Adelaide Place, now long gone, was once, in spite of its tiny area, home to a multitude of ever-changing businesses. It was erected in 1835 as part of the London Bridge approach scheme and named after King William IV’s consort. Running south from King William Street to London Bridge, the site contained many alleys, including the disturbingly named Gulley Hole. Among its many businesses were a rag dealer, a gold refiner, a brick manufacturer, a supplier of lawn mowers, an agent selling tickets – first class only – for a steamship to Constantinople, and Finch & Co, a manufacturer of artificial manure. In 1862, Henry Griffiths, an employee of the latter, was charged with stealing from the company, after running away with the proceeds he’d been given to bank.

Adelaide Place features in the history of Guinness. In 1835 Waring & Moline, Consignees of Guinness Stout set up here with storage space provided by the vaults formed by the land arches of London Bridge. Samuel Warring, a Bristol merchant, was in partnership with the Quaker, Sparks Moline. The partners were related: Sparks’ maternal grandmother was a Waring and his sister was given the name of Mary Waring Moline. Their short-lived partnership ended in 1838.

Multi-storied number 3 Adelaide Place was especially busy, and followed through the years it provides a fascinating snapshot of 19th-century London business.

In the 1840s the address was home to offices of the Widows National & General Life Annuity and Assurance Society, Charles Collins, director of the London to Dublin Direct Railway, and Mr H Ward, licenser for Cobbold’s Patent Tubular Life Preserver. This life preserver, it was claimed, prevented drowning in shipwrecks, was ‘incapable of sinking’, and protected ‘the body against concussion against drift wreck, ice or any other hard substance’: ‘No person should go to sea without this.’ Shipwrecks were, indeed, a fact of life in the 1800s; in January 1854 alone, there were over 200 UK wrecks.

In 1854, the address was used for selling tickets for Crystal Palace Park with trains departing from London Bridge. Tickets varied in price: there were five-shilling days, half-a-crown days and one-shilling days. The park was a celebrated pleasure ground, formed after the Crystal Palace building in Hyde Park was moved here following the Great Exhibition of 1851. It featured a giant maze, gardens and fountains, model dinosaurs and a marine aquarium. A few years later the Sittingbourne & Sheerness Railway Company, offering a railway link to the Isle of Sheppey, had offices here, followed by CW Mullins, monetary advance agent, who specialised in loans to farmers.

Strange’s Crystal Oil & Lamp Depot was here in 1861–2: ‘Each lamp is different and the stock is superior to any other in the trade.’ Then we have the Tebb Brothers, auctioneers and estate agents, and FN Gisburn, who sold his patented ‘electrographic target’ for recording the accuracy of gunshots: ‘The only one which at any range records your shot correctly at the firing stand.’ Just up the road in King William Street was the gunmaker Deane & Son, famous for its rifles and revolvers. A little later we find an agent for assisted emigration to New Zealand looking for shepherds, farm workers and female servants, and also selling tickets for a sailing voyage to New Zealand in the clipper Storm Cloud. The New Zealand Government Emigration Board also had offices here, and offered grants of land to farmers who could pay their own passage.

In 1864, our address was home to GA Cape, ‘auditor and public accountant’, and then Mr C Hallows, creosote supplier, John Lenton Pulling, solicitor (son of a High Court judge), and Cope & Harris Accountants. In 1865 an inquest was held here into the death of Lazarus Simon Magnus, who had offices on the second and third floors. It seems he accidentally killed himself when he used chloroform to treat a toothache.

In 1870, Messrs Jones, auctioneers and land agents, were doing business here, as was the Artists’ Own Union of Artists, which offered paintings for prizes in a lottery, tickets one shilling each. R. J. Pollentine was the first secretary. In 1875, Robert Scott & Co, represented the London and Glasgow Steam Shipping Company, operating ‘the highest class of screw steamers’ between London and Glasgow. In 1877 a George T Warren, Guinness bottler, set up here, after ‘30 years with Sparkes Moline & Co’, according to Lloyds List. Guinness’s sales were booming, rising from 350,000 barrels in 1868 to 779,000 in 1876 and over a million by 1886.

