E is for Egmont

Our blog post today comes from one of our Search Room regulars and local historian, Ann Morton, who will be looking at Egmont Road, its origins and occupiers. Throughout the years, this street has been home to some highly interesting individuals, such as an artist and a physician, and demonstrates the impact of the wider context to our local stories. This piece has previously been published in the South Sutton Neighbourhood Association publication.

The Earls of Egmont

George Perceval, 6th Earl of Egmont

Charles George Perceval, 7th Earl of Egmont

Development started on the north side of Egmont Road in the 1880s as house-building spread up the Brighton Road, once railways and piped water had arrived in south Sutton. As John Hunt, on whose previous work this is based, pointed out, the road takes its name from the earls of Egmont (family name Perceval) who lived at Nork Park. Nork Hall or House was built in 1740 for Sir Christopher Buckle for use by his youngest son, Matthew. Following the latter’s death in 1784, the estate was let on a long lease to Charles George Perceval, 2nd Baron Arden, PC, FRS (1756-1840), and eventually sold to him in 1812. This was the same year that Spencer Perceval, the Prime Minister and Charles’ brother, was assassinated in the House of Commons by John Bellingham, a merchant frustrated by lack of compensation after imprisonment for debt in Russia.

The descent of the Irish Egmont earldom was complicated by several earls dying without issue. Charles’ son George, a future earl and inhabitant of Nork Park, started his career with a bang. George had a basic education at Harrow but, aged 11, persuaded his father to let him go to sea as a ‘first class naval volunteer’, classified as a rating, in July 1805. Charles had Admiralty connections and negotiated a place for George with Captain Edward Codrington on HMS Orion, a 74 gun third-rate ship. George, therefore, served at Trafalgar as a ‘powder monkey’. He later commanded HMS Infernal and was promoted to rear-admiral then vice-admiral and finally admiral in the 1860s.

George Perceval was returned to Parliament in 1837 as one of two representatives for Surrey West, a seat he held until 1840. That year, he succeeded his father in the barony of Arden and entered the House of Lords. The following year, he also succeeded his half-first cousin on removed, Henry, as sixth Earl of Egmont. Apart from his naval career, George was also chairman on the Royal Agricultural Society.

George’s nephew, Charles, succeeded in 1874, as the 7th Earl and was involved in local affairs. In the 1880s, when the first houses in Egmont Road were being built, The Morning Post records Charles chairing the annual dinner of the Sutton Conservative Association at Carshalton Public Hall. Later the same year, according to The Standard, he was rather incongruously appointed as chairman of the Working Men’s Constitutional Association at its inaugural meeting at The Cock Hotel in Sutton. He was also president of the Sutton District Fire Brigade.

The 1891 Census shows eleven properties in Egmont Road as well as Egmont House on the northern corner on Brighton Road. All the houses contained large families, with at least one member of live-in domestic staff. Occupations ranged from merchant’s clerk or tea broker to secretary to an Australian meat company, sea captain, or engineer. At this time, during the late Victorian period, the Perceval family was making complicated arrangements about their settled estates, which attracted legal proceedings. Because of these arrangements, an order was made in 1900 for an inventory of the heirlooms of the earldom to be deposited in the Supreme Court. The inventory mainly lists family portraits, including works by Lely, Lawrence, and Gainsborough, with 9 paintings retained by Lucy Lady Egmont during her lifetime but, sadly, no jewels or pearls are described.

Owners and Occupiers

The Adams Family

The Valuation Office Field Books from just before World War 1 show that properties in Egmont Road were developed by a variety of people – sometimes by individuals, perhaps by local builders like J B Potter (and his executors), or by other businesses like the Carshalton District Development Company. Luis Alwyn, a surveyor or consulting electrical engineer, sometime owner of property in Talbot Road, Carshalton and elsewhere in the parish, was the main shareholder in this company. Often a run of houses, perhaps two pairs of the large semis, were owned by the same people and rented out. One example of this was the four properties (Mountfield, Headingley, Arley, and Warden) belonging to the Misses Jane, Mary, and Ann Kyffin Adams.

