Honeywood Heritage Centre UK Ancestry Info

Friday 23 November 2007

The first date is when this site was created.

Update 22 November 2010

This site is being replaced via

http://www.gastronomyafharrison.co.uk/page215.php

It says there that it is a hidden page within my Gastronomy website due to better legibility of documents. Some have been posted to this site you are reading now but some are less than perfect. Some links on this site have become unusable and you would be best served by using the new link above.

New material has been added and if you have been to this site before you can find the new items.

Use the slider on the right and go down about one fifth of the long kitchen-roll. Look for

Update 22 November 2010

Alan Harrison - ne Edwards

end of update

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Honeywood in Carshalton Surrey, is now the Heritage Centre for Sutton Council. It has its own web site at

http://www.friendsofhoneywood.co.uk/
It's a good introduction and you can tour the rooms and exterior from the panel on the left.

It was the country house of a rich London merchant as the 20th century emerged. A pen and photo picture is attempted in this site. A hundred photos should be enough!

Honeywood is a listed building overlooking Carshalton's picturesque town ponds. Its heritage centre uses objects, words and pictures to represent major themes relating to the history of the London Borough of Sutton.

A restored 1903 billiard room doubles as an audio-visual introduction to the Carshalton area. There is also a Tudor Gallery, a Childhood Room with Edwardian toys, a Wandle River display, and an art gallery with changing exhibitions.

A programme of special events is held throughout the year. It is used for visits from local schools.

Look under "Historic Houses" (an extract appears below - "A Brief History") and explore other avenues when you have finished.

For an interesting sketch of Carshalton and a good picture of Honeywood three-quarters the way down the site, go to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carshalton

An example of exhibitions at Honeywood can be found at

http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/ceramics/pages/honeywood.asp

This site includes paintings from the past and give some of the atmosphere of the locality.

http://www.sutton.gov.uk/leisure/heritage/Carshalton/williamtattonwinter.htm

The next three sites are photo albums and give detail of Honeywood and the families.

The first two are about Honeywood. Neither of these is intended for people within a twenty or so mile radius who can go to Honeywood. Much better that they go along and see for themselves.

Click the link and then the Introductory photos. Those seen, use the back-arrow before clicking the main collection.

http://alanharrison7.googlepages.com/ancstrylinkpage

You will see the name Leslie Edwards in the third site and he was born at Honeywood in 1900.

That album tells some of the story. John Kirk owned Honeywood and adopted Leslie's mother when she was a child.

The name "alanharrison" occurs in the links and he was born Edwards in 1941. He never knew his father, Leslie and saw a photo for the first time in the mid 1980s.

Click this link then the "occupants" link.

http://alanharrison7.googlepages.com/ancstrylinkpage

To get back to this Honeywood Ancestry page, click the top link.

The local newspaper to Carshalton is the Sutton Guardian. "Carshaltoner's Story" can be read if you skate down to it.

That story includes mention of someone who lived at Honeywood as a child from 1939. Her story can be found later under "Childhood Memories of Honeywood".

As luck would have it, someone in Nuneaton entered a certain name into Google and found Carshaltoner's story in the local newspaper. Alan Harrison was contacted in October 2007 and two branches of a family sharing the same great-grandmother now know each other.

Carshaltoner's Story included mention of Leslie Edwards having three sons but the new family informed him there were only two. He now has a wealth of information and photos relating to his past.

Anyone with anything of interest is invited to contact him -

mailto:avrf23@dsl.pipex.com

If no email facility etc, just go to Honeywood and tell the staff - everyone is interested.

John Pattinson Kirk

New information has come to light in December 2007, via the London Gazette.

