of 1887

(1) Sidney’s father William was the brother of Edward’s father Montague.
(2) The London Gazette, 2 January 1857.

Neighbours:

<– 42 King William Street

40 King William Street –>

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Alfred Markwick, surgeon, and the Epithem Company

Tags

medicine

Street View: 5 Suppl. and 18 Suppl.
Addresses: 19 Langham Place and 32 King William Street

19 Langham Place only appears in the 1847 Supplement to Tallis’s Street View. If you look at the street view itself, the building of which number 19 was a part seemed to consist of four non-consecutive house numbers: 3, 19, 25, and 21, but in the index to the Supplement, the numbering is slightly more consistent: 3, 19, 20 and 21. The number 25 on the street view must have been a mistake. If we look back to the original street view of 1839 for Langham Place we see that the building of which number 19 was a part, did not yet exist. The space was completely covered by number 3, the ‘London Carriage Repository’ of Marks and Son. You can read about them in another post (here), but first Alfred Markwick, surgeon, whose place of business was erected in 1842 at the instigation of James Fergusson, Esq. On Goad’s insurance map of 1889 we can see that another renumbering has taken place and what was number 19 is indicated as number 4, but number 20 is still number 20. Number 4 was used as the entrance to St. George’s Hall which was built in 1867 behind what was once Markwick’s place of business. In the 1890s, numbers 20 and 21 were demolished for Queen’s Hall, which extended with a rounded front into Riding House Street. The entrance to St. George’s Hall was moved to Mortimer Street. The houses that were numbered 3, 19-21 in Tallis, St. George’s Hall, and Queen’s Hall no longer exist as they fell victims to an air raid in 1941. The ruins were demolished in 1952 to be replaced by the concrete Henry Wood House, which has been given the more logical numbering of Langham Place 3-7.

Goad’s insurance map 1889

Ordnance Survey map 1892

detail of an old postcard showing 3 and 4 (former 19) Langham Place (the entrance to St. George’s Hall sticking out into the street)

But Langham Place was not the only address with which Markwick was associated. He and his father Mark were involved in the Patent Epithem Company at 69 (in 1847: 32), King William Street. They shared number 32 with Nicholls & Pellatt, the wine merchants. You can see the two Markwick properties in the elevations above this post (click to enlarge). Markwick had developed a pad to replace the old poultices filled with bran. They were called Markwick’s spongio piline epithems, a name a journalist of The Era dismissed as “calculated to throw an unmerited taint of humbug and professional quackery about it, and one which few people will tax their memory to retain”.⁽¹⁾ Despite the dismissal of the name, the journalist accepted the fact that the pads themselves contained heat a lot longer than the traditional poultices and would not go putrid or hard and dry. They were made of sponge and wool with a backing of India rubber and very beneficial in cases of “rheumatism, sore-throat, tic-douloureaux, &c.” There was also a form without the sponge for protection of the chest. From an article in The Lancet (1846) on the epithems we learn that Markwick was surgeon to the Western German Dispensary and formerly an externe to the Venereal Hospital in Paris.

advert in London Medical Gazette, 1846

advert in The Era, 1 November 1846

In time, the spongio piline came to be recognised as a valuable addition to the medical toolkit and the Epithem Company also developed an application suitable for horses, the “Horse Foot-Pad”, which was designed to fit inside the horse shoe.⁽²⁾ Markwick’s invention even made it into the Great Exhibition of 1851 with specimen of his epithems for medical, surgical and veterinary purposes, and also with a spongio-piline sock, knee-cap, finger-stall, and breast poultice.⁽³⁾ The entry was listed, by the way, for Mark Markwick, Alfred’s father. Markwick had received a Patent for his invention in May 1846 and in 1851 had granted an exclusive licence to his son who arranged with Messrs Kirkman and Brown for its manufacture. They were unfortunately not trustworthy and Markwick went bankrupt. He eventually regained his exclusive licence and made new arrangements with a Mr. Frimbey, and after the latter’s death with the Whiteheads. He sold them the licence for £350 and if an extension was granted, Markwick would receive an annuity during the extension. Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead, James Heywood Radcliffe, and John Dicken Whitehead of Royal George Mills, Saddleworth, Yorks, applied for such an extension of the patent in 1859, which was granted for five years in May 1860.⁽⁴⁾

Mark Markwick could be found at 32 King William Street as the manufacturer of the patent epithems, together with a business manager, a porter, and a servant. Alfred Markwick was certainly still at 19 Langham Place in 1851, as he is then listed in the Post Office Directory and in the census, but by 1856 he had left as one Alexander Bridge, also a surgeon, is found at number 19. And from 1860 onwards, we find the offices of The Society for Promoting the Employment of Women and those of The English Woman’s Journal on the premises. The Ladies’ Institute consisted of the offices of that journal, a reading room, a cloakroom for shoppers’ parcels, a coffee/luncheon room, a registry for jobs and a committee room. It attracted a number of campaigners for women’s rights, such as Barbara Leigh Smith and Emily Davies, and they became known as the Langham Place Group.⁽⁵⁾

The 1855 London and Provincial Medical Directory gives Alfred’s address as Church Street, Croyden, but in the 1861, 1871 and 1881 censuses he is listed at 1 Leinster Square. He became a Physician at the Westbourne Homeopathic Dispensary, and a member of the British Homeopathic Society. He remained at Leinster Square till shortly before his death on 12 March 1887 at 32 Ventnor Villas, Brighton.⁽⁶⁾

The Medical Directory, 1885

Markwick’s book on urine (1847), online via The Wellcome Library here

(1) The Era, 18 October 1846.
(2) The Era, 20 August 1848.
(3) Official and Descriptive Catalogue of the Great Exhibition, 1851, Class 4: Vegetable and Animal Substances.
(4) The English Reports, Volume XV Privy Council, 1901, pp. 116-118. The London Gazette, 11 May 1860.
(5) See the introduction by C.A. Lacey to Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon and the Langham Place Group (1987)
(6) England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1887. His estate was valued at over £17,800.

