Genealogy Chat

My great grand uncle owned his own business but despite searching business records I can find no record of the business he had.

My great grand uncle Walter Charles Clarke was born in 1895 in Aldbury, Hertfordshire and 1911 he was an apprentice to a jobbing saddler in Norfolk. In 1920 he married a Violet Helena Stevens in Eton, Buckinghamshire and this is I suspect the most likely place for the business.

In 1922 they had a son George E. Clarke in Eton.

In 1954 my great great grandmother Esther Clarke died in Hertfordshire and my grandfather remembered his father William going to look for his brother Walter and let him know their mother had died. However William and Walter were not close. Unbeknownst to William he and Walter were in fact half brothers not full brothers sharing a father but not a mother. When their father died in 1905 Esther remarried and continued to raise Walter as one of her own however she like many others had 10 other children one of whom was in a home for wayward boys in 1911 which suggests home life may have been difficult.

William apparently knew where Walters business was and when he arrived he found it being run by Walters son George. George told his uncle William that Walter had died the year before (1953) a fact I was later able to confirm. George married a Joan Olive P. Dibble in Eton in 1945. My grandfather never knew where Walter lived or where the business was. Can anyone else find a trace of a business?

This looks to be him in the 1939 Register. He has a Saddler's shop:-

Clarke Household (3 People)

103 (Saddlers Shop) High Street,Eton , Eton U.D., Buckinghamshire, England<<<<<

FIRST NAME(S) LAST NAME(S) DOB SEX OCCUPATION MARITAL STATUS

Walter C Clarke 28 Jun 1895 Male Saddler Married (also says fireman in next column - the shop is next to the Fire Station))
Violet H Clarke 19 Sep 1898 Female U D D Married
George E. Clarke 02 Aug 1922 Male Shop Assistant (outfitter)

Looking on Google Streetwiew it seems that there is still a shop at 103 High Street that still does leather goods repairs.

Kath. x

Thank you for finding him.

You can see what the shop does now here:-

http://www.leathergoodsrepairs.co.uk

Today the next door shop is Eton Travel Agency, but in 1939 the shop was two businesses - next to Walter's was a Watchmaker and Jeweller called Edward Bragg and next to that on the corner was a Fruiterer and Florist called Herbert E. Brown.

At the other side of Walter's shop was the Fire Station which is now Eton Town Council Offices.

Kath. x

Thank you. It's nice to know the shop still exists doing leather goods repairs to this day.