Hi Everyone,
I posted a few messages a while back re: Parkfield Ladies College, Parkfield House, Perry Vale. Marianne Strickland took over the school in 1874 and ran it until 1886. I am researching her life and family history. She later went on to run a school in north London- our house!
Anyway, I posited the theory that Perry Vale got renumbered and Parkfield House became 70-72 Perry Vale and that it later became Parkfield Garage, site (for a while at least) of the legendary P.V. Motorcycle Co. and then became the depot for the Enterprise Transport Co. Ltd, an omnibus company with 5/6 buses!
A girls school that ended up as a bus garage...yeah, right! My theory was met with stony disbelief.....(or was it disinterest?) If I was right these premises were a few yards due north of Vale Lodge, and were demolished after bomb damage in WW2.
Ha, well I have been completely vindicated ! And my research has led to two dramatic stories. One of unimaginable tragedy and one of unimaginable cruelty!
In 1886 Marianne Strickland sold the school to a German woman, Mrs Sophia Brodbeck. The deal turned bad resulting in a court case that Marianne lost. I visited the National Archives to research the court files. In doing so I discovered that the landlord of Parkfield House was a William Smith -not an easy name to research.
I had found out about the omnibus company (Enterprise Transport Co. Ltd) having Googled "70-72 Perry Vale", but couldn't get any further with it. That was until I discovered the joys of Googlebooks...on Google you have different search options: Images, Maps etc. Go along to "More". Click on it and a drop down list appears. Click on "Books". Google have scanned tens of thousands of books from around the world. Some you can view cover to cover. Some only allow you a letterbox sample view. Using this and searching for "Enterprise Transport Company" led me to a specialist book, "London's Buses- The Independent Era, 1922-34" by Blacker, Lunn and Westgate. I have now seen this in the British Library.
Here is what I found:
For the last six years (c.1927-33) of its existence, Enterprise Transport occupied 70-72 Perry Vale, leasing the property from an Emma Torr Smith. So Parkfield House, formerly a ladies' boarding school leased from William Smith (see above) had morphed by 1927 into an omnibus depot leased from Emma Torr Smith, who, it turns out, was William Smith's daughter.
The Tragedy:
In the late summer of 1858 the Smiths and their in-laws the Torrs were holidaying at Worthing. It was decided that the children should take a boat trip along the coast under the supervision of their various nannies. Mr Torr had made the arrangements, hiring the "Mary Eliza", a small pleasure yacht. The vessel was manned by Edwin Blann and Jacob Tester, two experienced men. Possibly due to a sudden gust the boat got into difficulties and capsized. The Torr family lost three children and the Smith family five children. Also drowned were Clementina Jackson aged four, the boat's master, Mr Blann and his wife Ellen, and Ann Henns. At some point after this tragedy William Smith and his much depleted family moved into Parkfield House, and it was here that his wife died on the 18th of September 1863.
The Slavery:
Emma Torr Smith was born in 1853 and would have been six at the time of this terrible event. It is not known whether she was on board, but it is very probable that she was. How this seaside trauma, and the later death of her mother when she was 10, and the years of family grief affected her is uncertain. But perhaps a court case of 1932 offers a clue......
The plaintiff was a Sarah Laura Turner, a domestic servant aged 36. The defendant was Emma Torr Smith. It was alleged that Miss Smith had kept Miss Turner as a prisoner and slave for thirteen years at her house, Oak Lawn in Beulah Hill, South Norwood! Emma and her friend Kathleen Crowther subjected Sarah Laura Turner to systematic mental and physical cruelty and humiliation, keeping her under lock and key in a room so stiffling that she had to keep her face to the gaps in the floorboards to breath. The supposedly Christian minded Miss Smith made her sleep on a broken iron bed and denied her any heating whatever the weather. Much to the annoyance of the judge, who would have been only too happy to sentence Emma Torr Smith to a custodial sentence, the dispute was settled out of court.
My quest for images of Parkfield House goes on. If any one has any suggestions, please let me know. A sliver of it when it was PV Motorcycles is just visible in a Forest Hill book by (I think)Coulter and Seaman. Like many a victorian property this is an add-on shop front extension and would not have been there in its former days as a school.
The omnibus company was run by Thomas Edward Greenwood, his brother-in-law, James Tovey Hart and another relative Edward Chapman. I guess that descendents might just have further info on this building and it's history.
Paul
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