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The UK Land Registry is slowly digitising all the UK property records, and after doing ours they sent us the original in April 2012.  We discovered that there was a conveyance of our house dated 15th May 1906 between a syndicate of four well-to-do businessmen,

John Martyn Andrew;

Seymour Pleydell Bouverie;

Arthur Freke Evans; and

Frederick Maitland Freake (Vendors);

and George Arthur Gale (Purchaser). 

What started as a bit of casual web browsing has increased considerably. These five men are very interesting. It's almost an obsession, but truly fascinating.  I know more about Sir Frederick Maitland Freake than anyone else.  I’d be pleased to hear from you on any related topic. I believe that I have linked to any sources and not appropriated any copyright material. This is not intended to be a scholarly work so there are no detailed references.  Read their individual stories.  I’d love to know how their partnership was formed. Contact me

SP Bouverie was from a prominent banking family eventually incorporated in Barclays.

FM Freake, a polo Olympian in 1900 and 1908 and First World War hero, was the grandson of a builder philanthropist and son of a society figure who made scandalous world headlines in 1890.  Both his immediate ancestors are discussed at length, along with their stately home, the former Fulwell Park.

GA Gale went bankrupt shortly after building our house, and is probably the same man who stood for parliament as a Liberal candidate in Fulham West in 1929. 

The remaining two are much less prominent, and as of March 2013 AF Evans, solicitor, and JM Andrew, land agent, only get four Google hits each!  I’ve probably increased that to ... at least five each.

The above photograph shows that we are not allowed to “...carry on...any hospital, asylum, public house or sewage farm...or any thing which may become a nuisance damage, annoyance or inconvenience...to occupiers of the adjoining land or the neighbourhood.”  Does that include Alice’s George Formby records, I wonder.

Internet research has yielded the above further information about the 1906 vendors and purchaser.

In 2006, the petrol station a hundred yards along the road from our house closed down, and soon became a bare building site. Every few days throughout the year we took photographs as work progressed on the new building, nine flats and office accommodation.  These photographs have been compiled into a time-lapse film of the building of this three-storey structure.

I left the camera taking shots every thirty seconds, and made this film of local traffic.

We also found the 1930 film of the first trolleybus journey on the first day of operation on May 16th 1931 through Teddington and for about two seconds you can see our house that year!

Now watch the following version of the same journey, lovingly recreated by our friend Alan Benns and shown side by side with the original.

This article originally appeared as part of our 2012 Christmas Letter, and has subsequently been considerably expanded.