My friend Paul shared these photo finds on his Twitter/X page, and as they had the names of the family on the back, I thought they might be a good family to research. So when he listed them on eBay, I put a bid on them immediately, and a week later I won them.

Meanwhile, I started the research on the family of Hollebone. So I was ahead of myself by the time they arrived in the post.

Aren’t they just great old photos!

Irene, smiling back left, has a photo album on her lap in the next photo. Florence centre back above with a large fan. Very likely photographers props.

Then Violet has the fan in photo below.

Aunt Ada in the above photo, bottom right, is wearing rings, so these two photos must have been taken after 1 June 1901, when she married Walter William Barrett Hancock.

So I think between late 1901 and about 1903, before sleeves became a bit smaller. Before or after their father’s death in October 1902, before I think.

The Hollebone Ladies

On a quiet day in the opening years of the twentieth century, five ladies of the Hollebone family gathered before the photographer’s camera. Seated at the centre of the family group was Mary Harriet Hollebone, née Gough, the matriarch of the family.

Born in Bayswater in 1841, she had spent nearly forty years raising her large family and supporting her husband, William Joshua Hollebone, the London wine merchant whose family had been connected with the wine trade for generations.

Around her stood four of her daughters: Ada Mary, Florence Gertrude, Violet Louise and Irene Pillar. Together they represented almost twenty years of family life. Ada, the eldest daughter, had recently married Walter Hancock in June 1901 and was beginning a family of her own. Florence, quiet and dependable, remained at home with her parents. Violet and Irene, both unmarried, were still part of the busy Paddington household.

The daughters were no longer children but independent young women, while their parents were entering their sixties.

There may even have been a special reason for gathering the family together: Ada’s recent marriage, a family celebration, or simply a desire to preserve a likeness of the women before life carried them in different directions.

Looking back today, the images capture a moment suspended in time. The daughters would go on to lead very different lives. Ada would raise her own daughter; Violet would marry later in life; Irene and Florence would remain unmarried; and all would witness the immense changes of the twentieth century.

Yet in these photographs they are simply mother and daughters, gathered together as a family. The camera preserved not only their likenesses but also a fleeting moment of closeness before the passing years changed everything.

More than a century later, their faces still tell the story of a respectable Edwardian family whose roots lay in Victorian London and whose lives were woven together by affection, duty and family loyalty.

I do rather like the ladies, and looking at their faces, I think they had a bit of fun and a few giggles while these photos were taken. I would have liked to have known them.

If the first two photos were indeed taken just after Ada’s June 1901 marriage, she’s wearing rings on her finger; it becomes even more poignant, as it may be one of the last photographs of the family before father William’s death in October 1902 and before the daughters gradually established separate lives.

Hollebone Family History.

William Joshua Hollebone’s story was one of family, enterprise, and continuity. For at least three generations, the Hollebones were associated with the wine trade in London, a business that provided both a livelihood and a respectable place within Victorian middle-class society.

William followed in the footsteps of his father, William Joshua Hollibone, who had established himself as a Wine and Spirit Merchant and Valuer. The trade would become a defining thread running through the family for more than a century.

William was born on 27 January 1842 in Pimlico, Middlesex, the eldest child of William Joshua Hollebone and Margaret Isabella Davis.

He grew up in a bustling household as brothers and sisters arrived one after another: Fredric, Alfred Richard, E. W., Henry, Anne Ida, Robert John and Walter. As a young boy he was educated away from home, appearing as a pupil in the 1851 census, before returning to live with his family by 1861 in Norwood.

The Hollebones enjoyed a comfortable position in society. William’s father was more than simply a wine merchant; he was also a valuer, a trusted occupation requiring business acumen and good standing.

Through his childhood and early adulthood, William would have learned the skills and contacts of the trade that would later sustain his own family.

A year of both sorrow and happiness came in 1866. On 11 January, William’s father died at Ravensbourne Park House in Lewisham, aged fifty-nine.

Barely five months later, on 14 June, twenty-four-year-old William married Mary Harriet Gough in Richmond, Surrey.

Mary had been born in Bayswater on 28 May 1841, the daughter of James Gough and Harriet Eastwood. Like William, she had grown up in a respectable London family and spent her early years in Paddington.

