3 Mill Road

A little Mill Road history

1901

Henry D Darnell, 44, railway locomotive clerk, b Fen Drayton

1913

Henry D Darnell, organist Eden Chapel

Henry Dennis Darnell was born in Fen Drayton in 1857 and moved into Cambridge with his parents and other siblings (apart from his eldest brother, George, who had moved to Newark, Nottinghamshire) in the 1870s. They first lived at Eckworth Villas. Henry married in the mid-1880s and, by 1891, lived at 39 Mill Road with his wife, Sabina, their two children, Edith and John Dennis, and two boarders – Millicent Driver, a dressmaker; and Eliza Stanford, a general domestic servant. Henry was a clerk with the railways.

By 1901, the family was at 3 Mill Road with the children, Sabina’s mother, a boarder, Waldemar, a chemist and druggist, and a housemaid, Margaret Pond.

The Land Values Duties records of the early 20th century show Henry as the owner and occupier of 3 Mill Road, which had a Gross Annual Value of £36 and a Rateable Value of £29.

In 1911 Henry and Sabina were still living at 3 Mill Road with son John, Sabina’s mother and now three boarders – Letitia Jane Gardner, a tutor; Adelaide Grace Fry, a secondary school teacher; and Florence Amy Wentworth, a mistress in a secondary school. Henry was still a clerk with the railways – The Great Eastern Railway.

Henry was recorded at 3 Mill Road in the 1913 Spalding’s Directory (as an organist at the Eden Chapel) and again in the 1916 Kelly’s Directory as a private resident.

Henry died in 1930, it’s not known whether he was still living on Mill Road at the time, but he was buried in the Mill Road Cemetery (headstone 236).

Contributed in September 2015 by Susan May, Great Shelford, great-granddaughter of Henry’s elder brother George.