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The Rathbones: builders and developers in West Hampstead


Victorian West Hampstead and Kilburn was created by hundreds of builders, some building just one or two houses, others whole runs of properties. Some worked independently while others forged links with fellow developers. Many went bankrupt in the process.

Marianne’s interest was aroused when she bought a couple of postcards addressed to a ‘Marguerite Rathbone’ of NW6. Her father Arthur Rathbone was responsible for many houses in the neighbourhood, he stayed solvent and passed on a large property portfolio to his heirs.

The cards were posted in May and June of 1909 by Margery Berman to her friend Marguerite. They were addressed to ‘Sandown’, Westbere Road, a detached house which became number 14, near the junction with Mill Lane.

Arthur Rathbone
At the time, Marguerite was living with her widowed mother Emma and several of her siblings. Emma Maria Lawson had married Arthur Rathbone in 1878 in Bethnal Green and they had nine children. The 1881 census has him working as a builder and sharing a house in Tottenham with his married brother Edward, a plasterer. Two children were born in Tottenham before the family moved to Croydon and then to West Hampstead by 1888, where initially Arthur and Edward traded as ‘Rathbone Bros’. They worked as builders and estate agents before Edward left to set up home in Brighton.

We know Arthur built houses in Broomsleigh Street, Ravenshaw Street and Glastonbury Street; Ingham and Burrard Roads, as well as Sumatra, Cotleigh and Dynham Roads. He owned properties elsewhere in the neighbourhood, including Sherriff and Gladys Roads.

Arthur appears to have had penchant for fast driving (and possibly alcohol), which led him into trouble. In November 1890, he was ejected from the North London Hotel (now the North London Tavern) in Brondesbury for being the worse for drink and accused of ‘furious driving’ a horse and trap on the Kilburn High Road, at speeds of between 12 and 13 miles an hour. The following February he was fined 20sh for failing to get a license for his trap. In June 1891 he was summonsed for another incidence of ‘furious driving’ along Kilburn High Road – it is very long and straight! Rathbone agreed with the charge and the magistrate dismissed his defence: that ‘his pony had been standing with his head towards home, and he could not restrain it.’ 

There’s no evidence of his taking part in local life, other than his loaning a cart to be used as a platform by the Fortune Green Preservation Society, at a public meeting to drum up support to retain the Green as an open space.

The family were living at 19 Mill Lane at the time of Arthur’s death on 11 November 1894. He is buried in Hampstead Cemetery, Fortune Green Road. Probate was granted to Emma with his effects valued at £100. This low sum disguises the fact that he had built up a large property portfolio, and presumes the properties were registered in her name. Emma moved to Westbere Road and by 1911 was living in Golders Green, at 865 Finchley Road, which she also called ‘Sandown’.

Who sent the postcards?
Margery Berman was the daughter of Solly and Jessie Berman. In 1911 he was working as a clerk for the Board of Guardians and living at 6 Hemstal Road. Margery was 13 and Marguerite Rathbone 14, so it’s likely they were school friends. One message ends ‘I remain yours to a cinder, Margery’ and the other suggests a walk the next morning, meeting at the top of West End Lane. It ends with an apology: Will send you a nice card next time but I am awfully stoney’, (short for ‘stoney broke’).

Miss Billie Burke, postcard
Both postcards were photographs of Billie Burke, daughter of the famous American clown William (Billy) Burke who had worked for the Barnum and Bailey circus. He started his own troupe and came to England in 1893. At the time of his death in 1906 he was living in St John’s Wood, and was buried in Hampstead Cemetery. Billie worked as an actress in London before returning to America where in 1914 she married Florenz Ziegfield (creator of the Ziegfield Follies) and her career took off. Billie appeared in over 80 films, but her best-known role was as Glinda, the Good Witch of the North, in The Wizard of Oz (1939).
 
Billie Burke as Glinda with Judy Garland as Dorothy

What happened to Arthur’s property?
Emma died in 1919 leaving £14,822, today worth about £670,000, to her son George Rathbone and another local builder, James Gibb. 

In January 1923 The Times described the imminent sale of her properties:
This is one of the most important auctions for a long period of Hampstead property. It involves 141 freehold and long leasehold houses, and two shops, in Cotleigh-road, Westbere-road, Burrard-road, Fortune Green-road, and other streets. The rentals amount to £9,500 a year and the leaseholds are held for unexpired terms, in some cases, as long as eighty years.
The auction was conducted by Ernest Owers, West Hampstead’s well-known estate agent.

What happened to Arthur’s children?
Of those we have traced, Marguerite married veterinarian Robert Johnston Forrest and she died in Dorset in 1972. Her sister Florence married tailor William Warr at Emmanuel Church in 1909. Several of Arthur’s sons followed professions related to the building trade. The 1901 and 1911 censuses variously show Frederick as a surveyor and auctioneer; Arthur junior an electrician; Charles a self-employed carpenter and George, a clerk to an auctioneer and estate agent. He became the co-owner of Banks and Rathbone, estate agents of 163 Cricklewood Broadway, who were involved in the 1923 property sale above. Only George benefitted directly under his mother’s will.

In 1911 their brother Herbert was lodging in Fulham and working as a commissionaire. He had been a carpenter when he signed up in 1899, shortly after the start of the Second Boer War to join the Lancers. Discharged as medically unfit in 1902, Herbert is buried in the family grave at Hampstead Cemetery. On 19 February 1916 Frederick joined up at Folkestone to the Canadian Overseas Expeditionary Force. He was killed on 10 August 1918, one of 1,447 men who died that day, fighting at the battle of Amiens and is buried in Rosieres Communal Cemetery extension. He left his £975 estate (today worth about £48,000), to his sister Florence.

Arthur Rathbone and his family helped shape West Hampstead and Kilburn, leaving a lasting legacy in the form of the many properties they built.
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