The last private occupant of 10 Downing Street, the present home of the Prime Minister, was a Mr Chicken, forename unknown. On the 22nd September 1735 the demi-gods and goddesses of British Politics moved in and Mr Chicken had to go find another coop. Their political successors have lived there ever since.

Beyond that fact, this Mr Chicken rests in total obscurity. Even his forename is lost to posterity. After he had sold up and moved out No.10 was repaired and renovated, and was then offered as a gift by George II to his principal minister Sir Robert Walpole. He accepted it only on the condition that it become the Official Residency of the First Lord of the Treasury, and to the present day it is occupied by the Prime Minister only in his capacity as the First Lord.

The only Chicken I have found to date who achieved any national prominence was Willie Hamilton, ex-Member of Parliament and scourge of the Establishment and the Royal Family. His mother Jennie Chicken was descended from a large family of that surname who were miners in the Washington area of Co. Durham in the middle and late 19th century, but whose origins were a branch of a large 18th century Chicken family in Newcastle on Tyne. Many descendants from that family still live in Northumberland and Co. Durham, although I have tracked other linked modern groupings and descendants to places as far apart as Tunbridge Wells, South Wales, Western Australia, and Ontario, Canada.

This would appear to be about the only claim to fame for the Chicken surname, and then only by reflection. Some became Master Mariners and Captains of Men-of-War, others became Engineers in the steam-driven industries of the Industrial Revolution, but none so far as I can tell reached any dizzy heights. I cannot at present accurately place Mr Chicken of No.10 Downing Street. Only that there were at least two Chicken families in London in that time period.

Recently I have traced one of the London Chicken families, on behalf of a descendant in New Zealand, who started life as Sailmakers and Mariners in Bermondsey & Rotherhithe. The mother of this group, Mary WILKINS, came from Whitby, Yorkshire, and her most prominent grandson, a William Chicken, became landlord from 1876 to 1899 of the famous "Jamaica Tavern", Cherry Garden Street, Bermondsey, a hostelry which goes back at least as far as the time of Samuel Pepys who mentioned it twice in his Diaries.

That pub at the corner of Cherry Garden Street and Southwark Park Road became known locally as "Chick's" , and survived until about 1973 when it was razed during the London slum clearances. I have met locals in the area who still remember it, though they had no idea why it had that nickname.

William's first wife Sophia Hannah Wallis died in 1893 and he married again in 1896 to one Rosetta Gootjes nee Thomas, who at the time was landlady of the "Ship Inn" in Kennington Road, Lambeth, which pub still exists in what must be virtually the same form as it was in 1896. I can recommend the beer and the food.

A cousin of that William, Henry William Chicken, Sailmaker of Rotherhithe, emigrated to South Africa probably around 1880, and I have recently traced his descendants out there, thanks to a great deal of help from a colleague on a collateral line for which I am most grateful.

Children of his were Henry William born 1862 at Deptford; Frederick John born 1864 at Rotherhithe and dying 1889 at Cape Town; Albert born 1866 at Bermondsey and dying 1933 at Cape Town; Isabel Mercy born 1869 at Deptford and married in Cape Town; and Sidney born 1874 at Horsley Down, Surrey, and dying in 1951 after siring quite a brood in Cape Town.

Related surnames here are PERRINS , NIDDRIE, COGGINS, WITTON and WREYFORD

Another William Chicken (gets very confusing), this time one of my own lot who disappears from the record after his baptism in Heworth, Durham, in 1806, turned up as owner of a Boilermaking Company in the Orchard House area of Poplar, London, in 1845. He teamed up for a while with one JOHN STEWART, also from Tyneside, in a joint company of shipbuilders and engineers near the entrance to the West India Docks.

Stewart went on to form the famous shipbuilding company of John Stewart and Sons, which lasted till 1923 in London's Docklands, whilst William parted company with him and turned up for a while as landlord of the "Ironbridge Tavern", Barking Road (aka East India Docks Road), Poplar, which became famous in the 1970's as the setting for the television series "Stars and Garters" run by Queenie Watts and her husband Slim.

A much-modified pub still stands on that site, though William, who in his later life called himself alternatively a Cement Manufacturer and, on his Death Certificate, as a Manure Manufacturer (!), died of apoplexy (or probably too much booze) on Christmas Eve 1866 in yet another pub, the "Captain Man of War", in Poplar High Street. According to his Will, he had some connections with a Cement Works at Orchard Place, Poplar.

The Orchard House or Orchard Place area, on a peninsula between Bow Creek (River Lea) and the River Thames, is a complex and remote part of East London, having undergone many changes of street and building layout and street names as the East India Docks and its surrounding industry developed in the middle and late 19th century. It has been described as "London's Lost Village" and has been a very difficult area to sort out to try to track this William's movements, and even today is difficult of access, being cut off from the rest of East London by motorways, the rivers, and the depredations of the Docklands Development Corporation. Cleared of housing in 1935 under Slum Clearance Orders, today it is under even more threat from Developers and the planned Olympic Village stretching from here up the Lea Valley to Stratford.

Recently, along with great assistance from a colleague Eileen Weston in London, we have transcribed and indexed the entries from the Pupil Admission Register for Bow Creek School, Orchard Place, Leamouth, Poplar, covering the period 1896 to 1935. There are 1258 pupils detailed in this Register, giving Dates of Entry to the School, Dates of Birth of the children, and in most cases such details as their address and their parent's names. It is intended shortly to place online a searchable website devoted to this fascinating corner of East London and its inhabitants.

UPDATE: May 2005:

This Website is now available, though some pages are still being developed - May 2005.The Indexes are accessible now, and various background pages such as the history of the area, maps and photgraphs etc. Anyone wishing to make any comments should contact Geoff directly at his email address.

As a side-issue, and in trying to elucidate William's career in the boiler-making business, I tracked the Family Tree and background of John Stewart from it's origins in Gateshead through the vicissitudes of his Company in Rotherhithe and Poplar, down to modern descendants in the South of England. In itself this has proved to be a most fascinating story, with a lot of skeletons in cupboards, and I would be delighted to hear from anyone with an interest in this particular Stewart Dynasty.

Some related surnames here are COSTERTON, PINDAR, QUAY, HASSELL, TARGETT and GOSNELL