The Adams family lived in north London. Henry Adams, the father of the three sisters, was born in Bethnal Green in 1814. He was a book-keeper at Truman’s brewery, originally in Brick Lane, and lived with his wife Elizabeth and ten children in Southgate. Henry died in 1881 and probate was granted to two of his nephews, Edward and Montgomery Adams. Edward, who also managed a brewery, had been living in Mulgrave Road in Sutton for at least ten years and perhaps he suggested to his unmarried Adams cousins that they invest in property in Egmont Road as it was being developed.

An Almoner

The 1939 Register (drawn up for rationing purposes at the start of WW2) reveals the various professional people who lived in the road. There were several with a medical background including a vet, doctors, and nurses, both private and registered. Dora Aubrey was described as a ‘lady almoner at a hospital’ and noted as ‘VAD Surrey 102′. The British Red Cross records show that she was an Assistant Commandant and was awarded a medal after 15 years’ service from 1925 to 1940. By coincidence, she lived with her family at Mountfield, originally owned by the Misses Adams, and in later life moved to number 50 with Lucinda Rice. Perhaps she had a role in the school Lucinda ran.

Dr Fritz Apt and his wife

Other aspects of WW2 were also reflected in the residents of Egmont Road. Dr Fritz Werner Israel Apt was described in the 1939 Register as a ‘qualified German pharmaceutical chemist (unemployed refugee)’ and his wife, Lisa Claire Sara Apt, as a ‘correspondent for German and French (unemployed refugee)’. Fritz was born in Berlin in 1890, the same year as Dora Aubrey, and Lisa was a native of Vienna. At the beginning of the war, all Germans and Austrians over 16 had to attend a tribunal to be given their security classification: high, doubtful, or none. However, after the fall of France in May / June 1940, Churchill gave the famous order to ‘Collar the Lot’ and most Germans were rounded up and interned.

The Apts are both listed in the Home Office Internees Index. Lisa’s card shows that she was declared ‘exempt from internment’ in November 1939 and that she ‘does not desire to be repatriated’. Her normal occupation is given as ‘married’. Fritz, on the other hand, was initially interned at Huyton Camp in Liverpool. Huyton, an incomplete housing estate, was used as a transit centre for internees being taken to the Isle of Man. He was released from Huyton in October 1940 to the house in Egmont Road. After the war, Fritz applied for naturalisation and the Home Office Aliens Department created a personal file on him, which is closed for 100 years on grounds of sensitivity. If there is also a file on Lisa, it will be attached to her husband’s file. Fritz was granted naturalisation in September 1947.

Local Artist

The large house at the junction of Egmont Road and Brighton Road was the former home of the local artist Elva Blacker. She featured in an exhibition at Whitehall and then at Cheam Library. Elva was born in 1908 and took over her father’s photographic business but her real love was painting. She began studying in the evenings later becoming a full time student at the Slade in 1936. She was called up in 1942 and joined the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, serving at Biggin Hill where she continued sketching and painting. Elva was a committed vegetarian with broad interests and travelled widely during her life but continued to spend time in Sutton where she was an influential figure in the Sutton Arts Council, persuading Graham Sutherland, another Sutton resident, to become its President. She was a friend of Lilian Baylis and knew Sybil Thorndike.

We are fortunate that her sketchbook was saved from a skip outside her house after she died in 1984. It is fragile but contains many local views; most pages are annotated with the date and a description of the subject. [Information on Elva was researched by pupils at Nonsuch High School and volunteers at Whitehall – see their post here.]

Dr George Rice

Dr George Rice (1848-1935) was a celebrated and much respected African-American physician who worked in Sutton from the 1880s. He married Florence Mary Cook in 1881 then moved to Sutton in 1884 so that he could take up the position of Resident Medical Officer at the South Metropolitan District School, situated on Brighton Road. In 1917, George, Florence, and their daughter Lucinda, moved to 50 Egmont Road, where George worked as District Medical Officer for Sutton and Cheam, until close to his death, aged 86 in 1935. His daughter, Lucinda, ran a preparatory school from the house in Egmont Road from 1938. [Please note; this information was provided by Ann and used in a blog post published by volunteers at Whitehall – see their post here – but is not the original piece from the South Sutton Neighbourhood Association newsletter.]