Tag Archives: Isaac Wilson

Wilson Memorial Homes

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Lancashire Evening Post – Friday 05 September 1930

CUMBERLAND MAN’S GIFT TO BRAMPTON.

Canon Sutton, of Bridekirk, chairman of the Cumberland County Council, performed the opening ceremony at Brampton, near Carlisle, yesterday, of a colony of 24 cottages for the aged poor, the gift of Mr. Isaac Henry Wilson, a native of Milton, Brampton, now Mitcham, Surrey. At Milton six homes are being built, six at Lanercost and six at Walton. The cottages will be rent and rate free to the occupants, who will be aged folk.

Fifty years ago Mr. Wilson left his native soil and made fortune in building houses on the Surrey side of London and yesterday he was present at the ceremony to explain that his desire was to do something for his native soil, to lessen the burden of the aged who had borne the heat and burden of the day, and to render the eventide of their life much happier. The houses were not for the young, but for, say, spinster sisters and old couples who had had hard time in life and found their latter days irksome.

Mr. Hugh Jackson, an alderman of the County Council, said that Mr. Wilson had already given 56 cottage homes at Mitcham for aged and deserving people. Less than two years ago built there and equipped and endowed hospital at cost of £60,000, and had since given further £25,000 for extensions. Over 60 applications had already been received for the Brampton houses.

Mr. Wilson presented Canon Sutton with a golden key with which to open the homes. Complimentary speeches wore made Mr. C. H. and Lady Cecilia Roberts, Mr. Leif Jones, M.P., Mr. J. J. Adams, Workington, and Mrs. Lucy Thompson, and among those present were the Mayor and Mayoress of Workington, Mr. R. H. Hodgson, and Sir James Watt.

The next day, the alderman died.

Lancashire Evening Post – Saturday 06 September 1930

ALDERMAN’S SEIZURE.
DEATH AT BRAMPTON OF WELL-KNOWN CUMBERLAND MAN.

The death took place this morning of Mr. Hugh Jackson, an alderman the Cumberland County Council, living at Brampton. On Thursday Mr. Jackson presided the opening of the cottage homes at Brampton, the gift of Mr. Isaac H. Wilson, of Mitcham. Yesterday he, Mr. Wilson, and Mr. John Smith, went for a drive in Mr. Wilson’s car to Scotland. returning tea at Brampton.

After tea Mr. Jackson and Mr. Wilson, who have been friends since boyhood, went for walk, and on the way Alderman Jackson had a seizure. He was taken Brampton Hospital, and despite medical advice from Carlisle and Brampton he died this morning. He was chairman of Cumberland Education Committee, and an active man in the county.

See the buildings on StreetView.

The Brampton Connection

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Overheard on an S1 bus recently, as it passed the Wilson Hospital:

“Wilson Hospital?”
“Which Wilson was that then?”
“Harold Wilson?”

Named after Isaac Wilson, the Wilson Cottage Hospital in Cranmer Road, was opened in 1928. He paid £60,000 for the land and its construction. In 1933, he donated a further £10,000 for an extension to the hospital.

The Cumberland Hospital, built in the grounds of his house Birches, was named after his home county.

Eric Montague, in his Mitcham Histories book “The Cricket Green”, tells us that Isaac Wilson was born in 1862 in Milton, near Carlisle, one of four sons of a Cumbrian farmer. His brothers persuaded him to join them in London, where their building business was flourishing.

For a time Isaac and his wife Sarah lived at Fulham and then, in the early 1900s, they moved to Gorringe Park Avenue in Mitcham. Whilst living there the Wilsons became active members of St. Barnabas church and many of the houses in the vicinity were built by them.

He lived at ‘The Hut’, later numbered 185 Commonside East, on the western corner of Cedars Avenue, until 1928. He then lived at The Birches, built by his firm in Lower Green East. This road was renamed to Cricket Green in 1944 after a suggestion by Lady Robertson.

An idea of the size of their enterprise can found in the local newspaper report on the Mitcham Military Service Tribunal in 1916, when Joseph Wilson asked that his last employee left be given exemption. Mr Wilson said that before the war he had a staff of 40, and there were around 1,000 houses to be kept in repair.

Isaac Wilson also funded the building of 56 houses for the elderly, the Mitcham Garden Village, which was opened in 1930.

A similar development of 24 homes in Brampton, near his home town of Milton, Cumbria, called the Wilson Memorial Homes, was built in 1930.

Back to Mitcham, and the house at the corner of Cold Blows, currently a nursery, was originally called Brampton. Montague says it was believed to have been built by the Wilson firm, which, given its name, is quite likely. See 1953 OS Map.