History of The Hollies
In the beginning …
In the beginning there was woodland. The site of The Hollies and all of Wanstead was, until about a hundred years ago, covered by broadleaf woods. The biggest trees were oaks, as they still are in this area. And if this sort of woodland looks familiar, it’s because a patch of it is still here, directly opposite The Hollies.
This photo shows the small part of Epping Forest called Tarzy Wood, at the corner of New Wanstead and Wanstead High Street. These oak trees are direct descendants of oaks that first grew here after the last ice-age, around 10,000 years ago.
Archeological Evidence
Now jump forward and the Romans have arrived. Throughout the Roman period (approximately 0-450) this area remained almost entirely a sea of trees, with only a few locations where small clearings were made. Archaeologists have found a variety of Roman remains, and there is a possibility that Wanstead Park was the location of a Roman Villa.
We have to assume that forest tracks linked to the roads that the Romans built, including the main London to Colchester Road which was roughly on the A12 line. However, woodland remained the main local feature long after the last Roman soldiers had departed from the province named Britannia.
This locality was still predominantly wooded in 1800. On the map - from around that date - the routes of (A113) New Wanstead / Hermon Hill and (A1199) Hollybush Hill can be seen as cuttings through woodland. Eagle Pond shows up but Wanstead High Street hasn’t yet been lined with houses and shops. The location of The Hollies is woodland where two tracks cross.
All this changed in 1856 when the Eastern Counties Railway extended their line from Liverpool Street Station, adding a branch from Stratford to Loughton. Because this line passed between both Snaresbrook and Wanstead, a station to serve both villages was part of the new development. ‘Snaresbrook Station’ opened for a steam train service on 22 August 1856.
Wanstead village started to expand towards the station, so much so that the railway company changed the station’s name to ‘Snaresbrook for Wanstead’ 1857, and ‘Snaresbrook and Wanstead’ in 1898, then back to ‘Snaresbrook for Wanstead’ in 1929.
In 1947 the station immediately behind The Hollies became ‘Snaresbrook’ again, when the new loop extension of the Central Line was opened, with a brand new ‘Wanstead Station’ at the other end of the High Street.
The effect of a train service into London can be seen on this Ordnance Survey (OS) map, based on surveys made in 1862-3. Three large residences have been built: Holly Bush House, Mornington Lodge and The Hollies (103, 104 and 138 on the map), all within easy walking distance of the new station.
The three villas were set in surrounding woodland and each had extensive grounds.
Mornington Lodge (later named Holly Lodge and since renamed as Kingsley Grange) was designed in a fashionable mid-19th Century gabled-cottage style, despite its multi-roomed nature. It is still there, divided into flats, but its grounds have been built over.
Holly Bush House has also been divided into flats and has also lost its grounds to later housing. Unfortunately, the Italianate-style main house has been sorely mistreated over the years.
The original Victorian-era country villa that was called The Hollies kept its grounds but the house was more than mistreated – it was totally demolished – and replaced by the present-day apartment block, also called The Hollies. This happened in the mid-1960s when developers were granted planning permission for two blocks of flats on the site. A subsequent planning application was approved for the current single block of 34 flats.
To date, no photographs of the original house on the site of The Hollies have been found. However, the ‘footprint’ on the 1862-3 OS Map shows a substantial house, perhaps a little larger than Mornington Lodge but not quite as large as Holly Bush House. Until a photograph, sketch or painting of the original house can be found, it is not possible to confirm the architectural style of the original house. It may have been similar to either Mornington Lodge or Holly Bush House, or perhaps different to either.
An OS Map published in 1896, based on surveys done in 1893, shows the original ‘footprint’ of the house unchanged from 1862. But by the time of a 1914-15 revision of the OS Map, The Hollies had gained an extension at the Wanstead High Street side.
The 1914-15 revised OS Map also shows the driveways of all three of the large houses and it is possible to see that The Hollies had its main driveway opening onto Wanstead High Street. In documents of this period the address was The Hollies, High Street, Wanstead, Essex. The re-orientation towards New Wanstead (and necessarily a new address) came about when the current block of flats called The Hollies was completed around 1965.
Records show that the original house on The Hollies site had at least three sets of occupants, in succession, from the mid-19th to the mid-20th Centuries.
John Henry Nettleship
JH Nettleship and his family were the first occupants we can trace. By the time the Nettleship family came to live at The Hollies, Mr Nettleship was Superintendent of the Great Eastern Railway Company, the senior operational manager, in charge of the whole railway. Obviously it was convenient to have a station ‘in the back garden’ of his home.
