Harry Brown

The gallant-looking World War I cavalry officer in this photograph, taken in Thessalonika in 1918 is Harry Brown, whose grand daughter has lived in Chelmsford Road since the 1970s.

Harry was the son of an Islington milkman who met the 4am milk train every day; his son was fostered with neighbours after his early death from asthma. Once grown up, Harry worked in the rag trade, married a girl he met in the church choir and had a son. But he volunteered for the army on the outbreak of the First World War – he was soon made an officer, survived four years’ service, and returned home to continue in the business he had started. Harry and Maud’s son, Leslie, was a promising pupil, but the family did not have the money to send him to university. So Leslie went to work in the accounts department at W H Smith, where he saved enough to put himself through theological college.

Leslie Brown became Archbishop of Uganda, where his daughter Alison spent much of her childhood. Alison remembers games, jokes and the excellent “sea lion” faces her grandfather made on her occasional visits to England. Evidently he never lost the family trait of ultra early rising.