6 - Gray & Davison

Summary

FREDERICK Davison and Louisa Gray were married by Licence at St Pancras Church on 6 February 1839. They took up residence in Park Village East – a recent development by John Nash, to the north-east of Regent's Park, whose houses have been described as ‘pretty but sophisticated cottages’. The Davisons, with a female servant and two lodgers, lived at Vendome Cottage, two doors from the York and Albany Tavern, and near the junction of Park Village East and Mornington Place. They are last recorded at that address in September 1842.

London's rapid expansion to north and west, stimulated in part by the expanding railway network, was eating up the fields and lanes which had until recently preserved some recollection of the Middlesex countryside. In its place, Park Village East aspired to create rus in urbe – a congenial environment on the edge of the city, in which the monied classes could enjoy the advantages of modern housing in a picturesque, pseudo-rural setting. Yet it was barely half a mile from the New Road which, by the 1840s, was consolidating its reputation as a major commercial thoroughfare bordered by workshops, stone-yards, and stables for the carriers whose vehicles conveyed goods to and from the railway terminus – Euston Station opened in 1837 – and canal basins. For Frederick Davison, journeying every day from Vendome Cottage to Gray's organ manufactory, the contrast could hardly have been more striking.

The workshop itself was probably much as it had been since Gray extended his premises in 1826–7 (above, p. 86–8). He and his family continued to live in 11 New Road, where they are recorded in the 1841 census: John and Jane Gray, three children (Emily, Maria and Alfred) and two female servants. William Pistell (a marble mason) owned the house adjoining Gray's to the west; the narrow passage leading from New Road to Gray's workshops went through his property. Mary Gray (John's mother) still lived next door at 9 New Road, and then came two more houses belonging to Gray (8 and 7 New Road). Number 7 was rented to the organ-builders James and Henry Thomas, who were probably father and son.