For the first time, we now know the name of John's company.
The London Gazette of 11 December gives that the company was photographic apparatus dealers. John and three others and one Leon Marion traded as Marion and Co. We will presume this was not the only company John was involved in.
Go to this link to see for yourself.
http://www.gazettes-online.co.uk/ViewPDF.aspx?pdf=26114&geotype=London&gpn=7006&type=ArchivedIssuePage&all=&exact=john%20pattinson%20kirk&atleast=&similar=
The Honeywood researchers, in 2006 and earlier, were of the opinion that John had a large house in Soho. It may well have been 22 or 23 Soho Square. These are mentioned in the London Gazette.
The researchers had previously written in "Honeywood - a brief history" (see later) the following
"In the 1881 census he (((John Kirk)))) is described as a merchant, but we do not know what goods he dealt in....Kirk had a town house in Soho Square, London and probably used Honeywood as a country retreat."
Perhaps we now know where. We also know what goods he dealt in. However, there is no evidence to date to limit those goods to photography.
The date of his death is important and his will has been located. It was 20 June 1913. The declaration of his death is at
http://www.gazettes-online.co.uk/ViewPDF.aspx?pdf=28758&geotype=London&gpn=6732&type=ArchivedIssuePage&all=&exact=john%20pattinson%20kirk&atleast=&similar=
John's death certicate has been located and he died of "Fatty degeneration of the heart".

Hugh Lee Pattinson ...
..... was a man of renown and may have been a friend of John Kirk in Alston, Cumbria. To explore that possibility, go to

http://honeywoodlinktohughpattinson.blogspot.com/

Although Hugh and John are not directly linked, the site has been developed to give a word picture and photo-picture of their age and locality.

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Honeywood - a brief history - from a website above

London Borough of Sutton Civic Offices St. Nicholas Way Sutton SM1 1EA 020 8770 5000

Honeywood is the Borough's Heritage Centre. It stands at the end of Honeywood Walk, Carshalton on the west bank of Carshalton Ponds. The earliest surviving part of Honeywood is a small chalk and flint chequer-work building which is incorporated into the centre of the present house. It consists of the present shop and first tea-room, the hall and the tiny kitchen to the rear of the tea-room. This building probably dates from the mid-17th century.

An early 17th century map of Carshalton shows the house site crossed by streams flowing from a line of springs along the edge of Pound Street, just within the present garden. Houses are not usually built in streams, and it is possible that the original building was originally a cold bath or a mill. Chalk and flint chequer-work is now rare but appears to have been a fairly common building method in this area in the 16th and 17th centuries. There were two chequer-work buildings in nearby Cheam High Street until they were demolished between the wars.

The chalk-and-flint ‘Honeywood’ was 'L'-shaped in plan. A bay window had been added to the front by 1848, and a new two-storey extension was built at the back, in the angle of the 'L’, between 1848 and 1868. The existing staircase is also 19th century.

The deeds to Honeywood show that by 1779 there were two houses standing side by side at the west end of the ponds. Our building was the northernmost of the two, and in the mid-19th century it was called 'Wandle Cottage'. The other house stood between our building and Pound Street and was then called 'Honeywood'.

In 1883 the freehold of both properties came into the hands of a man called John Pattinson Kirk, who had already acquired leases on both of them. Very little is known about Kirk. He was born at Alston in Cumberland around 1836 and his wife Leah was born in Birmingham in 1856. In the 1881 census he is described as a merchant, but we do not know what goods he dealt in.

Kirk had a town house in Soho Square, London and probably used Honeywood as a country retreat. He demolished the original Honeywood around 1883/4 and c.1895 he transferred the name to our building, which has been called 'Honeywood' ever since.

Early photographs show that in the 1870s and 1880s our Honeywood had a weather-boarded extension against the north side. In 1896 Kirk had this demolished and replaced by the present brick north wing. This appears to have been built as a service area. There was a scullery at the back of the ground floor, while the front (now the second tea-room) appears to have been a store. This was perhaps a substitute for a cellar since one could not be excavated because of the high water-table.

In 1903, Kirk made a major addition to Honeywood by adding the large Edwardian wing to the south end. This was pebbledashed and decorated in mock Tudor style.

By great good fortune a photocopy of the plans has survived in the collections of the Beddington, Carshalton and Wallington Archaeological Society. These are dated February 1902, and are marked 'H. Wakeford & Sons, 167 Clapham Road, London'. They show the use of the rooms in the extension and the adjacent parts of the house.