Neighbours:

<– 20 Langham Place <– 33 King William Street

3 Langham Place –> 31 King William Street –>

John Belcher, architect and surveyor

Tags

architecture

Street View: 18 Suppl.
Address: 5 Adelaide Place

There are two John Belchers, father and son, both architects. Belcher senior lived from 1819 to 1890 and junior from 1841 to 1913. It was obviously senior who had his office at 5 Adelaide Place in the Tallis Street View as junior was only seven years old when the Supplements came out, but because they worked together during part of their careers, I have chosen to include junior. John senior is frequently given the year of birth of 1816; the ODNB is slightly more careful in giving 1816/17, but if you look at the census records for 1851 to 1881, John consistently gives his age as 32, 42, 52 and 62 which would give the year 1819 for his birth. John was apprenticed to William Chadwick, architect, on 22 April 1833. His father, John Young Belcher, a chemist and druggist, had to pay £150 for the privilege. The fact that his father is described as a chemist, helps to confirm the birth date of John; on 17 January 1819, John, the son of John Young Belcher, a chemist, and his wife Sophia, is baptised at St. John’s, Hackney. This does not preclude a birth date in 1818, as baptisms did not always take place straight after birth, but it is a good indication.

John senior married Anne Woollett, the daughter of George Woollett, a linen draper in 1840.⁽¹⁾ The year after, on the 10th of July, John junior is born, the eldest of many more children to come. At some point, John junior is sent to Luxembourg and Paris to complete his architectural schooling and in 1865, he becomes a partner in his father’s practice. That is also the year in which he marries Florence Parker, the daughter of William Parker, originally from Ireland, and Laura Elisabeth Boass (sometimes referred to as Louisa); John and Florence did not have any children.

designed by J. and J. Belcher for Rylands & Co., Wood Street, Cheapside, London (Source: archiseek.com)

Belcher and Belcher had their offices at 5 Adelaide Place, but that was not where they lived. 1-6 Adelaide Place, on the east side of the new approach to London Bridge, had been built in about 1835 and functioned as the address for many separate businesses, ranging from solicitors to provision agents. At some point, the Belchers left these offices and they seem to have moved to 38 Somerleyton Road, Brixton, or at least, that is the address given on the City freedom record of John junior in 1873. After his father’s retirement in 1875 Belcher worked with various partners: James W. James (-1882), Arthur Beresford Pite (1885-1897), and John James Joass (1897-1913) who continued the business after Belcher’s death. Belcher’s probate record gives 9 Clifford Street, Westminster, as the business address. Joass was the dominant influence when Belcher and he designed Mappin and Webb’s premises at 1 Poultry.

Mappin and Webb building (Source: architecture.com)

Although the Belcher business was very successful (you can see some more buildings they designed here), they did not always get to build what they designed. In the competition for the completion of the Victoria and Albert Museum, they came second and the design of Aston Webb was chosen, although Alfred Waterhouse, the architect of the Natural History Museum, considered Belcher’s “a magnificent design, the most original of the 8 [entries]”.

Belcher’s design for the V&A (Source: Victoria and Albert Museum Collection)

According to the census records, Belcher and Belcher lived at the following addresses:

John senior
1841: Montague Terrace
1851: Trinity Square
1861: Doddington Grove, Newington
1871-1881: Brunswick Square

John junior
1841: Montague Terrace
1851: Trinity Square
1861: Doddington Grove, Newington
1871: Sutherland Square, Newington
1881: Love Walk, Camberwell
1891-1911: Redholm, Camberwell

According to the Herne Hill Society, the house at Herne Hill was designed in 1885 by Belcher himself; according to the Grade II listing it was built in 1887.

Redholm at Herne Hill (Google Street View)

William Parker, John junior’s father-in-law, is described in the 1861 census as a proprietor of copper mines, but in 1871 as the minister of the Catholic Apostolic Church of Albury, Surrey. Ten years later, we find John senior with the same job description. According to the ODNB, John junior was also a minister of the Apostolic church, although the censuses consistently name him as architect. What he certainly did do was design their church in Camberwell New Road (now a Greek Orthodox church).

Apostolic Church, Camberwell (Source: archiseek.com)

There is much more to be said about the two Belchers, but I will leave it at this as most can be found online, for instance on Archiseek, Bob Speel’s website, Wikipedia, or, if you are interested in their entries at the Royal Academy of Arts, see here for pages 169 and 170.

(1) Holy Trinity, Newington, 30 June 1840. Why the article on John Belcher junior in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography fails to mention George and just names one Philip Woollett as Anne’s ancestor because he is the father of William Woolett, an engraver, is totally beyond me.