Site: Ellen and William Craft - blue plaque (1 memorial)
W6, Cambridge Grove, 26
The Crafts have another plaque in this road but English Heritage are clear that this (number 26) is the house in which the Crafts settled after their escape from slavery in America. Here they raised their children.
The most detailed description of the Crafts' time in Britain that we have found is at Jeffrey Green who states that they were in Britain 1851-69. Having escaped slavery in 1848 the Crafts then had to escape the slave-catchers and so sailed to Liverpool in late 1850. They joined a fellow escaped slave on the lecture circuit and in 1851-2 they were in Ockham in Surrey at a school, studying themselves, teaching handicrafts and carpentry and also having a son. Green states that the Crafts had moved to Hammersmith by 1855 when another child was born at home, Beavor Cottage, and that 12 Cambridge Road (which became 26 Cambridge Grove) was purchased in 1857 (thought it's not clear who bought it). This was the address that William Craft gave in his preface to the publication that told their story: Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom; or, the Escape of William and Ellen Craft from Slavery, 1860.
After the end of the American Civil War and the legal emancipation of enslaved people, the Crafts returned to Boston in August 1869 with three of their children.
The railway runs very close to this house. Wikipedia reports that the Kensington and Richmond line of the London and South Western Railway opened in 1869. We'd really like to know whether the houses in what was then Cambridge Road were built before or after the railway was constructed. OS 1868-83 map and OS 1840s-1860s map both show this street but not clearly enough and the dates are not definitive enough for us to be certain either way.
If the houses were built first then the arrival of the railway involved the demolition of the house immediately next door to number 26. Also, the road in front of number 26 had to be dug out to allow vehicles to pass under the rail line. The disruption to anyone living in number 26 must have been awful.
We thank our colleague Alan Patient for these photos.
