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Claire Cowen comments:
This photograph is well known
as one of the few pictures of Peckham Rye
at that time. It includes my great aunt Elsie,
who married and became Dame Elizabeth Mary
Cadbury. (She is also recorded on a plaque
as attending the Quaker Meeting House, now
the Royal Mail Sorting Office, in Highshore
Road, Peckham.)
Elizabeth's parents are John and Mary Jane
Taylor, not Thomas and Rosamund Cash as stated
on the Sunbury page. They moved in 1863 to
Sunbury, recorded in the 1868 Ordnance Survey
map under 'Taylor John (Sunbury)', nowadays
council flats on Peckham Rye East.
John's brother Joseph Taylor, married to Mary
Jane's sister Elizabeth (both Cash before
marriage), is listed as living closer to Nunhead
Lane at No.1 Rye Terrace, also part of Peckham
Rye.
Elizabeth Cadbury wrote that the new home
at Sunbury was 'further from town, on higher
ground, and had a large piece of ground, which
my father gradually transformed into a delightful
garden. He was an enthusiastic gardener and
botanist, and left many collections of ferns
and flowers.'
I don't know how the names got mixed up. Thomas
and Rosamund Cash were the brother and sister-in-law
of Mary Jane and Elizabeth. They may also
have lived in the Peckham Rye area.
The Cash family was another big Quaker family
and I have a picture of Mary Jane's mother,
Elizabeth Petipher Lucas Cash, in the Quaker
dress of that day. She moved with her husband,
William Cash, and family to Peckham Rye in
1824, when it was 'a pleasant country place;
there were farms and fields, and a few houses
with lovely gardens; nightingales sang amongst
the trees, and it was as different from the
crowded suburb it has become as it is possible
to imagine.'
This account was written by her grand-daughter
(Elizabeth Cadbury) in the 1914 introduction
to a limited-edition book called 'A Dear Memory'.
The book is a collection of the letters her
mother (Mary Jane Taylor, 1831 - 1887) wrote
to a friend over her entire lifetime.
The book contains many fascinating references
to their life in Sunbury and other details
about the Peckham of their day. |
