There was a grand total of 13,923 people listed by the census in the Corbett Estate’s 27 streets. However, 207 of them were visitors (probably staying just a night or two), so a more accurate figure for all those living here on the 2^nd April 1911 (the date the Census took place) is 13,716.

They lived in 3,082 houses, which ranged from large 6-bed villas with servants quarters, to smaller 3-bed houses with a downstairs bathroom.

53% of residents were female, and 47% male, and most households contained a married couple: fully 89% when you look across the whole Estate (to put that into context, the figure for the UK as a whole in 2019 was 66%). The average number of people per house was 4.4 (although many contained far more of course: some families had seven children so a houseful of nine people wasn’t unusual). The average number of children per couple however was 2.2.

72% of people had moved into the Estate from other parts of what is now Greater London, and 28% came from further afield (Scotland, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Brazil to mention a few places).

The average Estate couple were, as we’ve seen, young and married. The head of the household was most likely to be called William, his wife Mary, and their children Winnifred and William (many people still named the first born male after themselves).

The Estate came into existence because a station had been opened at Hither Green in 1895, which enabled Corbett’s new residents to commute into the City. People did all kinds of jobs, but by far the most popular was working in an office as a Clerk. According to the Census, 20% of workers on the Estate were thus engaged, which is a huge figure for a single occupation.

At this time (just before the First World War), many people still employed servants: either a ‘daily maid’ or, in the wealthier families, a full-time live-in domestic worker. Some of the larger properties actually had two servants. Across the whole estate 9% of households employed a live-in servant.

Birkhall road lies in the south of the Corbett Estate, and was built in 1904/5, just over halfway through the 15 years it took to finish all 27 streets.

There are two distinct styles of house: the ‘heavier’ Gothic-influenced ones, with carved capitals at the top of stone mullions, and often with distinctive Corbett Keystones; and a ‘lighter’ design with an all-brick façade. The first were the work of Catford builder James Watt, who built around a third of the Estate, and the second were built by Frederick Taylor, who lived in Wellmeadow Road.

The Early Residents: details from the 1911 Census

By 1911 when the Census was taken, 376 people lived in the street’s 94 houses, with just four of them having more than one Head of Household (ie the house had been split in two – often one generation of a family lived upstairs and another downstairs).

The residents of Birkhall enjoyed the lowest average density of people per house across the whole estate: 3.8 people. This is in stark contrast to nearby Sandhurst Road where the figure was 6.2, and the houses were smaller! There were a couple of properties with 9 people in them (7 children and 2 adults), at Nos. 4 and 36, but they were very much the exception. There were no lodgers in the whole street, and 7% of households had a live-in servant (many other 'daily' servants would have come to cook and clean in other houses).

In terms of jobs, the street had one of the highest concentrations of the most popular form of work on the Estate: 31% of working people were Clerks. Across the 27 streets, the average figure is 20%. The next most popular professions were Teachers, Dressmakers and Telephone operators.

The oldest resident was Elizabeth Walker at No. 69 – she was 83 in 1911.

Birkhall boasted three of the best job titles on the whole estate: James Knights, age 35, was a ‘Traveller Artificial Manure Manufacturer’ at No. 26; Ernest Bridal (at 18 the eldest of five sons to Caroline and Ernest Bridal at No. 4) was an ‘Electric Light Attendant’; and William Woole, 34, was a ‘Boot Clicker’ living at No. 20 with his brother George and George’s family. Boot Clickers cut leather for shoes against a metal mould, and their knives made a clicking sound as they worked.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT: Electricity

Ernest Bridal (the young man at No. 4) was at the cutting edge of early 20^th century technology in his job of Electric Light Attendant. The Estate was heated and lit by gas and coal, so it’s likely he worked in Lewisham or Catford. In 1910 only 2% of homes in the country had electricity.

There was distrust for the new-fangled electric devices, and they were very expensive – hence why it might be necessary to have someone to ‘attend’ to them.

