Three things you didn't know about Hewitt Road's past

I stumbled across an interesting snippet about Hewitt Road recently and before I knew it I'd come across a few more (setting aside, for the time being, all consideration of it having been the site of Harringay House).

The first of the three subtitles below should be read in your best Edith Evans-as-Lady-Bracknell voice as she shares her stunned disbelief at where baby Jack Worthing was found.

1. A Cigarette Factory

Number 1 Hewitt Road was built by William Davis, one of the Davis brothers who between them bought and developed around a hundred houses on the Ladder (See the discussion that follows this thread for more on the Harringay Davises). 

Davis and his wife stayed at the house till 1906 or 1907 and were followed by Robert H Carrell, his mother Charlotte and his sister Matilda. Tobacco seemed to somewhat have run in the family. Charlotte and her husband had run a coffee house in Vauxhall Bridge Road, before switching to running a tobacconist business in Woolwich. By 1881 the family were in Middleton Road, Dalston and Matilda was described as a cigarette manufacturer, employing 9 people. Brother Robert was described as the manager of the business. Twenty years on, the threesome had arrived at 15 Beresford Road by which time both siblings were described as cigarette manufacturers.

I had no reason to associate their trade with any of their places of residence: that is until the appearance five years after they'd arrived in Hewitt Road of the mysterious East Ender Emma Yarnton. Quite who she was and what her relationship to the business was, I have been unable to discern, but I began to get the sense that perhaps she had some background in cigarette manufacture and had been brought in to shake things up a little. She certainly seems to have done so. Emma apparently took a leading hand in the business and she began to secure a limited presence of the cigarette manufacturing business in the press for the first time - always good news for the historian!

A 1911 article in the 1st April issue of the War Office Times and Naval Review journal, about Emma and the business entitled, "High Class Cigarettes for the Army and Navy: A Lady Cigarette Maker", suggested a business with a little more profile than I'd expected. After awkwardly explaining away how a lady might be heading up the operation, through one might imagine much mumbling and throat-clearing, the author goes on the declare that "The cigarettes manufactured by Miss Yarnton, the Lady Cigarette Maker ... leave nothing to be desired. We should be inclined to describe them as the ne plus ultra in cigarettes". (Of course one would expect nothing else of Hewitt Road cigarettes!) He goes on to offer an overview the company and the product.

Miss Yarnton makes both Turkish and Virginia Cigarettes. Her Turkish Cigarettes are manufactured from carefully selected pure Dubec tobaccos of the finest quality obtainable, blended by an expert blender of over 30 years' experience. The Virginia Cigarettes are prepared from the finest Virginia tobaccos grown. Miss Yarnton's, unlike most other Virginia Cigarettes, are distinguished by a delicate, mild, alluring flavour.  All her cigarettes are hand-made by English girls, under her direct supervision. The factory is situated in one of the healthiest London's Northern suburbs, and no of suspicion need, accordingly, be entertained by the smokers of these cigarettes as to the surroundings amidst which they are made. Having ourselves witnessed the process of making these cigarettes we can vouch for the fact that they are manufactured in an absolutely hygienic manner, and that the utmost care is taken throughout the whole process to ensure that no dust, grit, or foreign matter of any kind shall enter into the composition of the cigarettes

At the time Hornsey Council had been successful is getting Hornsey known as 'Healthy Hornsey'. So, no doubt the journalist was playing on that when he explained that "factory is situated in one of the healthiest London's Northern suburbs". With this article, I started to think that with its large garden including a  separate small brick building, 1 Hewitt Road was perhaps a manufacturing base as well as a residential one for the Carrells / Yarntons. An advertisement in the same journal a few months later reinforced that idea.

Advertisement for Yarnton's Cigarettes, July, 1911

Then I found another advert in The Field magazine which suggested even more strongly that the cigarettes were made in Hewitt Road. It finishes "Direct from Factory, Yarnton House, Hewitt Road".

Advertisement for Yarnton's Cigarettes, March , 1911

Thanks to the kindness of strnagers I've been able to visit the small building to the side of Number 1 and I feel satisfied that it could have served as a small factory. Its flat roof could have been constructed to let in the maximum light and why would you put large windows in a building if it were not to use it as a workshop of some kind.

