A short history of No 12 Albany Road, 1882-1943
by Volunteer Derek Turner
Although the place of Number 12 Albany Road in history is chiefly determined by being where Mabel Barltrop, later ‘Octavia’, lived for nearly 30 years and as the headquarters of the Panacea Society, it also has an interesting and unusual history of its own, both before and after Mabel moved there. At first sight it may look much like all the other houses in the road, but it has unusual features and anomalies. Records and close examination reveal that it has undergone far more changes that would at first appear.
This history, though quite short, can be divided in two parts chronologically. Part 1, Mabel’s House, now called The Founder’s House, 1882 to 1919, runs from the building’s construction to Mabel’s ‘translation’ to become ‘Octavia’. Part 2 ‘Octavia’s house’ continues the history from 1919 to 1943 when Emily Goodwin died. After that, the house as a residence also slowly died along with the remaining Panacea Society’s members, but like Tutankhamen’s tomb – without the body! – it has remained ‘mummified’, the only significant addition has been the plaque put up in 2017.
Part 1 Mabel’s House 1882 to 1919, a family home
Albany Road and its houses
In the 1880s, England was undergoing a housing boom, and Bedford was no exception. New estates were being developed round the outskirts of the town, amongst them the extensive Bower Estate to the east of the Castle Mound. A building plan dated 1881 shows nine plots on the western side of the newly created ‘Whitbread Street’ between Castle Road and Wade Gery Street. By the time the road and the houses had been built, Wade Gery Street had become Gery Street, and from 1902 Waterloo Road, and Whitbread Street had been renamed Albany Street, later Albany Road. From the start, all the houses were given names as can be seen from the street directory for 1890; the name given to the house on the plot that was to become No 12 Albany Road, was Friedenstein. The other houses in the road have a variety of British names, but Friedenstein looks, and is, German. The explanation lies in the name of the road.
All the houses have retained their original names, except No 18, re-christened ‘The Ark’
One of Queen Victoria’s many German grandchildren, Charles Edward, said to be her favourite, brought up as British and educated at Eton, was created Duke of Albany in 1882. Changing from Whitbread to Albany proved an unfortunate decision.
Charles Edward later ‘turned German’, was briefly the last Duke of Saxe-Coburg, fought against Britain in the First World War and was a senior SS officer in the Second. Friedenstein Palace was one of his German ducal homes, somewhat larger than its British equivalent!
Friedenstein Palace, Germany. Wikipedia Commons
Numbers 12 to 18
Comparing Number 12 to 18 with the other houses in the immediate area reveals an anomaly in the design of the block of four houses of which Number 12 is a part. The neighbouring block of four, even numbers 4 to 10, is built according to a practical design common throughout the Bower Estate; two pairs of semi-detached houses, separated by a passage that allows entrance to the side and back of the houses and gardens.
The block containing Numbers 12 to 18 is different in two ways, both related to the fact that the garden of Castleside extends all the way to Albany Road. The nine plots shown on the 1881 plan match the number of houses there today, a block of four nearest to Castle Road and a block of five, two pairs of semi-detached houses and a detached house, but the 1881 plan fails to show the Castleside garden. In reality, only three plots were available between Castle Road and Castleside garden, but the builder, Robert Richards managed to squeeze in four houses, by eliminating the passage and narrowing the rooms in Number 12. The building plans of 1882 and 1883 show this clearly.
Plot plan, 2.12.1882, plots 198-200
Building plan, 17.06.1883 Credit: Bedfordshire Archives
Of course, plans are not always followed exactly, but in this case they were. The 25-inch OS map of 1900 shows that both the five-house block on the western side and those on the eastern side of Albany Road had passages whereas the four-house block did not.
