{"id":313,"date":"2010-08-24T23:10:50","date_gmt":"2010-08-24T22:10:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/?p=313"},"modified":"2019-04-03T21:59:36","modified_gmt":"2019-04-03T20:59:36","slug":"william-willett-s-builders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/?p=313","title":{"rendered":"William Willett (b 1837) Founder of the building firm"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are (at least) two notable William Willetts. The most notable two are probably the father and son pair; the son (b 1856) is noted as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/?p=142\">advocate of Daylight Saving<\/a>, whilst his father is noted for founding the building firm Willetts.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>William Willett (the elder) was born in Colchester in about 1837. His father Everard was a Vitular and his mother, Maria (who was Everard&#8217;s second wife) was an Innkeeper after being widowed in 1845. The 1851 Census shows that William was an apprentice stonemason living (with his mother and siblings*) at the Queens Head Inn, Hythe St, Colchester. *Siblings were an elder brother, John, a younger sister, Maria, and a probable step-sister, Sarah.<\/p>\n<p>By the time of the 1861 Census he was a builder living at 261 Marylebone Road, London and gave his occupation as &#8216;Builder&#8217; &#8211; He already owned a statutory company employing 7 men and 2 boys.\u00a0 In 1871 he was living at 8 Prince Consort Road, Hampstead.\u00a0 Prince Consort Road (later Belsize Crescent) was one of his developments. In 1881 he was in Hove at 1 Eaton Gardens (another Willett development &#8211; now part of the Willett Estate conservation area).\u00a0 In later Censuses he was at 64 The Drive, Hove (still in the Willett Estate), where he died in 1913.<\/p>\n<p>The web-site <a href=\"http:\/\/www.british-history.ac.uk\/\">british-history.ac.uk<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/..\/utility\/willcreatenewwindow.gif\" alt=\"open new window\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" \/><\/a> details a number of places that he and his eldest son, William, developed in London. I have plotted these on a <a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.com\/maps\/ms?ie=UTF8&amp;hl=en&amp;msa=0&amp;msid=118025575183428438701.0004702d3d35c7176354f&amp;z=12\">Google Map<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"..\/..\/utility\/willcreatenewwindow.gif\" alt=\"open new window\" width=\"16\" height=\"16\" \/><\/a> (click on the blue felt-tip-like lines to see details). They made a habit of building high quality houses in areas that were, or would become, viewed as quality areas such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Belsize Park<\/li>\n<li>Sloane Square<\/li>\n<li>Kensington Palace Gardens<\/li>\n<li>Grosvenor Square<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/maps\/embed?pb=!4v1516826900147!6m8!1m7!1sqv2L_Yx6XWz_UF88k5IPPw!2m2!1d51.49196234352597!2d-0.1574313379557155!3f72.59042010228447!4f2.376081447580731!5f0.7820865974627469\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><br \/>Building in Lower Sloane Street\n<p>Later they would build outside London, particularly in Chislehurst in Kent and Hove in Sussex.<\/p>\n<p>Although most of the houses were speculatively built, they were built to a high standard usually using in-house architects (such as Harry Measures and Amos Faulkner).\u00a0 The Willetts often built with red brick (made at the company&#8217;s brick works at Acton Vale) in a decorative style with features such as bay windows and ornate detailing.\u00a0 Much emphasis was put on ensuring that light could get into all rooms (including basement rooms).\u00a0 &#8220;Willett built&#8221; became a by-word for quality.<\/p>\n<p>The company is no longer independent; the diagram below attempts to show where it has ended up (as at 2010).<\/p>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"957\" src=\"https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Fate-of-Willett-Builders-1024x957.gif\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1065\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Fate-of-Willett-Builders-1024x957.gif 1024w, https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Fate-of-Willett-Builders-300x280.gif 300w, https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Fate-of-Willett-Builders-768x718.gif 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are (at least) two notable William Willetts. The most notable two are probably the father and son pair; the son (b 1856) is noted as the advocate of Daylight Saving, whilst his father is noted for founding the building firm Willetts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_editorskit_title_hidden":false,"_editorskit_reading_time":0,"_editorskit_is_block_options_detached":false,"_editorskit_block_options_position":"{}","footnotes":""},"categories":[66,8,163,124,58,118,50],"tags":[169,159,166,236,165,167,168,164,215],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-1837-1911","category-1912-99","category-builders-ideas-or-concepts","category-daylight-saving","category-mapping","category-work-in-progress","category-willett","tag-belsize-park","tag-builders","tag-chislehurst","tag-daylight-saving","tag-grosvenor-square","tag-hove","tag-kensington-palace-gardens","tag-sloane-square","tag-willett"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1066,"href":"https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions\/1066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.faulder.org.uk\/genealogy\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}