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Authority record

Waghorne and Miles

  • F007
  • Family
  • 1789

The Waghorn(e) wheelwright and carriagebuilding family business probably originated with Samuel Waghorn, in the Limpsfield or Titsey area of Surrey. Samuel Waghorne (1789-1858) moved to Croydon in about 1819. By 1826 he was associated with Richard Jones (an established coachbuilder) on the west side of the High Street; and by 1834 appears to have been running the business alone. His premises (numbered 83 High Street by 1851, renumbered 146 High Street in 1886, and renumbered 252 High Street in c1931) were to remain the firms headquarters for some eighty years. Samuel II died in October 1858, aged 69, but the business continued to be known as Samuel Waghorne, presumably run by his widow, Harriet (c1789-1867), and their son, Thomas (0822-1868). In Warrens Directory for 1865-6, the firm is named Waghorne and Son. A Harriet Waghorne (probably a daughter) also worked as a milliner and dressmaker from the same address.

After the deaths in close succession of Harriet (senior) and Thomas, the business was taken over in 1868 by James T Miles, and renamed Waghome and Miles. The firm prospered in the latter part of the nineteenth century as a builder of superior carriages of various types. Its customers included various prominent members of the establishment, both from Croydon and from further afield. The firm undertook van and cart building on a separate site. From 1902 it also built motor car bodies.

In about 1906 the firm was bought up by Marchant and Sons, a firm of coachbuilders established at 34 Tamworth Road in about 1873. Marchant and Sons took over the High Street premises, and continued to operate from that address until the 1950s.

Grant Bros.

  • CB186
  • Corporate body
  • 1877

Grants department store was founded by Mr Richard Grant and his brother Mr William Grant in 1877, as a modest drapery business at no. 17 Croydon High Street (then No. 8). The family lived above the shop, but within a few years they needed to expand the shop into the back garden. Later still, the shop expanded into part of the Greyhound Inn. In order to prevent the prospering business from further expansion, local traders bought the adjoining property, causing the Grant family to buy No. 16, over the road for their expansion.

When the High Street was widened, the store was rebuilt over the road, (the West side) in Numbers 14,16, 18 and 22. soon afterward they bought Numbers 20, 24 ,28, 28, 30 and 30A.

By this time the store had over 60 departments, including Hairdressing Salons, China, Glass, Hardware, Restaurants, and outside catering.

Richard Grant died aged 75 in January 1924.

The stores next expansion, in October 1929, was just behind the store, near Surrey Street, and was opened in October 1931.

William Grant died on the 3rd of March 1931 aged 79. William and Richard Grant left behind 3 sons between them, R. Donald Grant, W. H. Goss Grant, and Sidney T. Grant, who all ran the store together after their fathers deaths.

In 1959 Grants became a public limited company.

In 1960, when the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh visited Croydon, the Grants store provided the afternoon tea, which was hosted by the mayor.

The Grant family sold the store in 1983, and it finally closed in 1987.

Anderson, John Corbet (17 January 1827 - 3 January 1907)

  • Person
  • (17 January 1827 - 3 January 1907)

John Corbet Anderson was a leading historian of Croydon in the nineteenth century. He was educated in Rothesay on the Isle of Bute. Showing a keen interest in art from a young age, Anderson submitted a cartoon sketch to an exhibition in Westminster Hall in 1843 called ‘The Plague of London 1655’. He moved to Liverpool in 1846 and worked as a portrait painter. Anderson moved to Croydon in 1852, living with his sisters on Duppas Hill. He married Frances Goddard in 1855 and following her death in 1861, married Sarah Goddard in 1864 with whom he had seven sons. Anderson contributed cricketing lithographs in ‘Sketches at Lord's’; between 1850 and 1860 he drew lithographs of 39 different players. In 1859 he published 'To India and Back by the Cape by a Traveller', despite having never visited India. Five years later he published 'Shropshire: its early history and antiquities'. He also contributed to ‘English Landscapes and Views’ (1883) by Roberts and Leete, wrote the footnotes for the updated version of Joseph Nash’s 'The Mansions of England in the Olden time', illustrated ‘Biblical Monuments’ by William Harris Rule, wrote ‘Old Testament and Monumental Coincidences’ (1895), and edited ‘The Family of Leete, with special reference to the genealogy of Joseph Leete’ (1881).

