Little Holland House and the Dickinsons

The next open day of Little Holland House will be the 7th April – get ready for your visit with this introduction to the man who made it, Frank R Dickinson, written by our Archives volunteer, Paulette.

The 28th March commemorates the wedding anniversary of Frank R Dickinson and Florence Marriott, who married in 1904. Why is this significant, you may ask?  Well, whilst it marks 120 years to the day when this young couple married, it also marks the day they moved into their ‘dream home’ on Beechnut Tree Road in Carshalton, now Beeches Avenue.  The couple’s dream home was Little Holland House, which today is one of the borough’s three heritage house museums.  In honour of this significant anniversary, and to tie in with some of the work being done behind the scenes at Little Holland House and in the Archives, we thought that a mini blog series about the man behind one of our best loved local landmarks would be appropriate. 

Today’s piece is penned by one of our wonderful archives volunteer team, who has found herself recently enamoured of the project that is Little Holland House and the vision and people behind it. Over to Paulette, to tell you more about what she has been finding out…

Let me introduce myself.  My name is Paulette and I have been volunteering at The London Borough of Sutton Archives for around 8 or 9 years.  I originally worked on the Past on Glass project, digitising the Knights-Whittome photograph collection, and absolutely loved it.  Since that was completed around five years ago, I have been involved in a wide variety of Archive tasks, some more engaging than others! 

For the last few months I have been working on a completely absorbing project, transcribing (digitising) the typewritten memoir/autobiography of Frank Reginald Dickinson.

For those of you who don’t already know who Frank was, let me introduce you to him.  Many of you may have already visited Little Holland House in Beeches Avenue, Carshalton and marvelled at the skill and artistic talent of the man who designed and built his own house (with only the help of a bricklayer and one of his brothers), created and carved the internal woodwork, made the furniture, fixtures and fittings in the Arts and Crafts style and painted all the artwork inside.  The house is open on the first Sunday of each month and is well worth a visit (or a re-visit) to remind yourself just how wonderfully skilled he was.

His memoir is entitled DO IT YOURSELF by CHOICE or CHANCE a TRUE LIFE STORY and over the next few weeks/months I am hoping to make you better acquainted with Frank, his life and his great talent.

When I realised quite how often I was saying “listen to this” and reading extracts of the book out to my fellow workers, the seeds of a possible blog took root.

I have been transcribing his book as typed with all the mis-spellings and sometimes eccentric grammar and punctuation, included.  As a taster I am including Frank’s own Foreword to the book as typed:-

“These memoirs are the faithful record over a period of nearly eighty years of an imaginative and sentimental character from infancy to old age; from a very humble beginning of an errand boy to the eminance[sic] of an architect, an artist and a poet of later years as these memoirs show, and though this activity hass[sic] not brought me a fortune; it has achieved a wealth of happiness undreampt of; I therefore thought these experiences well worth recording as an example of what can be achieved by the most limited means, time and scholarship, as these records will show, in which both CHOICE and CHANCE have played their part.

The new action phrase, “Do IT YOURSELF” which has become so popular, seems a much appropiate[sic] title, for I am sure few could show more personal activities than these memiors[sic] show in the later chapters, and I will leave it to The Publishers to decide which title to use.”

Over the following blogs, I am going to be sharing some of my favourite excerpts from ‘Do It Yourself’, a phrase which we use so commonly these days but which is rarely so literally acted upon.  If you have an interest in Arts and Crafts, or even if you just have an interest in local history, watch this space for further instalments. You can also find out more information about how to visit this special house here.