The ground floor of the extension contained a magnificent Billiards room and drawing room, while the first floor had extra bedrooms and a nursery. This extension turned Honeywood into a well-appointed upper middle-class house. The extension includes a large nursery.

As Kirk was about 67 in 1903 it is likely that Honeywood was being turned into a family home for his adopted daughter Lily and her husband, Henry Edwards.John Pattinson Kirk died in 1913.

The adopted daughter, Lily Kirk Edwards, outlived her husband and in 1939 she sold the house to Carshalton Urban District Council, who used it for various social and community purposes. During 1989-90 it was converted into a Heritage Centre, which opened on 6 December 1990. In 1999-2000 the interior was repainted following the 1903 decorative scheme as closely as possible. The original colour scheme was recovered by carefully scraping back the paint in a series of small sample areas.

Looking for Kirks and Edwards

The 1851 England Census shows George Kirk, age 60 living in Alston in Cumbria. His occupation was Woollen Draper. The only information regarding origin is SCT - i.e. from Scotland.

George Kirks’s wife, Margaret is shown as 51 and was born in Cumberland.

The others shown are

John Pattinson Kirk – scholar
Mary Kirk
a servant – name immaterial

Margaret Kirk was baptised on May 5, 1800 in Alston – her father was John Pattinson – a Parish Clerk. Her mother was Mary, daughter of John and Agnes Dickinson. It may turn out that the father was related to Hugh Pattinson who worked on a process for extracting silver from lead. It follows, as Alston was a mining community.

Mary Kirk was born on 23 July 1837. In the 1881 Census, she is shown as Head of Household, age 43 and a draper and grocer. We can reasonably conclude that she was not married.

John Kirk was baptised in Alston on 8 July 1835 and died in 1913. In censuses he is shown as a chemist (industrial?). Information has come in that he had interests in African gold mines – was that the source of his money to finance a large central London House and Honeywood?

He adopted Carshaltoner's paternal grandmother, Matilda Susannah Benton and changed her name to Lily Kirk.

She later changed identity again and married Henry Edwards. They had two sons, Leslie Kirk Edwards (1900) and Kenneth Edwards (probably 1902. Kenneth had a daughter – April.

Leslie Edwards was Carshaltoner’s father. The latter was born in the early 1940s.

John Kirk’s wife was Leah. She was Matilda Benton’s sister. Within all the photos in the albums, it is odd that wife Leah is not there. No marriage records have been located.

Anyone with information, questions etc – please contact

mailto:avrf23@dsl.pipex.com [

or just go along to Honeywood – staff there are always interested.

This site was updated on 22 November 2010 with news that April Edwards and her brother Malcolm have been found.

Childhood Memories of Honeywood

We moved to Honeywood during the summer of 1939. My father was appointed caretaker of the building and also Queen’s Well (now the old Peoples Home.) Honeywood was chiefly used as a Social Club

Honeywood was purchased by the Council for about £6,000 I believe, from a Mrs. Edwards who lived there for many years with her husband and three sons. The husband died some years prior to 1939 I don’t ever remember being told when.

At least two of the sons got into debt by gambling. Eventually the debts became so heavy that they were given money and told to leave the country. One went to Canada, but returned and called on us at Honeywood alleging to be looking for his mother, saying he had lost touch with her, but believed she was ill and had been calling for him.

We knew she lived at Wynash Flats, but was a sad little figure who had seen better days. We told the son we didn’t know where she was. Honeywood had been empty for a considerable time when we moved in and some decoration was needed then.

I remember a large photo album containing pictures of Honeywood as it was at the turn of the Century. The gardens looked so lovely and the ladies in their long dresses walking about the garden standing looking at the flowers. The greenhouse also was in such good condition then. I do wonder what happened to that album. Is it in the archives?

