Woolf Barnato

[Roadtonowhere]

Hi again to all motorsports fans

I was recentley planning on submitting a proposal to English Heritage for a blue plaque on the flat where Woolf Barnato speant his childhood near Marble Arch.

That is as far as I got thanks to 'The Bentley Era' by Nicolas Foulkes. #

The English Heritage seemed to like the idea but they need a specific building.

Any help you guys can give will be most appreciated.

I have already contacted the good people at Brooklands archive for their help.

Thanks in advance

Roadtonowhere

[Vitesse]

After some digging in The Times, I can offer the following: while waiting for a house he was building in Park Lane to be completed, Barney Barnato leased Spencer House, St James's Place from Earl Spencer in early September 1895. Woolf was born there on September 27th.

Barney died in 1897, but unfortunately, he doesn't appear in Who Was Who and neither was his death announced in The Times (except in passing in a round-up at the end of 1897). The house was sold to Sir Edward Sassoon.

I couldn't find Woolf in either the 1901 or 1911 Censuses and the next address I can find for him is in January 1918, when he was at 39[?] Elsworthy Rd, London NW3 - by 1920 the house had apparently acquired the name "Kingsmead".

Thanks for pointing that out, btw - I hadn't realised Babe and I shared a birthday!