My original intention in writing this post was to record my recent findings as to the naming of Orford House and Orford Road in Walthamstow. Whilst researching for a recent talk I found contradictory information regarding the origin of the name.
Orford House, Orford Road, Walthamstow
However I have of course gone off at a tangent and found a fascinating story involving forgery, bankruptcy and prison.
Orford House has been named as such from at least the date of the 1841 census. Before that it can be seen on sales particulars as just the house on Church Common or similar wording. At about the same time the road previously Church Common Lane gradually became Orford Road via some other names in between for different parts of the road.
Practically every local history book or article indicates that the name came from the occupant of the house in the mid 1800s – John Woodley who supposedly came from Orford in Suffolk. However I have not found a primary source with this information and wonder if it has just been copied from the Walthamstow Antiquarian Publication ‘Some Walthamstow Houses‘ published in 1924. This book has no references where I could check its sources.
Back in 2021 I put together a talk to commemorate the centenary of Orford House Social Club and recently I was asked to deliver the same talk to Walthamstow Historical Society. I could have just done the same talk again – that would have been the easy option but that’s not my style. I had to re-visit my research and this time I believe I have found evidence which points to the house being named Orford House for a different reason than generally thought.
First of all the census return for 1851 shows that John Woodley was born in Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex which is some 70 miles from Orford in Suffolk. The entry in the last column below looks like “Essex, Stanstead”.
1851 census extract
Looking at the 1841 census the place of birth is not stated but the box is ticked for being born in the same county as currently residing. Walthamstow was of course in Essex at that time. How had no-one picked that up before?
Woodley’s ancestors were all born in the Stansted area too – in fact there are several generations of them buried in the churchyard of the redundant church St Mary the Virgin in Stansted. Confusingly there’s also a St Mary the Virgin in Stansted, Kent!
Another Orford House
Searching on the British Newspaper Archive for “Orford House” and ticking “Essex” as the location to search, I kept getting results for a house of the same name in a place called Ugley. Noticing that these results were in newspapers local to Stansted set me off to find out more. Ugley is just 4 miles from Stansted. Find out more about that Orford House here.
Orford House, Ugley. Photo © Robert Edwards (cc-by-sa/2.0)
John Woodley’s father and later his brother – both annoyingly called Matthew Woodley – lived at a place called Bentfield Bower now Bentfield House. This is just 2 miles from the Ugley Orford House. See this view of an OS map surveyed in 1916. Orford House is east of Houghtey Wood towards the top of the map view and Bentfield Bower is south-west of Bentfield.
Looking at the Woodley family occupations they were corn merchants, brewers and churchwardens. These are all professions which I think would have given them knowledge of the local area.
I haven’t yet found a concrete connection to this Orford House and this is very much still a work in progress but this seems much more likely to be the reason the Walthamstow house got its name rather than it being named after Orford in Suffolk with which as far as I can tell the Woodley family had no connection.
A problem with the in-laws
When researching I often create a family tree as this helps to distinguish who is who especially when there are multiple people of the same name. Of course this has a tendency to send me off the original path and that did happen here when I discovered that two of John Woodley’s sons married into a family hit with the scandal of bankruptcy, forgery and prison.
The Woodleys used the helpful naming pattern of using maiden surnames as middle names. John Woodley’s son, Matthew Fuller Woodley was named after his mother Sarah Fuller. Matthew was born in Crutched Friars and in his adult life was churchwarden of St Olave’s Hart Street. In 1855 age 22 Matthew married Lucy Bedford Allen of Walthamstow at St Mary’s Walthamstow. Matthew’s mother died the following year and his father died in 1858. In 1858 Matthew’s brother John Banham Woodley married Lucy’s sister Eleanora Maria Allen also at St Mary’s Walthamstow.
The following year, 1859 it all came crashing down. The father of the two girls Richard Bedford Allen an underwriter at Lloyd’s was made bankrupt, pleaded guilty to forgery and was then sentenced to 10 years’ penal servitude. His crimes included a number of instances where he forged signatures in order to obtain funds including at least two of his own family.
A very short entry can be found on the wonderful Old Bailey Proceedings Online. From the linked Digital Panopticon we can see that in January 1860 he was held at Millbank Prison then moved to Dartmoor and then Woking. He was released on licence in 1866.
Using the British Newspaper Archive again I found a long report of the bankruptcy proceedings which took place on 28th April 1859. Earlier that month there had been an announcement regarding the sale of the contents of his house on Hoe Street.
Looking at the 1841 and 1851 census return I got a fair idea of where in Hoe Street the Bedford Allens lived as like Orford Road parts of Hoe Street had different names over the years. I was then able to pin it down exactly on the 1822 Coe map of Walthamstow. On this link Orford House is shown as no 913 immediately below Church Common. According to the index Richard Bedford Allen’s house was at no 861 below the bend in what is now Orford Road. Looking at a later OS map found on the National Library of Scotland website my feeling is that the house was either what became known as Priory Lodge or Holly Mount just south of Thornwood.
Even before this scandal the Woodleys had moved out of Orford House so it couldn’t have been the scandal that prompted them to move.By 1855 Orford House was being used as a private school. Other families followed after this time but that’s a story for another day.
By 1859 John and Eleanora had moved to Camberwell and by the time of the 1861 census Matthew and Lucy were back to the family seat at Bentfield Bower.
So instead of just focusing on the origin of the name of Orford House I have instead opened up another can of worms! If anyone has anything to add to the above or any knowledge of the history of the Woodley family in Essex please comment below.
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