Surrey Trade/Post Office Directories

[peakoverload]

Does anyone know where I can locate (online ideally but will purchase data CD's if necessary) post office, Kelly's, trade directories that cover Upper Norwood from around 1840 to as near to the present as possible. I'm trying to find information about private houses and businesses in the area known locally as 'The Triangle' namely Church Road, Westow Street and Westow Hill. In particular I'm looking for information on the house I grew up in on Church Road

So far I've only been able to find a few for 1855, 1878, 1891.

I've been given some information pertaining to my house and it's former residents which indicates that the information came from directories and in particular for 1861, 1864, 1865, 1866-1889 (maybe not complete), 1892 - 1898 (maybe not complete), 1902 - 1909 (maybe not complete), 1911, 1912 - 1928 (maybe not complete), 1930, 1932 - 1939 (maybe not complete), 1954.

I would like to see what other information is in these and any other directories for the area to build up a picture of the community through history.

[Chris Doran]

I have a substantial number of directories of Upper Norwood as some of the roads in my area of study, Penge & Anerley, are in the SE19 postal district. Also some maps, electoral rolls, and postcards. Some of the last two and some of the directories only cover the east side of Church Rd between Crystal Palace Parade and Fox Hill.

Much of this is in electronic form and I will contact you by PM to see how we can share this.

I guess you are already familiar with several books by John Coulter and Audrey Hammond, and in particular "Upper Norwood Triange Memories" by Beryl D Cheeseman. If you still live in the area, you should be able to find them at UN and Croydon Local Studies Libraries as well as The Crow Bookshop. They also appear on auction sites regularly. Croydon LS has "Norwood News" on microfilm and it's also on Find My Past and the British Newspaper Archive.

There was at one time a Virtual Norwood website which had photographs and a discussion forum which had a lot of historical posts. This is now gone, but may be on the Wayback Machine.