CAN YOU BEAT ‘T H E CHIDDICKS’ CHALLEN GE ’?

DISCOVER THE HISTORY ON YOUR DOORSTEP

We hope you have been enjoying the #StoryOfOurStreet project, which has hopefully inspired you with lots of ideas, to help you research your own street, or the street of one of your ancestors. In August, Paul Chiddicks set you a challenge, ‘The Chiddicks Challenge’, to discover – could you beat his family’s record of living on one street for over 83 years?

Well, as ever, our readers never let us down when it comes to challenges. To say you beat my record is an understatement – you smashed it completely! From shops, houses and even public houses, it seems that some of our ancestors never ventured far and many properties stayed in the same family for centuries!

So let us begin the #StoryOfOurStreet.

A post-war purchase

Reader Susan Hora starts us off with her family home in Reading, which was purchased by her parents in 1945. The family moved further along the same road in 1950 and remained in the same house until 2013. 63 years in the same house and 68 years on the same road, which was to feature later in a book.

Still going strong

Next up is Richard Burgess and his parents’ house in New Malden in Essex. Richard’s parents moved into the family home in November 1939 and paid the grand sum of 18s/6d rent per week. Richard himself was born in the house and although he technically hasn’t beaten my record of 83 years quite yet, his sister is still living in the same house today, so should easily beat my record.

Those precious deeds

Reader Robert Brigden’s family, first moved into their house in Rutland Park, in Catford in London, just after his grandparents were married in 1912. Robert’s grandparents later bought the leasehold of the house in December 1919 and Robert has copies of the deeds which shows that his grandfather borrowed the £225 mortgage from the Bermondsey Co-operative Building Society. The house stayed in the family’s hands, until Robert’s mother moved out in 1999, a grand total of 87 years in the Brigden family.

Family home courtesy Robert Brigden

A hop across the pond

Jean McKenny takes us across the pond, with her great-aunt, Elsie Cahoon, who lived in the same house in Pleasant Lake Village, Harwich Massachusetts from her birth in 1902, until she sadly passed away in 1990, a grand total of 88 years living in the same house. Many of Jean’s extended family, also lived on the same street for a number of years, a real family community.