In addition to managing a railway’s normal operations, managers at superintendent level were important enough to travel on the Royal Train whenever it used the tracks of their company. They had to ensure that every aspect of Queen Victoria’s railway journeys were safe and secure.
The 1881 census shows JH Nettleship and his wife Jane plus two sons and two daughters aged between 20 and 13. They were all living at The Hollies, along with two live-in servants: a cook aged 21 and a housemaid aged 31.
When JH Nettleship died in 1897, the Chelmsford Chronicle (2.4.1897) reported that he left £13,961, an amount that would be in excess of £1,000,000 in today’s money. He’d been a widower since his wife Jane’s death in 1892 and their children were adults by then.
There is a twenty year gap in the records from 1897 to 1917. Perhaps the house was used by members of the Nettleship family until it was finally sold.
Dr WJC Keats and Dr DLM Keats
The next known residents at The Hollies were Dr William John Charles Keats and his family. Dr Keats, was born in 1867 and qualified as a physician and surgeon. His career in medicine started at Barts Hospital in London where he was a Junior House Physician and from there he became the Assistant Medical Superintendent at Greenwich Union Infirmary. After further promotion he became the Medical Superintendent of Camberwell Infirmary. He was, for a while, president of the Infirmary Medical Supervisors Society. The Medical Directory shows that he moved to Wanstead in 1917. From then until 1935 his address is listed as The Hollies, Wanstead, Essex.
He married twice, first to Eliza Jane Ennis, who presumably died young, and then in 1917, at the time he moved to Wanstead, when he was 50, he remarried. His second wife was Dorothy Elcock. The new Mrs Keats (Dorothy Lila Mabel) qualified as a doctor (in 1924). However, unlike her husband, her role as a doctor was much more remarkable because she was one of the very few fully qualified women doctors in the country. The concept of female doctors was still very new and remained contested.
We get hints about the Keats’ household from classified ads that were placed in local newspapers. In the 24.3.1917 Essex Newsman Mrs Keats advertised for a “Cook-general” at £40 per annum. As an enticement to a cook who would be expected to undertake wider general duties, the ad indicated the job was in a “doctor’s house (with) a parlourmaid and (a) boy kept”.
A replacement cook was needed in 1919 and the parlourmaid information was again used. Advertisements for a cook appeared again and again: in 1923, 1925 and 1930. Mrs Keats seems always to have had trouble keeping domestic staff.
The male Dr Keats (William John Charles) can also be tracked through newspapers (and court records, as an expert witness) because, in addition to his medical work in anaesthetics at the Walthamstow, Wanstead and Leyton Children’s and General Hospital, he was also the police surgeon for J Division of the Metropolitan Police.
Then there is a gap in records between 1935 and 1939. The house must have been sold again in this period. Records relevant to The Hollies start up again in 1939 when the government hastily checked the state of the population. (A full census was not due until 1941, although this was never implemented because of the war.)
Dr Rupert Alexander Madgwick
The 1939 register shows the residents at The Hollies as Dr Rupert Alexander Madgwick, his wife Mary and two others: Fanny – a nurse – and Laura – a servant. The nurse and the servant had the same surname so were probably sisters or cousins.
Dr R A Madgwick was qualified as a Physician and Surgeon. After moving into The Hollies, he always gave two addresses in The Medical Register – The Hollies, High Street, Wanstead and Balmoral House, Balmoral Road, Forest Gate. He seems to have practised medicine from both locations and this may explain why there was a live-in nurse based at The Hollies.
Dr Madgwick was born in Dominica, in the British West Indies, where his father was based as a merchant. The young Rupert Madgwick was sent back to England to complete his education and train as a doctor. He shows up again on the passenger manifest of a ship from England to Barbados in 1922 but he was back from the West Indies by 1925, when he started practising medicine in Forest Gate.
At some point after her appearance on the 1939 Register, Dr Madgwick’s wife Mary died. Dr Madgwick remarried in 1961. But the new Mrs Madgwick, formerly Gladys Lofthouse, was not a resident at The Hollies for very long. By 1964 Dr Madgwick’s address in The Medical Register was given as 89 Warren Road, Wanstead. The house called The Hollies was sold and demolished.
Squatters in 1968
The new block of flats had an eventful start. In December 1968 the Illustrated London News reported that placard bearing demonstrators had occupied the roof. The reporter got mixed up and referred to the block as having 9 storeys. In any case, the report generated interest and spread as far as Nottingham where the Nottingham Guardian reported that police had been called to manage the crowd that had assembled outside to watch the ‘squatters’. Things have quietened down since.