Hither Green Lane is the oldest road on the Corbett Estate and appears on the earliest maps of the area.  It is an ancient right of way which runs from a mile north east of Rushey Green in the valley of the river Ravensbourne, up over a low ridge to Hither Green and down again to join a branch of the river Quaggy at Further Green.  Until the late 19^th century it ran through green fields, and the section to the south of Brownhill Road was renamed Verdant Lane in 1907.

Although it’s one of the longest roads in the area, only a small stretch of Hither Green Lane was actually developed as part of the St German’s Estate, i.e. the area to the south-east of the former Park Hospital (which opened in 1897 as a fever hospital in what was then a much more rural setting).   The Corbett Estates company used a substantial area opposite the hospital grounds to house a Steam Joinery, where the wood for building the houses was prepared. The sales agent for the Estate (Mr Robert Pettigrew) lived in Eliot Lodge, on the corner of Hither Green Lane and Duncrievie Road, which is now one of the oldest houses in Hither Green.

At the time of the 1911 census, there were 63 houses in this part of Hither Green Lane with 289 occupants. The houses include some of the very earliest that Corbett built on the Estate, starting in 1896, and some of the last, such as those built in 1910 on a patch of land at the corner of Hither Green Lane and Brownhill Road.  The latter were built on the site of a pear orchard and one of the original trees still stands in the back garden at No. 328.  The size of the houses varied from large double-fronted houses with four bedrooms each to smaller terraced ones with three bedrooms.  The larger houses have keystones above the doorways which are characteristic of the Estate, but the smaller terraced houses do not, although some have small balconies above the front doors with attractive Art Nouveau-style cast iron details.

There were seven parades of shops built on the estate, one of which was the Central Market at Nos 246 to 274 Hither Green Lane. These were built in 1905 and whilst many of the shops are still operating, their wares have changed considerably over time.

The Early Residents: details from the 1911 Census

With an average of 4.6 people living in each house, this road had a typical rate of occupancy for the Estate: the largest number of people recorded as living in a single house on Hither Green Lane was nine, compared with the maximum of 13 on the whole estate. Six houses accommodated two households, something which was not uncommon in the area: usually one family lived upstairs and one downstairs, but without the structural alterations that separate flats today. Seven of the 58 Heads of Household were women, which at 10 percent is around average for the estate. 

There were only two lodgers, and 20 houses had live-in servants.

The census reveals that 64% of people living here were born within the area which we now define as Greater London.  Two residents were born in unusual places: Theodosia Goodwin of No. 280 was born at sea and Frances Dawson at No. 343 in Peking, China.  The oldest person was John Simpson, a widower aged 82, who lived at No. 324.

The most unusual surname in the street belongs to Mr Francis Bulkley-Bing, who was a musician born in Dublin.  One family was named Corbett, but they were not related to the developer, Archibald Cameron Corbett. Head of Household Matthew Corbett was a baker who was born in Camberwell in 1861.

Many people on the street were employed as clerks or servants, or worked in tailoring, dressmaking and millinery.  A multitude of Clerks worked in banking, insurance, shipping, shops, manufacturing and on the railway.  There were a few professional people (engineers, a company secretary, a schoolmaster, a musician and a draughtsman) and various tradespeople (cook, electrician, carpenter, dressmaker, milliner, dairy man and paper hanger).  Unusual occupations include a Tin Rose Manufacturer and a Golf Ball Coverer.

Hither Green Lane used to have its own Wesleyan Methodist Church with a large Sunday school hall behind it.  This was an impressive building on the corner of Wellmeadow Road, for which the foundation stone had been laid in 1899.  Sadly, it was hit by an incendiary bomb on the night of 11-12 September 1940 and most of the church and much of the hall were destroyed or badly damaged.  The blast also affected a large number of houses in the area.  The site was not cleared until the 1960s, when a block of flats was built in its place.