William Wright (one of my 2nd great grandfathers) was born on 5th October 1837 at 9 Blackmore Street in Clare Market, Westminster. The area of London was then a bustling, crowded district known for its meat and produce markets, located just behind the Strand. He was the son of Thomas Wright a cheesemonger and Ann Isabella Guy. Later that month, on 29th October, he was baptised at the nearby St Clement Danes, the historic church designed by Sir Christopher Wren that would remain the anchor for his family’s milestones for the next sixty years.
St Clement Danes Church
William grew up in a full house, though like many Victorian families, the Wrights experienced both the joy of new life and the tragedy of early loss. He was eventually the eldest of seven siblings: Jane, Anne, Thomas Henry, Isabella, Martha, and Mary. Sadly, William saw his brother Thomas Henry pass away at age two, and his sister Mary died when she was only an infant.
The biggest shift for the family came when William was 13. His father, Thomas, passed away in October 1850, his mother took over the running of the cheesemonger business. By the time of the 1851 census, 14-year-old William was still living at Blackmore Street, likely helping his mother as the family adjusted to life without his father.
William followed a traditional trade, becoming a cheesemonger. In the mid-1800s, a cheesemonger was a vital part of the local economy, specializing in the sale of butter, eggs, and, of course, cheese. By 1861, at age 24, he was still operating out of the family base at 9 Blackmore Street.
On 3rd October 1866, William married Anne Taylor at St Clement Danes Church. Anne was the daughter of John Gent Taylor, a master baker, William and Anne grew up as neighbours both living on Blackmore Street..
Together, they raised a large family of nine children:
- William Guy (b. 1867)
- Lydia (b. 1869)
- Thomas Beaumont (b. 1871)
- John Samuel (b. 1873)
- Frederick Arthur (b. 1875)
- Henry Arnold (b. 1877)
- George Herbert (b. 1880)
- Isabella (b. 1882)
- Anne (b. 1883) – my great grandmother
Interestingly they baptised all their children at the non conformist Great Queen Street Chapel. The Chapel was founded in 1706 as a dissenting chapel constructed in the garden of a home on Lincoln’s Inn Fields. In 1758 the chapel was purchased by the Reverend Thomas Francklyn and became a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel. All of their children continued to follow the non conformist form of worship.
William’s mother moved out of no. 9 sometime before the 1871 census, leaving William in sole charge of the cheesemongers. The records show that while the shop remained at Blackmore Street, the family move toward the growing suburbs and by the 1883 William and his family had moved out of Westminster to 8 Ferm Park Road in Stroud Green (Hornsey) in Middlesex, where they ran a cheesemongers and their last child was born (my great grandmother Ann Wright) there. This mirrors a common Victorian trend where business owners kept their shops in the city but moved their families to the cleaner air of the outskirts. The Clare Market area was cleared in the 1890s and The London School of Economics was built on the area. Clare Market had been flagged as a “very poor, casual, chronic want” on the Charles Booth’s Poverty Map (1886-1903). https://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebook/booth-b-354?page=65
Bill of Sale from 8 Ferme Park Road
1887 marked by the loss of his mother, Ann Isabella, who passed away aged 73 at 9 Blackmore Street. As William reached his sixties, he and Ann had moved to the St Clement Danes Alms Houses in Wandsworth, leaving their children to run the grocers in Stroud Green. These alms houses were established to provide housing for the elderly or “decayed” householders of the parish of St Clement Danes.
William Wright passed away on 22nd July 1902 in Wandsworth at the age of 64. The cause of death was noted as cancer of the liver.
not just any family 