Queen’s Well was used as an A.R.P Headquarters and I remember all the staff who worked there. Some Air raid equipment was also stored at Honeywood. We had the long gloves in case of a gas attack. These were hung in the room on the left up the stairs and were known as “Kippers”

There were helmets, leggings and boots and even gas masks. This part of the building was later turned into a flat and various people occupied it. A Mr. and Mrs. XXXX lived there for some time. He worked for the Council but later moved to Billericay Council.

Various functions were held in Honeywood including 21st Birthday Parties (my late brother and I had ours there, also our Wedding Receptions) It was the Counting House for many Flag days and I can recall my father piling up the sacks of money with many hundreds of pounds – into his wheelbarrow and taking it across the road to Barclays Bank! Could you do that today?

The Carshalton Education Department started at Honeywood. Upstairs , the two attics were occupied by the typists, the room beneath by the then Education Officer and his clerk. The room up the stairs and to the left was also used by the Education Dept., All the staff were so pleasant and hard working, yet so vastly different.

I lived there from 1939-50 (I married in 1949) but was unable to find a flat until September 1950. My parents remained there until October 1956 when ill-health forced my father to retire.

When I heard that The London Borough of Sutton were thinking of making Honeywood into a Heritage Centre, I thought what a marvellous idea. The place itself is so historic – it’s just right.

Did you know there was a well with 1776 on it? It was in the kitchen. Is it still visible?

I personally hadn’t been back there until early in 1992. A friend of mine made a suggestion that may be I would like to see it again and she would accompany me. During our visit we went into the restaurant part. It has been decorated and redesigned so well it’s difficult for me to realise that the part we sat in was once used for storing coal.

Before that – many years ago - it was I believe the servant’s entrance and dining hall. There used to be a row of bells on the wall for summoning the servants to whichever room they were required.

If any of what I have written is of interest, help or use to you then I am pleased.

For me personally, my time at Honeywood was the time of growing up – I was 12 in 1939 – and I look back on it with love and affection,

In the bungalow in which I now live, I have a very beautiful embroidered picture of Honeywood, worked by a close friend; also a painting of the place, so I can never forget it.

I paid one last nostalgic visit to Honeywood before leaving Carshalton in August 1992. This was during the last week. The previous Monday evening A former colleague rang me in connection with a letter I had written to the local paper in January 1991.

She used to be a typist for the Education Dept., at Honeywood and wondered if I had been back recently! We arranged to meet there and go over it together. A wonderful reunion for us both.

February 1995

Published in the Sutton Guardian

Since this was published it has been established there were only two sons.

Carshaltoner's Story

This has been published by Sutton Guardian

This item identifies points of interest to Carshalton residents and asks them to contact Sutton Guardian for coverage. It also asks them to look in their lofts etc for any relevant items. There's a lot of interesting local history waiting to be discovered!

ANCESTRY ON YOUR DOORSTEP – I missed Carshalton residency by one generation …….

but then, there was a war going on.

by Carshaltoner (ne Edwards)

I can be contacted – avrf23@dsl.pipex.com.

Any response will be fully appreciated and acknowledged.

Carshalton residents will have passed Honeywood (the Heritage Centre) on so many occasions that it is part of the highway wallpaper. However, in its heyday, let us say around 1908, it was the country house of rich London merchant John Pattinson Kirk.

He had adopted my paternal grandmother Susannah Matilda Benton around 1876, and changed her name to Lily Kirk. She married my grandfather, Henry Edwards and they had three sons. I only know the name of one of them, my father. At the age of 65, I have discovered where my father was born. Leslie Kirk Edwards was born at Honeywood in 1900.

He was one of three sons of Lily Kirk Edwards. Had events been different, I might have been born there as he was my father.The Kirk name on my birth certificate had intrigued me since I was twenty when I obtained it from my mother. In my ripe old age I now know. My late mother told me nothing about my father and had her reasons for that, no doubt. It was a very short marriage (again, there was a war going on).

She soon remarried as indeed Leslie Edwards did ten years later. My first sight of my father’s photo was in 1988 after an ancestry agency tracked down one of his second wife’s children, by then, obviously, an adult.