Anderson’s first book on Croydon – ‘Monuments and Antiquities of Croydon Church in the County of Surrey’ – was published in 1855. The book traced the history of the parish church from the 14th century to the restoration undertaken in the 1850s. In 1871 he wrote ‘Monuments and Antiquities of the old parish church of St John Baptist of Croydon, in the County of Surrey, which was destroyed by fire on the night of January the fifth’, and ‘The parish church as it was rebuilt during the years mdcclxii-ix after the design of G. Gilbert Scott, R. A.’ He also wrote ‘Chronicle of the Parish of Croydon’, the first volume of which was ‘Croydon: Pre-Historic & Roman’ (1874). The second volume was ‘Saxon Croydon’ (1877) which covers finds such as human remains in Park Street, under Whitgift’s almshouses and at Farthing Downs. The third volume was ‘Croydon Old Church: Parish Register and the Whitgift Charity’, followed by the final volume on ‘The Archiepiscopal Palace at Croydon’ (1879). Anderson’s next book on Croydon was published in 1882, ‘A Short Chronicle concerning the Parish of Croydon’, followed by ‘A Descriptive and Historical Guide to Croydon Surrey’ in 1887. His final book, ‘The Great North Wood: with a Geological, topographical and Historical description of Upper Norwood, West & South Norwood, in the County of Surrey’, was published in 1898.

Anderson died on 3rd January 1907 and was buried five days later in Queen’s Road Cemetery in Croydon, where his grave still stands.

Byron Family

  • F009
  • Family
  • 1755-1962

The Bryons were Lords of the Manor and residents of Coulsdon from the purchase of the Manor in 1782 until the sale of the estate and its dispersal in 1921.

Thomas (1) had no children and the manor was inherited by his nephew, Thomas (2) (1772-1845) before passing to the eldest son, Thomas (3) (1809-1863). Thomas married his cousin, Julia Jeffreys (1813-1899), daughter of Thomas’s aunt, Charlotte, who married Revd. John Jeffreys. Thomas and Julia are the first members of the family to feature significantly in the Byron Collection AR1057.

Thomas and Julia’s only child, Edmund (1843-1921) inherited the estate in 1863. He married Charlotte Jeffreys (1845-1908) in 1867. This was also a first cousin marriage into the Jeffreys family, Charlotte being the daughter of her Edmund’s uncle, Gen. Edmund Jeffreys. Consequently, they, and their five children who survived into adulthood (one daughter died at the age of 5) and the grandchildren, features relatively prominently in the Byron Collection

The manor and all the estate were sold and dispersed upon Edmund’s death in 1921 with his children as the primary inheritors.

The children of Edmund and Charlotte were:
Lucy (1868-1967), who married Theodore Hall Hall. They had one child, Owen.

Thomas (1869-1940), who did not marry. Emigrated to Canada.

Cecil (1870-1911), who married Katharine McAfee. They emigrated to Canada. Two children died in infancy; one son survived into adulthood, Arthur (1906-1984). Arthur wrote a family history, which was privately printed and a copy is held by Croydon Museum and Archives.

Eric (1875-1964), who married Margaret Daisy Robinson. Eric stayed in England; he is the main recipient of personal family letters held by the archive and he is the one who essentially amassed and preserved the Byron archives. He donated an important archive to the Museum of Croydon in 1934, AR384.
Eric and Margaret Daisy had three children. The oldest, Robert (1905-1941), did not marry. He was a renowned author of travel books, art historian and political campaigner; the second was Anne (1909-1977), who married Percy Charlesworth; and the youngest was Lucy (1912-2009). It was Lucy who took on custodianship of the archive.

Mary Eva (1880-1964), who married Charles Hilton. Eva was the youngest child of Edmund and Charlotte. Eva and Charles had no children.

Lucy Byron later married Ewan Butler (married 1934-1955) and Ewan’s brother, Rohan (married 1956); Lucy and Ewan had three daughters, the youngest of whom, Setitia (1946-2017), donated the archive (AR1057) to Croydon Museum over 2010-2012. Following her death, her husband, Anthony Simmonds, assumed any copyright issues relating to the Byron papers and archives.

Family trees are available in:
• Elliott, Nigel (2020) The Byrons of Coulsdon: Abroad and at Home, Bourne Society, Surrey, p.XIX.
• Scales, Ian (2000) ‘The Byrons of Coulsdon’ in Ian Scales (ed.) Bourne Society Village Histories 5: Coulsdon, Bourne Society, Surrey, p.48. These two family trees serve to complement each other in the periods covered. The volume by Elliott has a specific focus on the Byron archive, drawing extensively upon it.
• The Museum of Croydon holds a copy of a handwritten and comprehensive family tree running from the seventeenth century through to the 1970s/1990s, including the ties with the Jeffreys family. This was produced as a working research document and may be used in conjunction with the published family trees.
• Byron, Arthur (1982) A Short History of the Byron and Jeffrey Families, privately printed. This work may also be consulted for reference. The book is primarily text based rather than providing family trees but it takes the reader through the generations of these two families in a structured manner. A copy is held by the Museum of Croydon.

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