‘humble but respectable’: Recovering the Neighbourhood Surrounding William and Catherine Blake's Last Residence, No. 3 Fountain Court, Strand, c. 1820–27

Abstract

In this paper, drawing upon a wide range of unpublished archival sources, I present a detailed reconstruction of Fountain Court and its residents, William and Catherine Blake during the period William and Catherine Blake were resident at No. 3 Fountain Court (c. 1820–27). The paper presents important new information concerning the society and milieu in Fountain Court and its neighbourhood during 1820–27. This fresh archival evidence enables us to identify and precisely locate for the first time the 'humble but respectable' fellow lodgers and neighbours living in Fountain Court during William and Catherine Blake's period of residence, and provides a detailed picture of life in the Blakes' neighbourhood during this period, and of trades conducted in the court, as well as the close familial and social relationships existing between a number of households immediately surrounding the Blakes' residence. Such relationships provide a context for William and Catherine's own relationships with their brother-in-law and landlord at 3 Fountain Court, Henry Banes and his wife Sarah Banes (née Boucher) and two of their neighbours and fellow lodgers in the court, the carver and gilder John George Lohr, and Blake's employer and fellow artist John Barrow. The Blakes' last residence was not in a sleepy, forgotten backwater, as some contemporary accounts and later biographers appear to suggest. As my paper demonstrates, Fountain Court in the 1820s, leading directly off the Strand, a major commercial thoroughfare of the largest metropolis of the period, was comprised of a small community, thriving with social and commercial activity. The reconstruction provides a detailed immediate context in which to view afresh William and Catherine's years living and working in Fountain Court.

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