Updated July 2023
The oldest references to this house usually call it The Corner House but it doesn't seem to have gone by that name for a while. It is on the corner of West Street, in Market Square / High Street. Not to be confused with a later property known as the Corner House on the corner of Institute Road and the High Street. ( For more on that building see the post here ). The property had three rooms per floor in its early days.
In 1702 until at least 1705 the property pictured was occupied by chapman Richard Greydon.
In 1719 Richard Langley made the place his home. He may just have used it as an alehouse.
Joseph Webb, butcher, along with his wife Ann bought the premises in 1743 from the heirs of Thomas Constable, a merchant linen draper from Reading who had owned the property for some years. The grand asking price? £40! At that time a Thomas Wright was the tenant. However Joseph himself occupied the house at the time of his death in 1756. He left the premises to his wife Ann but two years later upon the death she asked her son in law William Sneath the Marlow surgeon to organise the sale of them on her behalf. The property was supposed to belong to Ann only for her lifetime and then descend to her and Joseph's son John and his heirs but she had the consent of her son to sell it (or she would have been illegally selling entailed property)!
The premises were auctioned off at the nearby Crown inn to the highest bidder.
Ann's sole heir was her daughter Elizabeth Sneath which suggests that her son John was dead by then. The will of Elizabeth Sneath herself can be read here. There was an unmarried daughter Mary in Joseph's will too. She, Elizabeth and John were that will's joint executors.
By 1833 Henry Menday / Mendy (born circa 1795) had a bakery in the Corner House. The premises then comprised a garden and yard as well as the main building. The annual value of the property was assessed at £12 then. Henry also occupied a garden and yard opposite with an annual value of £2. His shop was only two doors down from Sawyer's bakery- more about that business here.
Henry continued in the Corner House for some years before he retired in middle age and went to live further along West Street with his wife Mary. He died in 1869.
Owen Wright the baker was in Menday's old premises by 1853 until at least 1884 when there was a failed attempt to break into the shop. Marlow was enduring a little crime wave at the time.
In 1879 when Owen heard that fellow shopkeeper Ann Badger had had a pair of boots stolen from her business he went off in hot pursuit of the suspect, retrieved the boots and handed the man over to the police. Playing cricket probably helped keep him fit!
Owen was no stranger to appearing in court. He twice had to sue men who owed him money. John Jones hadn't paid for £1 worth of bread in 1855, while "MacMillan" owed a whole 4p for flour in 1865. Most Marlow bakers in the 1800s also acted as flour dealers.
In 1879 during a routine inspection Owen was found to have be selling bread at less than the advertised weight, though only marginally so. Near neighbour and fellow baker Charlotte Sawyer was similarly guilty along with a host of other retailers whose scales were found to be in less than perfect working order. You typically were fined for this.
Owen died at home on the premises in 1884 aged just 54. He and his family were worshippers at the Salem Chapel, Quoiting Square which is now called Christ Church.
The Corner House premises were used for most of the late Victorian period and earlier 20th century as a refreshment rooms or cafe. George Fryer decided on the slightly posher "refreshments caterer" for his occupation when filling out the 1891 census. He listed himself as having a coffee house in the Kelly's 1903 and 1911 trade directories. George was the subject of a number of thefts from his premises, usually of food. One of the most ambitious was the theft of a four and a half pound portion of a German sausage taken from the window in 1887. That was some sausage! The guilty party, a tramp from Aldershot, was seen to put it under his coat and was caught with it still there a little later. His snatch cost him 14 days jail time.
George and his wife Sarah suffered the death of their eldest child Florence aged 13 in 1893 and insolvency the next year. I'm not sure who occupied the premises immediately afterwards but it was still an eatery.
This blog focuses predominantly on pre 1920s Marlow so we'll leave it there!
To find other High Street / West Street content please see the "Specific, Shops, Streets Etc" index here. All mentions of an individual can be found under the A-Z Person Index options on the menu. Thousands of Marlow people are listed.
Sources:
Will of Joseph Webb 1756, PCC. Copy from National Archives, Kew. Also Ann Webb 1771 and Thomas Constable 1729 as above. All transcribed by me.
Commercial Gazette 15th August 1894. British Library Archives.
1833 parochial assessment original handwritten notebooks, held by my family and transcribed by me.
1841-1891 censuses reels, transcribed by me.
Property deeds Buckinghamshire Archives.
Kelly's Directory of Buckinghamshire 1883, 1903 and 1911 by Kelly's Directories Limited. Via the University of Leicester.
GRO death index online.
Ipswich Journal 7th January 1758. Bucks Herald 18th October 1879 and 14th April 1855. Copies held at the British Library Archive and accessed by me via the BNA March 2021.
Buckingham Express 2nd August 1884. As above.
©Marlow Ancestors. You are welcome to use this research or the image for the purposes of family or local history research if you credit this blog and provide a link here.
