While exploring the lives of my 2xgreat grand uncles Frederick James Stocking and George Thomas Stocking, I came across an interesting connection between their two brides, who they married at All Saints Walworth in the early 1880s. Both gave their home addresses as 6 Aylesbury Street, Walworth. When I looked closer at the parish registers, I found that, in the first three months of 1882 alone, 52 of the 91 marriages celebrated at the same church also gave the same address! Intrigued, I tried to find out more.

A quick skim through the parish register images at Ancestry show that 6 Aylesbury Street is used as a home address by a large number of brides throughout 1882 and 1883. I have not checked earlier or later dates. I thought perhaps this was a property owned by the church, used as a ‘convenience’ address for those who did not normally reside in the parish, but I have found no connection to the church. Both Fred and George’s brides had previously lived in Walworth, so this would seem to have been unnecessary, at least for them. A look at old maps of the area at the Underground Map Project for Walworth gave no indication of there being any institutions at or near no.6 – no schools, workhouses, hospitals or church or mission halls. So what was going on?

An address search at The Genealogist shows that, at the time of the 1881 census, no.6 Aylesbury Street, Walworth was occupied by two households:

• Richard Winter, a 38 year old Malt Roaster, his wife Caroline and their three young children
• Robert Henry Millward, a 33 year old Blacksmith, his wife Mary Ann and four children

The properties either side house similar families headed by railway workers, cabmen, grooms, leather workers and other tradesmen. There is no sign of any institution which might house large numbers of women (or anyone else). The picture is much the same in the 1871 and 1891 censuses, with one or two families occupying no.6.

I also searched the British Newspaper Archive at FindMyPast to see if the address featured in any London papers in the 1880s, but drew a blank.

Aylesbury Street has long gone, but stood close to All Saints, Walworth, bisected by Thurlow Street. The whole area is now over-built by what came to be known as one of Europe’s largest and most notorious housing estates, The Aylesbury Estate, initiated in the 1960s and now undergoing some renovation.

The mystery remains. If anyone has any other ideas, I’d be interested to hear them!