NEWSLETTER NO. 14 - Apr 2007
WADHURST HISTORY SOCIETY
GEORGE LUCK: 1850-1903: BUILDER OF GEORGE STREET
George Luck was a descendant of a long line of Wadhurst residents, whose names are commemorated both on tombstones and in the porch of Wadhurst Parish Church. His father, George Luck senior, had a business in Durgates and by 1867 George junior, his eldest son, was a plumber. Later, in 1899, he was listed as a builder living at 6, Durgates. In December 1900, George bought Manor Cottage, Sparrows Green, with five acres of land. Some of the land was sold off. The proceeds appear to have contributed to setting him up in business. He constructed brickworks on the corner of Gloucester Road (where St George's Hall now stands), stretching the length of George Street, south west as far as Cockmount Lane.
George Luck
Jane
Luck
George Street and twelve cottages at the east side were built to let and owned by George Luck in the period up to his death. George Luck junior and Charles Luck, under the name of Luck Brothers, continued to run the business from a yard on the north side of Durgates, where Nikwax now has offices. In 1907, they built a further six cottages on the west side of George Street. A further four cottages completed the west side. All the houses, which are terraced, have a frontage of eighteen feet, except for No. 1 which has forty feet and No. 5 which has twenty-two feet. Luck Brothers prospered, along with similar builders and decorators such as Piper's and Hodder's. Luck's employed twenty or thirty men in the period up to
the commencement of the Second World War. Peter Wicker, born at No. 22, was employed in the timber yard at Durgates as a joiner, making up the windows, doors and staircases for large numbers of new houses built throughout Wadhurst during this period. Luck's finally closed in 1939 when large numbers of workers were commissioned to work on construction of war service buildings.
Design and Layout
of George Street
The generous use
of land, both in garden and road provision in the layout and design
of George Street, along with the roomy interiors of the houses, reflect
the country-wide reaction against
the overcrowding of the slums that grew up in the eighteenth
and nineteenth centuries. An enormous surge in population, from countryside
to the city, followed the industrial revolution. The subsequent
increase of factory jobs was not
balanced by a national plan to provide clean and healthy living
conditions and adequate housing for the workers. Eventually,
action was taken with the passing
of the Public Health Act of 1875, which permitted the sanitary
authorities to make bye-laws to control building standards
and layout. The model bye-laws, signed by the Local Government
Board in 1877, required that streets
over one hundred feet in length should be at least thirty
feet wide. Each house was to have an open space of one hundred
and fifty square feet, at the rear for its exclusive use, and windows
should have an area of at least
one tenth of the floor space.
To return to George
Street, the houses were built in blocks of five or six at a time. Despite
minor alterations to the facades as subsequent blocks of houses were completed
and the brickworks on the eastern side were run down, the overall balance
has been maintained. The plan above shows the ground floor of the left
hand house and the first floor of the right hand one.
in the early twentieth
century
Eminent
researchers on the housing problem claimed that there is a tendency
during industrialisation, and often long after, for urban housing
provision to fall far behind need.
In The Housing Handbook (1903) Alderman William Thompson gave public housing a dynamic role when he wrote: "if local authorities were to build largely themselves", he argued, "they would be able to assist in meeting the demand for more house room: to provide an effective check where necessary on exorbitant rents; to set up a standard of a decent sanitary home that a working man might reasonably expect."
In 1907, W H Lever wrote: "The Cottage home is the unit of a nation and therefore the more we can raise the comfort and happiness of home life, the more we shall raise the standard of efficiency for the whole nation."
In 1918, W H Lever stated: "Once let a nation become careless and indifferent on the question of the housing of her artisans and that nation is bound to witness a gradual deterioration of physique and vigour."
Earlier still, in 1898, E W Bradbrook - Registrar of Friendly Societies
- foresaw the advent of owner occupancy with the following
statement:
"Our thoughtful and prosperous young working man will find that house rent forms a considerable portion of his expenditure, and will set himself to devise some means by which that burden can be diminished. The more he gets accustomed to the house which has been the scene to himself and his wife of so many innocent pleasures and home endearments, the more he will wish to make it his own....
To many a man among these, the day when the repayments terminated and he was able henceforth to live in a house of his own, rent free, was a beginning of days of prosperity and comfort, leading in some cases to comparative opulence, or at least to such an amount of provident accumulation as to remove all cause of anxiety from the contemplation of approaching old age."
This concept presupposes long-term strategies of thrift among
well-paid artisans.
The shortage of house provision for the working man in Edwardian times before and following the 1914-18 World War led ultimately
to the municipality itself building and owning houses. It
was accepted that housing should rank with education in regard
to the provision of subsidies.
In the 1920s, Government policy supported the extension of tax relief on mortgages which which led to an increase in owner occupancy. In George Street, the tenants, over a long period, bought their own houses.
