Feb 06
“A respected benefactress” – the bonneted shade of Miss Elizabeth Cass might be forgiven a wry smile at our expense. She and her equally well regarded sister Phebe have given posterity the slip, and got clean away, thanked, and unchallenged, although their weed-choked memorial would hardly please them. Elizabeth Cass lived in one of Walthamstow’s …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/walthamstow/the-quietest-millionaire/
Dec 29
Annie West only lived to be ten. Her unmarked grave, shared with eleven others including five babies, is in Queen’s Road Cemetery, Walthamstow; the plot was resold many years ago. In the final decades of the nineteenth century, when Annie lived and died, it was all too common for families to lose a child, sometimes …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/walthamstow/annie-west-the-saddest-christmas-shadow/
Dec 02
The face under the boater would look more at home in some shadowy corner of the Escorial Palace than in that slightly unkempt garden in Edwardian Berkhamsted, so perhaps the legend is true after all. My mother had a store of stories about her ancestors, some more likely than others, but this was the one …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/uncategorized/rachel-harriet-gravestock/
Oct 19
In most ways the Stutter family of Walthamstow were as ordinary-seeming as the thousands of others who had moved into the newly completed housing in the Queen’s Road area. A decent three-bedroom house with a good garden, a range and a scullery could be rented for around 2s 6d a week, with easy access to …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/walthamstow/born-deaf-and-dumb/
Sep 18
Christopher Urswick probably counted on modest posthumous fame. That memorial brass didn’t come cheap, and he wouldn’t have bargained for the elaborately decorated chantry chapel at Windsor being taken over for a princess’s tomb in future years. But pragmatists make bargains, and he had given up the exposed heights of political influence for the relative …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/hackney/christopher-urswick/
Aug 12
Like so much else, it turned up when I was looking for something quite different. An undistinguished looking medal in a red pouch, with Prince Albert looking portentous on one side and the word “exhibitor” on the other and “J Chapman, India” round the rim. My great, great, great grandfather’s exhibitor’s medal from the 1851 …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/chapmans-and-others/a-common-name/
Aug 04
Markhouse Road was notorious long before it was officially a road. When Walthamstow was a tangle of villages it had its share of grand houses. The Mark House, on the site of the parish boundary, stood until the 1890s. And the Low Hall, one of the mediaeval manor houses, in its final days presiding over …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/walthamstow/a-very-courteous-subversion/
Jul 18
It’s less than two long lifetimes since Walthamstow was a string of semi rural villages, more prosperous than most. Early in the nineteenth century Hoe Street was lined with grand houses, there was a stage coach commuter service, the railway was still half a century away, local government was organised by the parish, and residents …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/walthamstow/selborne-park/
Jun 02
The winter I looked at 62 Walthamstow houses I walked past The Chestnuts often. Even then, not long empty but without a purpose, it looked elegant as only an eighteenth century house can, but shabby and worthy of better things. It’s just a shame that now, nearly ten years later, it looks no better. And, …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/walthamstow/walthamstows-other-surviving-mansion/
May 31
I’ve lost count of the number of times Aphra Behn has been rediscovered. From polite footnotes in academic papers, one or two works included in an anthology, to Maureen Duffy’s tantalising “The Passionate Shepherdess”. Then in the mid 80s, there was Jeremy Irons having far too much fun in “The Rover”, an assortment of university …
Permanent link to this article: http://lissachapman.co.uk/aphra-behn/aphra-behn-the-poetess/
