Updated June 2025
I have always thought Fair View House in Glade Road Marlow to be so lovely with all the decorative metalwork so I decided to look into some of the house's former occupiers.
My attention was caught by the Cupper family so here's a little portrait of them:
Arthur and Eliza Cupper moved to Marlow circa 1890. They were in Glade Road on the 1891 census and in the 1891 Marlow Directory and Almanack though not in Fair View. Arthur was a domestic coachman, just as he had been for years in London before that on the census but when the Directory was published he was listed as a boarding house keeper.
He and his wife married at St Margaret's Westminster in 1869. Arthur was originally from Bramfield, Suffolk [born 1840 to William and Harriet] while Eliza was a London born girl from a family of Sussex origin [nee Hoadley born circa 1850 St George Hanover Square Parish, London to parents John and Mary Ann]. Eliza's father was a footman which made me wonder if he and Eliza's future husband had worked together in a large house.
All the couple's children except their youngest Maud, seem to have been born in Paddington or Marylebone in London. Maud was Marlow born.
By 1895 Eliza was managing Rye Peck House by the river as a private residential hotel (short term apartments with luncheon and tea included). It had been recently converted from a house. The South Bucks Standard was very impressed by the conversion saying that Rye Peck deserved to "become immediately popular amongst those who in search of relaxation and health, estimate cleanliness and comfort at their true value. The house which is excellently fitted up is cosy and well furnished and admirably suited to its purpose" .
Nevertheless this private hotel didn't seem to last long and Eliza turned to running a domestic service registry, that is an employment agency for servants, from the High Street where the family also lived for a time. Business must have gone well or Eliza was simply generous of nature as she was a frequent donor of funds to Marlow Cottage Hospital.
Arthur died in 1907 and by the early 1910s Eliza had moved the family back to Glade Road and into Fair View* and was running her agency from there. She supplied cooks, parlour maids, nurse maids, whatever you needed short or long term.
Her sons Edgar and Henry both attended Borlase grammar school in West Street. Henry was admitted on a scholarship in 1909, I am unsure about Edgar. Both played football for the school as Old Borlasians. Both were also competitive rowers in local competitions. Their sister Maud herself was a medal winning rower as an 18 year old at Marlow Regatta in 1913.
Henry and Edgar both served in World War One. Henry was mentioned in despatches in 1916 as a second Lieutenant in the Oxon and Bucks Light Infantry. As a civilian he worked in the USA and Canada as an executive of an automobile company and married an American woman. He returned to England by 1921 with his family and settled in Glade Road, but not in Fair View.
Edgar suffered a twice fractured leg from a German grenade thrown into his trench during his military service. He was then in the 7th battalion of the Bedfordshire Regiment. It is said on a number of websites that while he was away fighting Edgar's wife bigamously married someone else and that he himself also committed bigamy. These websites are sites concerned with filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock as Edgar's wife's second marriage was to a man who wrote screenplays for Hitchcock. I have not researched this issue myself at all. His marriages were not to local women.
By the way there was by sheer coincidence a man in Victorian Marlow named Alfred Hitchcock but he was a gardener!
*A previous resident at Fair View /Fairview was the elderly and very religious Caroline Patrickson, a lady of private means. She moved to Effra in Beaumont Rise sometime between 1904 and 1907 and had also lived elsewhere in Glade Road. While at Fair View Caroline lived with a paid companion and a maid. She died in 1924 aged 88. I'm her will she left bequests to the two servants she had then (different from her ones who served her at Fair View), Ms Wilmott her companion and Jane Day her maidservant.
Researched and written by Charlotte Day.
Several other houses in Glade Road have histories on this blog describing who lived there. To find them see this index
Sources:
1907 and 1915 editions of the Marlow Directory and Almanack.
GRO Birth, Marriage and Death Indexes online.
Census 1841, 51, 61,71, 81,91 transcribed by me from microfilm.
1911 census via Find My Past.
Bramfield, Suffolk and St Margaret's Westminster parish registers. Thanks to Jane Pullinger for accessing the latter in person for me.
South Bucks Standard 21st August 1913. Copy held at the British Library Archives and accessed by me March 2021 via the BNA.
Bucks Herald 25th December 1915, as above.
South Bucks Standard 5 November 1909, as above.
Reading Mercury 15th January 1916, as above.
Bucks Free Press March 21st 1924. Bucks Free Press Archives.
Photo by Kathryn. Taken March 2021.
©Marlow Ancestors. You are very welcome to use this research or image for family or local history purposes if you credit this blog and link here so that the sources listed above remain credited for the information they provided.