In The Housing Handbook (1903) Alderman William Thompson gave public housing a dynamic role when he wrote: "if local authorities were to build largely themselves", he argued, "they would be able to assist in meeting the demand for more house room: to provide an effective check where necessary on exorbitant rents; to set up a standard of a decent sanitary home that a working man might reasonably expect."
In 1907, W H Lever wrote: "The Cottage home is the unit of a nation and therefore the more we can raise the comfort and happiness of home life, the more we shall raise the standard of efficiency for the whole nation."
In 1918, W H Lever stated: "Once let a nation become careless and indifferent on the question of the housing of her artisans and that nation is bound to witness a gradual deterioration of physique and vigour."
Earlier still, in 1898, E W Bradbrook -
"Our thoughtful and prosperous young working man will find that house rent forms a considerable portion of his expenditure, and will set himself to devise some means by which that burden can be diminished. The more he gets accustomed to the house which has been the scene to himself and his wife of so many innocent pleasures and home endearments, the more he will wish to make it his own....
To many a man among these, the day when the repayments terminated and he was able henceforth to live in a house of his own, rent free, was a beginning of days of prosperity and comfort, leading in some cases to comparative opulence, or at least to such an amount of provident accumulation as to remove all cause of anxiety from the contemplation of approaching old age."
This concept presupposes long-
The shortage of house provision for the working man in Edwardian times before and following the 1914-
In the 1920s, Government policy supported the extension of tax relief on mortgages which which led to an increase in owner occupancy. In George Street, the tenants, over a long period, bought their own houses.
Life
in George Street 1900 - 1950
George Street was built in 1901. It was unsurfaced and very muddy, with children playing football on it in the winter and cricket in the summer. There were big lorry sheds at the south end of the street, used either as goal posts or wickets by the children, much to the anger of the owner of Manor Cottage. George Luck built the George Street villas on the east side of the road up to the west side twitten between 1904 and 1907. They were at that time built for his employees. Numbers 1 to 7 were built first and there was a well in the garden of number 3, supplying water to them. At that time, the brickyard occupied the remaining space on the west side. St George's Hall was built in 1927. The villa plans show roomy accommodation which has continued to provide family homes to the present day. Mary Offord
The water supply was
from a well and the lavatory was down the garden - a
wooden bench with a hole and a
bucket underneath, though, from the beginning, there was always mains
water and drainage. Peter Wicker says that in 1921 the rent
was 6/4d a week. There was
a kitchen range and, when it went out at night, the children sat with
their feet in the oven before they went to bed. One penny in
the gas meter would cook dinner. Electricity was installed
in 1934.
Residents of George
Street, referring to the period
of the 1950's and 60's, remember getting the galvanized bath down
from the hook on the outside wall on Friday night. The copper
was lit and everyone took their
turn. Mother was first, then the children and Dad last of all. The copper
was used again on wash day before the clothes were mangled and hung out
to dry. If you wanted a bathroom, you had to pay for the installation
yourself and the rent went up.
The houses on
the east side have longer gardens than those on
the west. For a long time, they were all unfenced and the children
could run around together on the
areas where vegetables were not being grown. The lack of fences
contributed to the happy community and a lot of time was spent chatting. There
are still residents living in the street who were born there or are
descendants of former owners.
In the 1960's,
Mr. Lavender, builder, and father of Jean and Rosemary,
living at No.1, started a Residents' Association, primarily to
manage the collection of money
to cover the costs of maintaining the road and to address matters
of common interest. To begin
with, all the properties were let out and no
doubt this funded the growth of the family building business. Over
a long period, the properties have
been sold off, so that in 1985, only eight remained tenanted. Now
only George's great great
grandson, Paul Crush, continues to have an interest as landlord
of one remaining tenant. Mary
Offord
A E Heasman & Son
At
the end of George Street, there operated for many years
the general carrier and removals business of A E Heasman & Son.
As The
Courier reported in
1976:
70
- year link with past is lost as firm closes down
ANOTHER
LINK with the past is to go for WADHURST. After
70 years in business as carriers and furniture removers
the firm of A. E. Heasman and Son is closing down at
the end of the year with the retirement of Mr Prentice
Heasman, eldest son of the founder.
In
1906 Mr Heasman's father bought a horse and van
and set up as a general carrier, operating between
Wadhurst and TUNBRIDGE WELLS three days a week.
This
continued until the outbreak of the 1914-18 war,
in which Mr Heasman served with the Army. On
his demobilisation the business was resumed. In
1921 his original transport was replaced by a Model
T Ford van and daily runs started to Tunbridge Wells.
On
leaving school in 1922 Mr Prentice Heasman joined his
father in the business. Three years later the firm
expanded with the addition of an extra van to cope
with a removal service.
Mr
Prentice Heasman was called up for the Second World
War and Mr Heasman senior carried on the business in
his son's absence - he died in 1972. Now,
after 54 years, his son has decided to call it a day.