Turner , Cecil Scott , 1871-1956 , solicitor

In the mid-nineteenth century the Scott Turner family lived at The Lodge. Horn Lane, Acton. Henry Scott Turner Esquire is listed as a private resident in Kelly's Middlesex Directories of 1855 and 1867. Cecil Turner remembered the house where he lived as a small child. "Went to Acton... Walked round Horn Lane and saw the gardener at the gates so got him to take me all round the garden and over the house- my earliest home- all looking sweet and comparatively unchanged-the house quite empty and the rooms where we played as children silent and solitary" (ACC/1385/009, 1 March). The Lodge was demolished in the first decade of the twentieth century, but the family maintained its links with the district, as the graves in neighbouring Perivale churchyard bear witness.

Soon after the death of her husband in 1871, Mrs. Turner and her three sons went to live in Uxbridge. Looking back in 1943 Cecil remembered his sixth birthday at Uxbridge in 1876 (ACC 1385/050) and on 22 June 1901 he visited "Southfield-my old home" (ACC/1385/008). Kelly's Middlesex Directory for 1882 lists a Mrs. Turner at 41, St. Andrew's, Uxbridge. The family's movements can be traced through the diaries, the first four being written by M.F.Turner, Cecil's mother. The Turners left Uxbridge on 24 June 1886 and, for the next two years Mrs. Turner lodged at a variety of addresses in London and paid extended visits to friends and relatives in other parts of the country. From 23 May, 1888, she took up residence at the Elms, Ealing, but by 1898 she and Cecil had moved to 99 Elm Park gardens, Chelsea. In 1919, they were joined by Cecil's brother Alec who had spent over two years as a prisoner of war in Germany. After the death of their mother in October 1931 the two unmarried brothers moved into the Vanderbilt hotel, Cromwell Road, South Kensington, where Cecil lived alone after Alec's death in December 1938. Happily, he wrote in 1955, "after 22 years of hotel life I am living in my home 9 Alexander Square, S.W.3" (ACC 1385/062). It was here that he wrote the last entries in his diary as he prepared to enter hospital for an operation in April 1956.