A Message from the great, great grandaughter of Mr George Sydney Smith Williams who built Thornhill Square

 

 

 

Hello. I am so excited, having just today find your site. I am the great great grandaughter of Mr George Sydney Smith Williams who built the square and dozens of other streets, and his wife Mary nee Fallover. Please can I see the document from which you found him? Sadly, Mary died in 1850 aged just 30. GSSW was very successful, at some stage (when?) he retired to Hove with his second wife Catherine and younger daughter Frances, where they also brought up their grandson/my grandfather Henry, whose mother Annie had died when Henry was aged just one. At the age of nine, Henry boarded at 'first' school in Hove with Winston Churchill. Henry;s first wife was distantly related to Churchill, so I think that they must have met at Churchill's family home or some such. So you can see that Mr GSS Williams was a very successful Victorian businessman: his children and grandchildren continued to prosper. Sadly, my father, who, like Henry, attended public school and Oxford, turned against all that! While I was still a toddler, he threw away everything that the family had worked for over several hundred years! Mr GSSW secondly 'married' Mary's sister Catherine. (See the Deceased Wife's Sisters' Act. ) As you know from the last paragraph on the history of Thornhill Square, he is the master builder who built the square. Not just that, but he then moved to live in the square with his wife Catherine. Most of his second set of children were born there. I have sent one letter to 32 and 32a Thornhill Square, asking for further information on the house. I hope they pass it to each other and respond to me. Please will you also? I am not clear from where or source what the info about my Mr GS Williams reached you. Do you have some documents that I could see please? I have further info on my family that you might like to know re the building company. For now: number 32 was the company headquarters and my family's home also. My gt gt grandfather built it as it is so that his clients and employees could turn right into the office (now 32 a) and the family could turn left into their home (32). The clients'servants, horses and carriages could use the mews behind (now off Matilda Street).