October Pictures

From Dittopedia

31st October

For desperately poor people, there was the workhouse. On 11th July 1760 at the Angel Inn, Thomas Keel, a local labourer, made an agreement to become master of the workhouse for three years. He took control of a building in Thorkhill Road, which at the time was called Workhouse Lane. The cottages in Rythe Terrace -- or more likely 115 Thorkhill Road -- indicate the location of Keel's workhouse more precisely. A 1781 inventory shows nine bedrooms, kitchen, parlour, cellar and brewhouse. There would have been about 30 inmates, many of them old or infirm.

The master received £180 a year to cover the needs of all the inmates, plus heating and lighting. The master also received the proceeds of the inmates' work. The inmates received three meals a day, with additional beer on Wednesdays and Friday afternoons. At Christmas, the brewhouse brewed extra ale. A few years later, the parish would provide additional fare such as Christmas puddings. In 1800, the workhouse governor received four shillings per head per week for keeping the poor fed, clothed and fit.

This was certainly no convalescent home. Occupants were expected to work in the house, the gardens or the parish which kept them. For example:

• making up St. Leonards Road (then Wharf Road) in 1771,
• digging gravel and putting it on the Portsmouth Road. In 1807 the workhouse was given a gravel cart.

The law was changed in 1834, and by 1836 the workhouse was closed. Ditton's inmates were transferred to Kingston, where they merged with a large concourse from many parishes.

30th October

Colonel Sidney Godolphin (1652-1732) came from an ancient Cornish family. The Godolphin family had held a long lease of Scilly since the late 16th century. Godolphin was Governor of The Scilly Isles and Auditor of Wales. He served in Parliament for nearly 50 years, where he was Father of the House.

The Assessment Book of Thames Ditton showing assessments for the relief of the poor gives the Colonel's address as Ditton Street -- but it was probably Forde's Farm:

He spent his time in arms till his state of health, requiring ease and quiet, made him quit a military life, but not the service of his Country, which he represented in Parliament near fifty years, and died Father of the House. It was his felicity to be valued and countenanced by his Sovereign, esteemed and loved by his friends and relations...

Godolphin died at the age of 81 in 1732. He has a portrait-bust on his memorial, erected by his youngest daughter Ellen, in The Lady Chapel of St Nicholas Church.

29th October

A 1699 map drawn by William Talman, showing a Trianon (top right of map) planned to be built in Long Ditton and reached by a long avenue extending from Hampton Court. Imagine how far the Portsmouth Road would have been diverted, if Hampton Court Palace had bought all the land from the banks of the Thames to the planned Trianon, in order to complete the avenue.