As Telegraph Hill Park faces a revamp, News Shopper reader MAHALA MEHMET traces the lives of people who lived near the historic landmark ...

I recently read of a Lottery Fund heritage award to revamp historic Telegraph Hill Park, New Cross.

The site was founded in 1795 as a semaphore signalling station there were no mobile phones in those distant times and is now a family park.

I was interested because in the mid 1970s I lived in Jerningham Road, which runs up to the park at the junction with Pepys Road and Kitto Road.

Only days before I had learned of a namesake, Annie Elizabeth Notley, nee Sporle, who lived at 90 Jerningham Road from 1901 to 1921. Both of us being born Sporles and living as married women in the same street, 50 years apart, is quite a coincidence.

I traced Annie's story back to Rotherhithe, 1815, when her grandfather, William Sporle, arrived from Ipswich as a young man and set to work as a sailmaker at Surrey Canal, Rotherhithe.

William married a widow, Ann Jane Notley, who had a young daughter. They moved to Princes Street, Rotherhithe, with William's business trading at Cherry Garden Stairs, Bermondsey Wall.

William and Ann had a son, Robert William, and a daughter, Mary Ann, who died as a baby in 1833.

In Princes Street, the records also show a master mariner William Notley and his wife Anne. On March 3, 1826, they had a son, William Henry.

Time passed and by the 1851 census, William Sporle was a master sailmaker, joined in trade by his son, and William Henry Notley had followed in his father's footsteps to become a sea captain.

Robert Sporle married and had a daughter, Annie Elizabeth. William Henry Notley also married and had a family, the eldest son also being named William Henry.

By the 1881 census, Robert's parents and wife were dead and he lived at 111 Jamaica Road with his daughter Annie and a servant girl.

William Notley, having lost his wife and son, was living in East Dulwich with four younger siblings.

Annie Sporle married William Notley on September 10, 1881, at St Johns Church, East Dulwich, in the presence of their fathers.

By the 1901 census, they had moved to 90 Jerningham Road and had two daughters, Florence and Helen.

A 1914 map of New Cross shows Telegraph Hill Park contained water features, a shelter and a band stand.

I wonder how often Annie and her family sat listening to a band, rested in the shelter or strolled along the paths?

By 1922 Annie and her family had sold their house and disappeared from records of the area but perhaps their spirits still linger in the vicinity of Telegraph Hill.

I look forward to the revamp of the park and hope it is restored to its former glory.

l If have any more details about the Notley family or the park's past, write to History, News Shopper, Mega House, Crest View Drive, Petts Wood, BR5 1BT.