Water Pipe and Manhole Cover Albany Road In St Paul’s Conservation Area. History Pipe situated near the chip shop. No one seems positive what it is it is likely to have been a water pipe – perhaps turned on from the metal bit in the pavement and there may have been a canvas pipe from the end to fill a water cart from the days … Continue reading Albany Curios
Long established family shopkeepers are difficult to find in towns today. But in Brentford, if you wander around the Victorian terraced back streets, a small handful of them still open their doors for business every day – a tradition that dates back generations.
Greengrocer, Bill Daubney, aged 65, is one whose name has been above his shop in Brook Road South for the last 46 years, and could conjure up an entire panorama of Brentford as fresh as his vegetables.
Bill produced two oval gilt framed portraits of his parents, “I only found them the other day” he said. He recalled that the pictures cost 24 shillings each. “My mother paid 6d a week for them” he said.
Bill, his parents and seven brothers and sisters , lived in a small cottage in Albany Road, one street away from where he works now.
His father was a greengrocer, and his grandfather worked in the fish trade. Both were born and bred in Brentford. Continue reading “Daubney’s Greengrocers, 45 Brook Road”
In 1872 there was a major sale of the cultivated land between Albany Road and the railway.
The piece of land that is now the south side of the football ground was bought for £580 by John Carpenter who lived at Brook House on the north west corner. This was Lot 19 and described as ‘enclosed on all sides nearly with substantial fruit walls, well stocked with fine standard and other fruit trees, also four division and two cross walls all well clothed with choice fruit trees, a packing shed and a well of water’. Brook House looks to have been quite a large house with a formal garden but there don’t seem to be any pictures of it. (Unless any readers can provide one!)
Mr Carpenter had been born in Sussex in 1814 and by the time of the 1841 census had a business as an ‘oilman’ at 52, High Street. He was married with 5 children. This business was described as ‘oil and colour trade’ by 1861 and he was also shown in directories as a ‘rag and general merchant’. Continue reading “Brook Road South – Brook House”
In 1837, a few months after Victoria became Queen, a piece of land between Brook Lane and Drum Lane (now Ealing Road) was for sale. It was described as 4 acres of partly walled Market Garden Ground and it contained ‘Three Respectable, residences, a cottage and numerous outbuildings’.
The map with the notice of sale shows that the buildings were near the present site of the Griffin. There’s a bend in Brook Lane to the left which is still there and the brook runs as an open stream along the west side of the road. Continue reading “Brook Road South – Market Gardening”
The History of Brentford 