The probable cigarette factory premises at 1 Hewitt Road

To put the Hewitt Road operation in context, at the beginning of the twentieth century there were about 500 tobacco manufacturers in the United Kingdom.

Cigarettes had begun to be smoked in this country in the early 1850's, when British officers serving in the Crimean War are reputed to have been introduced to them by the French and the Turks. The first British cigarette factory was opened in Walworth in 1856. The cigarettes smoked in this country were all of the "Turkish" variety until about 1870 when some firms began to produce cigarettes made from flue-cured Virginia leaf which had recently become available. British smokers liked the mild flavour of these Virginia cigarettes, and from this time onwards cigarette smoking became increasingly popular.

In the 1880's the manufacture. of cigarettes, which until then had been made by hand, was revolutionised by an American invention, the Bonsack cigarette machine.

In 1900 there were about 500 tobacco manufacturers in the United Kingdom. By this point, a large proportion of the cigarettes manufactured in the United Kingdom were machine made.* Emma Yarnton, who probably couldn't afford a Bonsack, made merit of the hand manufacture of her cigarettes.

Of course it's possible that I'm colluding in being misled by the scant information I have on the Carrell / Yarnton operation and the history of cigarette manufacture and it may be that their cigarettes were made in some godforsaken hole in Dalston, but there does seem to be enough clues for me to come to the inescapable conclusion that 1 Hewitt Road was the unlikely base for a small-scale cigarette manufacturer.

Whatever the truth of the matter,  both Matilda Carrell and Emma Yarnton were co-listed as living at 1 Hewitt Road till the early 1930s. By the end of 1933, the Oddfellow's had taken possession and it became the base for their Loyal Pride of Clerkenwell Lodge. Whilst formal use of the house as a Lodge ceased earlier this century, the Society retain ownership to this day and the property is let off as flats.

2. Hewittville

The most westerly house on Hewitt Road is the last one on the south side of the road before the junction with Wightman Road. Numbered 2a, it's neighbour, where you might expect to find number 4 is in fact number 2.

The other day, I stumbled across an item which revealed that for the first years of its life the house went by the name "Hewittville", an unusual addition to the more run-of-the-mill Victorian / Edwardian house names. 

If you walk along Hewitt Road, you may have already noticed that 2A is a bit different to all the other houses on the street. It's a bit wider and has a different style of covered porch to all the other houses. Looked at from the back, you can see that it has three, what look like original, floors in the back addition.

Hewitt Road was fully built up before the end of the century.....fully built up that is apart from one plot, the site of 'Hewittville'. That plot had been bought from the British Land Company in May 1892 by one William Samuel Griggs. He later bought from local builder William Davis, 2 Hewitt Road and 9 Stanley Villas (168 Wightman Road), where he lived for a few years.

Sometimes it's possible to guess at why a house was given a particular name. With this one I can't: there are no clues.  As far as I can work out, the only place  Griggs ever lived in Harringay was Wightman Road. I can find no trace of him at 'Hewitville'. In the census returns I can find for him, he is described as a 'Hatter's Manager'. This may explain why, after leaving Wightman Road, he moved to 46, Piccadilly, home to Woodrow, the 'by appointment' hatters for upper crust 'sporting hats and other headgear'. I'm assuming that Griggs lived over 'the shop'.

Woodrow, 46 Piccadilly, 1940

3. Number 123: Early home of council member of Social Democratic Federation

The Social Democratic Federation was established as Britain's first organised socialist political party in 1881. By 1905, 123 Hewitt Road was hone to G. W, Harstead, the secretary of the Tottenham branch. The house was regularly used for branch meetings.

It's odd what you find out about the ground under your feet when you dig around a little.

Notes

* I could find few readily accessible sources for a history of cigarette manufacture in the UK. What little I did find came via the Report on the Supply of Cigarettes and Tobacco and of Cigarette and Tobacco Machinery, published by the Monopolies Commission' in  July, 1961.