As Numbers 14 to 18 were terraced with no gaps between them, there was no access to the back and side of the houses from Albany Road. That might seem today like in inconsequential detail, but in the late 19th century, when society was obsessed with social class differences, it was essential for middle-class houses to have at least two entrances: the front door for the family and ‘respectable’ visitors, and a back or side door for servants and tradesmen. Front doors led into a hallway, side doors to the servants’ area, kitchen or scullery. Number 12’s front door was in Albany Street, but the lack of a passage in that road, together with the south wall being hard up against the boundary fence, ruled out any possibility of reaching a back or side door from that street. As can be seen in the building plan, the only possible means of access to the side door was from Castle Road reached via a gate which still exists though out of use, and a right of way created by chopping off the end of Numbers 14 to 18’s gardens. For those making deliveries to Number 12, an entrance from Castle Road down a long path was no doubt inconvenient and confusing.
Extract from building plan for No 12. Credit Bedfordshire Archives
Looking north to Castle Road
Looking east into the garden of Number 12
The second anomaly is that the elimination of the central passage modified the standard design to a middle symmetrical pair and two ‘wings. This had the effect of leaving Number 12 with a blank south-facing wall. Though Victorians preferred gloomy interiors, having no south-facing windows where this would have been easily possible was unusual. However, it would have been achievable in this instance to have windows in the south wall by swapping Numbers 12 and 18 around and pairing them with 14 and 16 as is the case with 4 to 10.
Numbers 12 to 18, showing the blank wall of No. 12
The most likely explanation for the blank wall therefore is not the result of squeezing four houses into three plots but because windows in Number 12’s southern wall would have overlooked the garden of ‘Castleside’. By 1901 it had become a boarding house for Bedford School, and it is known that the school later objected when an attic window was added to the blank south wall on the grounds that it wished to protect pupils in the garden or play area of Castleside from being observed. The same condition may have been laid down when No 12 was being planned. Circumstantial evidence to support this explanation is to be found in the detail of the plans. Those for the living rooms in houses 14,16 and 18 have the living rooms to the left of the passage leading from the front door. Had this been adopted for No 12, it would have made possible south-facing windows. Curiously and irritatingly, there is no evidence of whether this was planned for No.12 as the relevant part of the plan has been left blank.
Living room plan No. 14
Living room plan No. 12
The Valuation Return for 1902 states that that Number 12 was first sold in 1882, but that is misleading. The plot plan is dated December 1882; the building plan for even numbers 12 to 18 was deposited on 19 May 1883 and signed off by the mayor on 17 June so the four houses were possibly completed in late 1883, or more likely early 1884. The earliest dated house close by in Waterloo Road is 1884. Of the two street directories dated 1884, based on information collected late in the previous year, one does not mention Albany Street, the other lists only 12 occupiers in unnumbered houses which indicates that building was still in progress.
Later evidence make it clear that the house was retained by the builder Robert Richards and rented out for £35 a year. Had it been sold the estimated value of Number 12 at that time was £550.
Unfortunately, the deeds for Number 12 have been lost so the history of the first years of the house are unknown. Had the Barltrop’s bought it in 1906 they would probably have paid around £550. Number 31, immediately opposite, but a little larger was sold for £540 in 1907.
According to Panacea Charitable Trust Archive, the first owner was Captain George Kirwan, the street directories for most of the 1880s are missing, but the 1890 directory shows that John Rogers was living there at least from November 1889. The 1891 census reveals that he was 26, a farmer and miller with a wife, a nine-month-old son and two servants, but as he was only 18 when the house was completed it is unlikely he moved there before he was married in the summer of 1989. He was still there in 1901; the family had increased by a four-year-old daughter but there was only one servant. After he left in 1903, the house remained empty for two years. It was briefly occupied by John Saltmarsh during 1905/06 before the Barltrop family moved into Number 12 in late September 1906, but Mabel was in a mental hospital for nine months from April 1906, so she only arrived in January 1907. Her second son, Ivan Barltrop was admitted to Bedford School in 1906. Mabel herself records the arrival as 1906 in an early diary.
As the Valuation Return shows, Mabel paid an annual rent of £35, the standard rate for houses like Friedenstein. At that time, house ownership was the exception rather than the norm amongst most of the social classes other the landed gentry. It is known that Mabel was not well off during her early years in Bedford and was forced to take on editorial work, but no doubt Aunt Fanny, Fanny Waldron, who was relatively wealthy and living with them, contributed towards the rent.