There may be enough here now to raise questions in the Carshalton community. Honeywood was sold by Lily Edwards to Carshalton Urban District Council in 1939 and it was put to various uses including weddings and as a social club for NALGO members of the council and then, in 1989, it became the Heritage Centre.

There will be some in Carshalton who may remember such events, have photos or had children who have memories and stories to tell about happenings in the post-Kirk/Edwards era of Honeywood’s history.

After the sale, Lily Edwards lived at Wynash Gardens until her death in 1955. Where is she buried? What happened to her possessions? Does anyone have pictures of any of the family or know where the items like this are?

Is there a Wynash Gardens residents’ association complete with local historian?

Between you, me and the Honeywood gatepost, that bit about missing Carshalton residency by one generation was just to get your attention. My father became a lieutenant in the Royal Artillery and by the time he was ready to settle down, Honeywood as his home had come to an end.

I was born in central Surrey in the early 1940s and even before then, my parents’ marriage had come to an end. So much for settling down.

My own marriage was in the early sixties, and three years later my wife and I bought our first house in Ewell. En route to my godmother’s house in Carshalton and relatives beyond, we would occasionally drive past the ponds, oblivious to the wealth of family interest to be found at Honeywood. Some forty years on, that situation has vastly improved.

One lesson from all this that can be sold is start your ancestry research at an early age. My father died in 1967 when I was twenty-something. Had I been motivated, I could have met him. Of course, there’s more to it than this sentence but, in hindsight, I would have wanted a better result.

Let’s move on to more recent events. Within Sutton Council there’s a team of dedicated people looking after several houses like Honeywood and work goes on to improve awareness of Carshalton’s interesting heritage. I found out about them by writing to Carshalton library asking about Honeywood. My father’s birth certificate simply stated he was born at Honeywood, Carshalton, no road, no clues.

Back came the immediate reply that opened it all up for me with email introductions to researchers at Honeywood .After a swift rescheduling of our summer arrangements, my wife and I headed for Honeywood in late June.

We were given a hearty welcome and numerous pieces of information to enable a picture to be formed of my father’s early life with his father and mother and her adoptive parents John and Leah Kirk. It was quite an experience going round this large house and imagining life there soon after the turn of the twentieth century. That was compared with only having two photos and a letter describing my father written by his stepson in 1988.

Perhaps in Carshalton attics and albums there will be more pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. As far as I know, my father had no other children. He had two brothers who don’t present themselves too well historically. They gambled in the 1920s and after frequent bouts of being heavily in debt and being bailed out by their mother, they were told to get out of the country.

About ten years later, one returned with the mission of getting more money. People associated with Honeywood and protective of Lily Edwards, by then a frail creature, advised him that she was nowhere to be found. The story isn’t exactly the best inspiration for any of the sons’ descendants to spring forward but it is the only description to be found of what the brothers were like.

In the absence of other information the cloud does rather overlap onto my father and his disappearance before my birth, war or no war. However, the wife of Leslie Edward's stepson on remarriage, told me that Leslie knew the bible from end to end.

There is another area of the jigsaw. My grandmother, Lily Kirk Edwards, was an accomplished water-colour artist. Sadly, however, along with all the other family possessions, none of these can be found.

Were she still alive, no doubt she would serve you tea as that is what she did after John Kirk died. Carshalton UDC handbook for 1932 has an advert for “Honeywood Tea Rooms & Charming Old World Garden – apply Mrs L K Edwards.” Why not go along as there are tearooms to this day?

Even if you have no chunks of info to give, you can enjoy slices of cake with your tea and find out more about this fascinating house in a jigsaw within the overall jigsaw of Carshalton’s heritage.

Perhaps you know someone who knows someone who remembers Honeywood before the 1990s or who has a clipping or snippet to offer. If you or your parents had the wedding reception or celebrated another family event at Honeywood many years ago go along and relive it. Don’t forget to bring the memorabilia! Mention some of the information given here to any of the staff and you will be put in touch with the right person.

