Thomas Smith

Last week I finally went in search of the will of Thomas E Smith, whose printing factory launched Fleetville.  Finding the date of his death was not easy, for a start.  Enter Smith, Thomas,  London into any search engine and you are confronted with dozens of possibilities.  After much searching and cross referencing, I discovered that Mr Smith lived in a very grand house in Enfield; a house called Bycullah House, in Bycullah Road.  So there is our link to Bycullah Terrace in Fleetville!  According to the obituary in the local newspaper in Enfield he was a driven man, taking little rest and having a mountain of different interests.  One of them being the Liberal cause.  He had just returned by train from St Albans where he had been addressing a Liberal meeting, when he collapsed and died while running along the platform to catch the last train home at Kings Cross Station (today Enfield trains leave from Liverpool Street).  This occurred in February 1904.  I still have not discovered a photograph of the founder of Smith's Printing Works, and his Enfield house is no longer there.  It and the grounds in which it was set have long since been transformed into a housing estate.













Ian, who kindly provided that lovely photo of Branson's shop, on the corner of Harlesden Road and Burnham Road (now on the Photo Library page of the website) has sent two more locally relevant pictures.  Although no other information accompanied the pictures, shown here, it is likely that the Osborne advertisement was printed on the back of the admission ticket to the sports meeting, held in 1922.  Until the opening of Verulamium Park a considerable number of open air entertainments took place at Clarence Park.  Even through the 1950s the Co-operative Society held its annual family Co-operators' Days there.  The modern connection between bananas and sporting activity is clearly not so new.  Osborne, a fruiterer was in Hatfield Road, near the Methodist Church.  It later became Jagel's, fruiterers.  Now it is Connecting People, a recruitment agency.  The street number is now different, following a renumbering in 1932.

I have also received a tantalising glimpse inside the Kendall's shop in Bycullah Terrace, as it was when this final house in the parade was converted to a shop in the 1950s.  Thanks to Steve for sending it.  I am hoping he will be able to produce a higher resolution picture so that it can be further enlarged and enjoyed.






Finally, I have found one – just one – example of those cinema poster boards that could once be found.  Usually a red Odeon panel sat next to a blue Gaumont one; both cinemas being owned by the same parent company.  This 1959 example comes from Exeter.  Does anyone possess a photograph in which one or two of these boards appear?  Let's hope so, and of course, the film being advertised will help to date the photograph.