For the next twelve years the story turns to the inside of the house. The description of the rooms provided on the information boards in the Founder’s House describes the function of the various rooms in the later years of the house’s history when it became ‘Octavia’s House’, but prior to 1919, these functions on the upper floor would have been different. Mabel had to accommodate three teenage boys and a young girl as well as Aunt Fanny.
The Lloyd George Domesday survey return provides a summary of the rooms as they were in 1910, shortly after Mabel arrived. Comparing the list with what can be seen today shows that it is similar but not identical, for instance the mention of a dressing room, a term mainly associated today with theatres but around 1900 a small room attached to a bedroom, used for gettkng dressed and storing clothes.
It is unlikely that the furnishings were very different during the first fifteen years from what remains today. Mabel’s tastes were conservative and changed little over time. The main difference would have been in the ways that the upstairs rooms were used.
The inside of the house is very much what one would expect: working from the bottom up: a cellar, common in most houses of the time; a passage, leading to two reception rooms for living and dining and, separated by a curtain, to the kitchen (for cooking), scullery (for washing up) pantry or larder food storage, and the servant’s lavatory. On the first floor, the higher ceilings in the reception rooms that gave a greater sense of space necessitated a second short flight of stairs and short passage leading at the front of the house to two bedrooms and a small room designated as a dressing room on the building plans. Off the passage towards the back of the house was the lavatory, bathroom, single bedroom for the servant and a double bedroom for the children.
From the start, the front bedroom would have been Fanny’s; Mabel would remain in the adjacent room throughout. Initially, it is likely that the three boys would have shared the back bedroom, though for much of the year Eric and Adrian were away at St John’s Leatherhead boarding school, and after leaving school both Eric and Ivan were at Queen’s College Cambridge so would rarely have been living at home. Eric was the first to leave home permanently in 1914 when he enlisted. Ivan followed him almost immediately. For Adrian, who was a good deal younger, 12 Albany Road was home rather longer. He was in India during the later years of the war but returned to Bedford when it was over. The number of occupants of the back bedroom would therefore have varied over time, gradually reducing in number.
Where Dilys slept remains something of a puzzle before she eventually moved into the back bedroom at an unknown date. As a young girl, she might have occupied the small upper-level room originally designed as a dressing room. Alternatively, she might have slept in what was designed as the servant’s room - if she were there at all. In 1911, aged 12 she was living with her aunt Helena Bull (Aunt Lennie). Jane Shaw in Octavia writes that Lennie looked after Dilys for most of her teenage years. During 1915/16 Mabel had her second stay at a mental hospital, Dilys was most likely living with her aunt Lennie, as had happened during her mother’s first stay in a mental hospital in 1906.
The attic on the second floor, reached by a steep staircase, another standard feature, was designed for storage not as a living space and was therefore without windows. Another storage space was the stand-alone long, low building at the bottom of the garden. This can be seen on the 1883 building plan marked ‘shed’ and the 1900 OS map extract. Though it might have been a general-purpose shed, it is more likely that it was a coal shed for the use of all four houses as the there is no equivalent building for 14.16 or 18, and it would have been unnecessarily large for a single house. Coal, or a derivative such as coke, was the only means of heating houses in the late 19th century and well into the 20th, but it was dirty and therefore usually stored away from the main building. The fact that the building plan shows it as open-ended supports this view as a door on a coalhouse would just have been an obstruction.
Number 12’s original garden at the back of the house was small and mostly narrow, broadening out at the western end. There was no garden on the south side as the boundary was hard up against the south wall of the house. A photograph, probably from the 1920s, showing Octavia sitting in her garden, confirms its location. For most of the year, except when the sun was at its highest, the narrow part of the garden would have been in the shade except in the late afternoon.
That completes the description of 12 Albany Road for the period up to 1919 when, in the eyes of her followers, Mabel became Octavia and 12 Albany Road changed from being Mabel’s house, a family home, to Octavia’s house, the centre of a religious sect.