Since this was published, the writer has been contacted by his "new family". One painting has been found as seen before on this site. It has been established that there were only two sons.

Kirk Clan History - some notes which were on the internet in Dec 2006

http://kirkscotland.freeyellow.com/index.html -- --Kirk Family History Project (Scotland) The website no longer functions.

This website has been created to assist those tracing their Kirk ancestors in Scotland.

Our Kirk family history spans three centuries and covers many areas of Scotland. The Scottish ancestors were mainly employed as gamekeepers, a tradition dating from at least the mid-1700s right through various family groups into the early 1900s. They were employed on many of the large country estates, some of which are still in existence, but the rest have sadly disappeared.

The Earls of Glasgow, Eglinton, Dundonald, and the Duke of Montrose, all employed Kirk gamekeepers on their estates listed below:-
· Hawkhead, the Paisley estate of the Earls of Glasgow (Boyle family) and Dundonald, the Ayrshire estate of the Cochrane and Boyle families
· Eaglesham in Renfrewshire, Coilsfield at Tarbolton, Eglinton Castle, Kilwinning and Skelmorlie Castle near Largs, all estates of the Earls of Eglinton (Montgomerie family)
· Buchanan, the Stirlingshire estate of the Duke of Montrose

Large families were born to our Kirk ancestors, but not all children reached adulthood, as is evident from the family trees. The usual factors of infant mortality, infectious diseases, etc. apply. Those who did survive, however, seemed to live to a ripe old age, a testament to their active lifestyle and plenty of fresh air perhaps! When the old estates in Scotland were found to be too expensive to maintain and sold off for development, the Kirk gamekeepers found their way of life was disappearing too. The younger men could see no future in the family tradition and other trades and occupations beckoned. They heard wonderful stories about life across the seas. Some would leave their native land forever for new beginnings in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada from 1840 onwards.

end of web home page extract – elsewhere the following info is given (triple brackets additional):-

Kirk Marriage Index - John Kirk born in Stonykirk 28 02 1836 - parents James Kirk & Ann Rankine - source IGI Wigtown 1991 (((Stonykirk is near Stranraer.)))

Kirk Birth/Baptism Index – James Kirk – born in Barony (G) 05 12 183 – parents Wm Kirk & Margaret Turner – IGI Lanark 1991. (((No trace of Barony with or without (G) in map books.)))

(((It is not proposed that these are John Kirk’s ancestors – it’s the only info available at present. His father was George and moved to Alston in Cumberland and married Margaret Pattinson)))

Kirk Marriage Index – Lily Kirk married Henry Edwin John Edwards 17 08 1899 in Beddington – Wigtown Free Press (((the marriage certificate gives 05 08 1899

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The site talks about the younger men needed to look for work far afield. George Kirk may well have been an example.

It mentions that the old estates were sold for development. This is known as the "highland clearances". Sheep took over once the workers had gone and were known as the "four-footed clansmen".

Honeywood Heritage Centre UK Ancestry Info

Friday 23 November 2007

Update 22 November 2010

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John Pattinson Kirk

Matilda Benton

Lily Edwards - Christmas 1955

Leslie Kirk Edwards

Leslie Edwards with his second wife and her two boys. c 1955

Lily Edwards and Kenneth

Kenneth Edwards, wife and April Edwards

Update 22 November 2010

Kenneth, Marjorie and April Edwards c 1940

Marjorie Edwards with either April or Malcolm

Henry [ne Harry] Birth Certificate

Matilda Davis Birth Certificate

Davis Hinton Wedding Certificate

Henry [ne Harry] Benton Death Cert

Lily Edwards

Lily Edwards

Leslie Kirk Edwards in costume

John Pattinson Kirk

Reverse of left hand picture

End of update 22 November 2010

Honeywood Heritage Centre in Carshalton, Surrey, England

Lily Edwards - water-colour artist

Honeywood - a brief history - from a website above

Looking for Kirks and Edwards

Childhood Memories of Honeywood

Carshaltoner's Story

Kirk Clan History - some notes which were on the internet in Dec 2006