Occupants followed in quick succession, including the London office of WJ Wilcox & Co, New York, lard refiners and oil pressers, and of Borne, Scrymser & Co, New York, selling ‘cylinder oils, steam refined, dark lubricating and machinery oils’. Among others were Mr T Scoones, hop exchange auctioneer, Puttick & Puttick, auctioneers, surveyors and estate agents, CW Palmer, brewery accountant, a dairy agent, and a laundry agent trading in laundries, steam and manual, with the slogan: ‘no sale, no charge’. From 1881, H Grover, solicitor, wrote from this address to the Woolwich Gazette strongly opposing free education for the poor. He was probably the Henry Grover who in 1885 gave the same address when promoting his candidacy as MP for Deptford.

In 1888 an advertisement appeared in Queen, the Lady’s Newspaper, for Lake & Co, 3 Adelaide Place, selling Kale’s Complexion Pilules: ‘A certain cure for pimples. Perfectly harmless. No lady’s toilet is complete without them.’ In the same year we find the London Bridge News Rooms, where, for a penny, anyone could, in comfort, read newspapers, play chess and smoke. A telephone room was also contemplated. The News Rooms advertised a lottery, in which, for a 1s 6p postal order, participants had three guesses to identify a lucky number worth £5.

The final years of Adelaide Place proved troublesome. There was a scandal in 1902 when Mr Simpson, a saccharine company accountant, appeared in court pursued for maintenance by his wife who complained of his ‘persistent cruelty’. She said he was ‘always a drunkard’ and frequently struck and kicked her. He did not argue, but said ‘it was no good airing dirty linen in public’. And just up the road in King William Street, in the same year, Kitty Byron fatally stabbed her alcoholic lover Arthur Reginald, and was later found guilty of his murder.

Elsewhere in Adelaide Place a YMCA hostel, busy in World War One with soldiers returning from the front, proved a magnet for thieves. In 1916 Private Thomas Hare was sentenced to hard labour for stealing sheets. ‘An ungrateful and despicable act,’ according to the Lord Mayor. In 1917 a 15-year-old boy, described as ‘a most desperate character’ and ‘most untruthful’, stole money and watches from the hostel. He claimed in mitigation that his brothers had been killed on the front, his father was still fighting there, and his mother had died of shock. In 1919, another man was sentenced to hard labour for similar thefts.

After 1919 there are few references to Adelaide Place, and the site was cleared in the 1920s to make way for new developments. Unfortunately, in 1923, one of the construction workers died after falling from an iron girder. In 1925, a then very modern building Adelaide House, appeared in the area, becoming the City’s tallest office block. It is now a Grade II listed building.

Adelaide Place was no more, but its ghost lived on. The United Kingdom Temperance & General Provident Institution had built a water fountain here, where, during the hop-picking season, women heading to London Bridge Station to catch trains to Kent stopped at the fountain to wash their babies and cooking utensils. The fountain was relocated to Clapham Common.

The company was established in 1840 to provide mutual life assurance and annuities for members of the temperance movement, but opened its business to the wider public in 1847. It had offices at 1 Adelaide Place.

Researching old addresses
Streets that no longer exist can be researched via old newspapers, searching under street names, and by city directories. A particular useful resource is TheGenealogist’s Map Explorer, which allows users to overlay old and new maps to see how the streets have changed. Other useful old maps include Edward Weller’s Map of London 1868, available online at london1868.com. Tallis’s London Street Views shows elevated views of London’s major streets 1838–1840, and includes advertisements, plates, descriptions and a business directory. Part 1 shows King William Street, London Bridge Nos. 1-86, and Adelaide Place Nos. 1-6: see romanticlondon.org. Some of these views can be found on museumoflondon.org.uk .

Other good sources for London’s changing street names are: A-Z Old to New Street Names, maps.thehunthouse.com and Inner London Street Name Changes, rayment.info/

For Paul’s article about the Livery Companies of London, and a series of expert features about tracing the history of your own house, see the new Issue 9 of our print magazine, available via discoveryourancestors.co.uk