ABSTRACT
In the Edwardian years, the clerks at the Railway Clearing House were advised not to contemplate marriage until their income reached at least £90 a year. With the advantage of subsidised travel, railway clerks had a wide choice of area, but for others, fares were by no means an unimportant consideration. The typical two-storey London house of the 1880s and 1890s was still being built in large numbers through the Edwardian era, especially in such districts as Tottenham, Walthamstow, Ilford, Willesden and Catford. As early as 1901 a speculative builder at Ilford was providing houses ready-wired for electric light, but the availability of the facility in the new suburbs was restricted for a few more years by the vagaries of early electricity supply networks. In middle-class suburbs, money for new churches was extracted with ease. Although the music hall still flourished, alternatives were appearing and few halls were built in the new suburbs of 1900–1914.
