Joseph Potter recalls an uncle who made his fortune in eighteenth century London as a diamond cutter as well as two of Joseph’s half-brothers who inherited his wealth.

In his Memoirs, recalling the year 1792, Joseph Potter writes:

“We arrived safe in the River Thames and moor’d her abreast of the Tower of London. It came into my mind concerning a rich uncle I had in London which I had never seen, likewise two of my father’s oldest sons of his first wife’s children, Thomas and Ralph Potter …… He died possessed of about one hundred thousand pounds besides all Bell Alley, Coleman Street, belonged to him. He died when I was an infant and my mother alive, but Thomas and Ralph never once wrote to acquaint my mother with his death as the two shared the effects between them….”

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Hugh Newman, was Court Crier of the Rolls Court, but met his end at his own hands.

Hugh Newman (1778-1827) was the fourth son of John & Margaret Newman. He was six when the family moved to London. In 1805 he married a young widow, Ann Mathews, who bore him one son before her own early death. Hugh was employed as Porter and Court Keeper (Crier) of the Rolls Court in Chancery Lane, Westminster but lived with his infant son, George, in the same house as his brother-in-law, William Leedle, in Gibraltar Row, St. George’s Fields, Southwark.

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Between 1843-1857 Samuel Hugh Newman and his family, lived at various addresses in Ship Yard, Strand. Ship Yard took its name from the Ship Tavern, which stood at the south corner, just at the east end of Butcher’s Row (which fronted the Strand to the rear of St. Clement Dane’s Church). To the left, marking the junction of Strand and Fleet Street, stood the historic Temple Bar. From the Strand, Ship Yard was barely visible as it was entered through a narrow archway beneath 246 Strand, the double-fronted Temple House, then occupied by Griffiths, Linen Draper. Ship Yard’s narrow entry gave on to a tiny court on the right before turning sharply to the left and opening out into a street almost as wide as Butcher’s Row itself. Its importance was increased, however, by the fact that it wasn’t a cul-de-sac but debouched into Little Shear or Shire Lane (a thoroughfare joining Boswell Court on the west with Shire Lane on the east).

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The street is now quite mixed with some late Victorian houses. There is also one terrace of brick houses on the west side called “Hayles Terrace” and dated 1853. Further down on the same side are some very plain brick houses which could date from around 1816 or any time up to the 1850s. In my opinion this could be the original Gibraltar Row as it is a single row of modest dwellings and therefore the earliest houses in the street. They could date from a few decades later but it would be unlikely that the earlier houses should be pulled down in the 1840s or 1850s only to be replaced by something almost identical. At the north end of this row is a recess called Fives Court (visible by the lamp post and blue sign on the wall in both photos), which leads into a serpentine passageway (with some old brick walls) which leads directly in East Place, West Square where we know that Hugh Newman’s nephew, Samuel Hugh Newman was living 1838-184. Knowing that the Newmans usually lived in very close proximity to one another, I think this is another confirmation that these houses constitute at least part of the original Gibraltar Row.

The fact that the Leedle household was at 24, Gibraltar Row suggests there were more houses than at present but I would venture the opinion that the ones in my photograph are from the original row, so that we can know what sort of house No. 24 would have been, even if we can no longer identify it (the numbers having been changed to accommodate the new houses).

Sometime it might be worth checking the 1841 & 1851 Census to see if one can ascertain anything about the increase in the number of houses in this decade.

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