William Smith Williams: William and Kentish Town

Sunday 14 January 2018

William and Kentish Town

William moved from Paddington to Harmood Road in Kentish Town at about the time of the Great Reform Act of 1832.

They lived first at 25 and then at 31. I visited there on Saturday, only to find that those numbers now attached to modern town houses. I had hoped to see number 31 a step up in the world for the Williams family. Happily over the road the original late Georgian houses remain and are wonderful.

I mentioned the Great Reform Act because it extended the franchise to included those owning houses worth more than £10 per annum. Did the Harmood Road properties cross the qualification threshold? I haven't yet traced William to the electoral register, but I will keep looking.

He would have been very much in favour of the Act and would have been looking forward to further reforms in the coming decade.

He was at the time working for the pioneering lithographer, Charles Hulmandell, but also in touch with influential periodicals such as the Examiner, Athenaeum and Spectator. In due course he would become a contributor of articles on art, theatre and literature.

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About me

Phil Hamlyn Williams's book entitled Charlotte Bronte's Devotee is about William Smith Williams, the man who discovered and mentored Charlotte Bronte and a host of Victorian writers and artists. He has now turned his attention to another aspect of history: manufacturing, explored through the prism of the Great Exhibition of 1851 at which William's brother exhibited. Previously, Dunkirk to D Day tells the stories of some of those ordnance men who fought in both world wars.

Ordnance, tells the story of the men and women who equipped the British Army for the Great War. It was published by The History Press in June 2018. His first book, War on Wheels, telling the story of the thousands of ordinary men and women who together worked to mechanise the British Army in WW2, was published by The History Press in September 2016. He wrote the story of the MacRobert's Reply collaborating with Story Terrace, published in December 2016. This is the story of an aeroplane, the woman who bought it and the men who flew it. He writes family histories for Story Terrace and comments regularly on contemporary issues his own blogs. He is chair of trustees at The Lincoln Arts Trust which ran the Lincoln Drill Hall arts venue. He also chairs The Lincoln Book Festival. He works with others on CompassionateLincoln.

He was awarded an MA in Professional Writing at University College Falmouth in 2009. He has been writing for fifteen years, having spent much of his career in professional services, most recently as a partner in Price Waterhouse, and in the not for profit sector.

William Smith Williams

My article in Bronte Studies

Sunday 14 January 2018

William and Kentish Town

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