Together William and Mary built a large and close-knit family. Their first child, Herbert William, was born in Bloomsbury in January 1868, followed by Ernest Charles in September 1869.

Daughter Ada Mary arrived in February 1872, and later that same year came son Oswald Frederick.

Florence Gertrude was born in 1876, Violet Louise in 1880, Irene Pillar in 1881, and finally Gwendolen Maud Chevalier in 1888.

Over nineteen years, William and Mary raised eight children while moving with the changing fortunes of London life, from Bloomsbury to Putney and later to Paddington.

By 1881 William had firmly established himself as a Wine and Spirit Merchant and Valuer, continuing the occupation that had brought prosperity to his father.

Living in Putney with his wife and growing family, he embodied the respectable Victorian businessman.

The family home was filled with children ranging from teenagers to infants, while William managed the demands of a competitive London trade.

Census records of 1891 and 1901 continued to describe him simply as a Wine Merchant, demonstrating a lifetime devoted to the profession.

The family was not untouched by loss. William’s younger brother Robert John died in 1874 at only twenty-one years of age, and his brother Alfred Richard died in 1894.

His mother, Margaret Isabella, survived to the age of seventy-nine before her death in 1890.

When William died on 11 October 1902, aged just sixty, he left behind not only a widow and eight children but also a family business tradition.

Probate was granted in December of that year, and Mary continued as the centre of the family for another twenty-three years.

Widowed at sixty-one, she remained in Paddington, where several of her unmarried children continued to live with her.

She witnessed the marriages of some of her children and the growth of a new generation before her own death on 4 January 1926 at the age of eighty-four. She was buried at Putney Vale Cemetery, a place that would later receive other members of the family.

The next generation carried the Hollebone name into the twentieth century. Herbert William Hollebone remained in the wine trade, appearing as a Wine Merchant in 1911 and still connected with the business decades later.

After many years as a bachelor, he married Hilda Hunt in 1925 at the age of fifty-seven. He died in Windsor in 1950, aged eighty-two.

His younger brother Ernest Charles most clearly continued the family tradition.

Like both his father and grandfather, Ernest became a Wine Merchant. He married Merrial Fanny Mander in 1906 and had two daughters, Marie Louise and Joyce Merriel Florence.

Ernest remained active in the trade for many years and lived to the remarkable age of ninety-one, dying in 1961.

Through him, the Hollebone connection with the wine business stretched from the early Victorian period well into the post-war years.

Not all the children followed the family occupation.

Oswald Frederick became a solicitor, a profession reflecting the family’s comfortable middle-class standing and educational opportunities. He never married and died in 1924 at the age of fifty-one.

Ada Mary married Walter William Barratt Hancock in 1901 and had one daughter, Irene Marie.

Florence Gertrude never married and remained close to her mother and siblings throughout her life.

Violet Louise married James Duncan Hodge in 1929 when she was forty-nine years old and survived until 1967.

Irene Pillar also remained unmarried, spending much of her life engaged in service and home duties, and lived until 1971, becoming the longest-lived of William and Mary’s children.

Gwendolen Maud Chevalier pursued a career as a medical masseuse for gymnasts? An unusual and progressive occupation for a woman of her generation, she died in 1963.

As the decades passed, the siblings gradually disappeared one by one.

Florence died in 1945, Herbert in 1950, Ada in 1952, Ernest in 1961, Gwendolen in 1963, Violet in 1967, and finally Irene in 1971.

Here’s the Public family tree on Ancestry I have compiled for the Hollebone Family: Hollebone Family

Their lives spanned extraordinary changes, from the horse-drawn London of Queen Victoria to the age of jet travel and television.

The story of the Hollebones is ultimately one of continuity and resilience.

Beginning with William Joshua Hollibone, the wine merchant of Victorian London, and continuing through his son William Joshua John Hollebone and grandsons Herbert and Ernest, the family maintained a respected place within London’s commercial middle class.

Across more than a century, they experienced prosperity and bereavement, marriage and widowhood, large family gatherings and quiet bachelor households.

Yet throughout it all, the Hollebone name remained closely associated with enterprise, family loyalty, and the enduring traditions of London life.

You can contact me either by commenting here or via email at lynnswaffles@gmail.com 

Till next time then………