Facebook post #033 (Sep 2020)
I’ve finished my survey of in-laws and of third cousins! To round off, I’m working on a geographic summary… Why on earth are Croydon and Barnsley so magnetic?
This week, Robert Harris announced his new WW2 novel, V2, featuring the world’s first long-range guided ballistic missile. This was the biggest thing ever to hit South London! (see my photo from last year). The area had been sporadically bombed by plane but the rockets brought terror. When I was young, a relative told me of the rough sound doodlebug V1’s made – and the fear when the fuel ran out and the engine stopped. But the V2 was supersonic and no one heard it coming. One hit Woolworth’s in New Cross and killed 168 people.
There were dozens of the Knight branch of my family living all over Norwood (Croydon and Lambeth) at the time – right underneath the onslaught. I worked out that 344 flying bombs fell on houses in their neighbourhoods (CR, SE17+ and SW2/16 postcodes), and 712 people were killed. 1600 houses were destroyed in the Borough of Lambeth, and 35,000 were repaired during the war. Properties were requisitioned and people billeted in Lambeth Rest Centres, and other people’s homes. Among the streets badly impacted were Tivoli Road. Gipsy Hill and St Clouds Road – all of them home to the family. So too was Knights Hill Square, where the charcoal burners’ cottages that had survived interwar housing development, were destroyed. St Luke’s Church, scene of dozens of family baptisms and marriages, was damaged; nearby Georgian homes destroyed. Norwood Cottage Hospital was damaged; so was the Cemetery.
Knight’s Hill was named after the family but my closest relatives came in from Dorking. Chawton House was the seat, and the owner gave £50 towards the fleet to defeat the Spanish Armada. Our Solomon was a house builder though, rather than a house inheritor. On the whole the family was decidedly working class, the southern equivalent of the Barnsley Green’s in my ‘Kes’ post (#016). There were tram conductors, window cleaners, factory hands, clerks, carmen (think ‘white van man’). There were road repairers: one drove a steam roller for the council and I found a pic of the team. I think I detect a little pride in occupations like ‘public librarian’. One of the family worked as a porter at a railway station serving Crystal Palace.
I mentioned before (post #010) the importance of the Crystal Palace (see our page). There were six million admissions to the Great Exhibition (see our page), including train loads of working class Londoners (part of the Charles Dickens ‘heterogeneous masses’ (see post #021)). I managed to obtain a copy of the catalogue of thousands of the 100,000 items exhibited, including the Coalbrookdale swan fountain (see post #027). After Paxton moved the Palace to Sydenham, enlarged it, and set it in its own extensive pleasure grounds, the Crystal Palace dominated the area. The self-esteem of the area rocketed, and it provided considerable local employment. Not only was there motor racing but, vitally, the oldest and finest football club in the world was established at Crystal Palace.
Less than three years before the war broke out, the Crystal Palace burned to the ground. It is still mourned. However, the prehistoric monsters survived (see my photo), the National Sports Centre was built, and my parents took me to the concert bowl for firework music in the early 1970s.
A whole lot more on the blog.
