Horse-trading

Edward Paul and Co. Ltd. -- a local business that literally moved with the times.

Horse-drawn buses pass each other in the Brockley Road. This image predates 1911, when tramlines were laid.

For centuries, May Day -- 1st May -- was a celebration of the end of winter, and the return of spring.

   It was an important event in Crofton Park, which was still a rural area in Queen Victoria’s time. Traditionally, May Day would be celebrated with parades, dancing around the Maypole, and the crowning of a May Queen.

   By the end of the nineteenth century, however, times and the landscape were changing: this excerpt from the Forest Hill & Sydenham Examiner of May 1898, shows how Crofton Park was evolving from a farming community in Kent, to a suburb of the rapidly expanding London metropolis.

   ‘May-Day.

If Forest Hill and Sydenham do not celebrate the merry month of May by crowning a May Queen and a procession carriages decorated with all the beautiful blossoms of the season, one of our townsmen, Mr. Edward Paul, contractor and coal merchant of the Stanstead-road annually parades his fine stud of horses gaily caparisoned and harnessed to his trade vehicles, the drivers of which seem to consider the wearing of “top hats" none too silky, adds immensely to the success of the display.’

Local advertisement for Edward Paul, trading as a coal merchant

   Edward Paul was, in 1891, a greengrocer and fruiterer with a shop at 193 Stanstead Road, and a fleet of horses and carts to make local deliveries. By 1897, the horses and carts were delivering fuel as he had become a coal merchant; by 1901, he was also a removal contractor, reflecting the growing trade connected to people moving into and out of the area.

   A few years later, in 1904, his operations had moved to 127 Stanstead Rd.

   Paul opened a second establishment at 299 Brockley Road in 1908, and had become the owner of a fleet of horse-drawn buses by 1926.

   That year, the same newspaper reported;

'Local ‘Bus Change.

Residents of Forest Hill and the surrounding districts were surprised when it was announced on Thursday last that the London General Omnibus Company had bought up the familiar "E.P." buses, but on Saturday morning the news was confirmed by the appearance, in the place of  "Edward Paul, Ltd, Forest Hill, S.E." on the side of the buses, of the familiar "John Christopher Mitchell, Secretary," of the L.G.O.C. The buses, twelve in number, were the property of Messrs. Edward Paul, Ltd., Stanstead Road, Forest Hill, and run on Services 12d Acton Vale and Dulwich, 12c Oxford Circus and Dulwich, and 12a Oxford Circus and South Croydon.

   We understand that there will be no change in their working for the present.'