94 Ermin Street Stratton. Today it’s an estate agent but this unprepossessing building was, it’s arguable, the crucible of the Morse family’s commercial empire.
Records are somewhat convoluted and not terribly clear. But an edition of the Stratton Outlook, from way back when, states he (Levi Lapper) was born ‘in the shop opposite the Ermin Street Methodist Church which was owned by his father Charles Morse’. And that corresponds with the description that exists of Ebenezer Morse’s shop. That being 94 Ermin Street. But it’s rather hard to verify any of this. The only address that directories and the British Newspaper Archive give is Lower Stratton. And there seems to be no address for Levi’s birthplace beyond the registration district of Highworth.
So! While we can say that it’s possible, more than likely even, that Primitive Methodist Charles Morse ran the shop at 94 Ermin Street first and that Ebenezer later took it over – we can’t say this for certain.
Anyway! If you’ve any knowledge of Swindon’s history at all, the name Morse ought to be familiar to you.
On the image below, from Swindon’s Local Studies collection, you’ll see that the sign above the door, of the grandly-titled North Wilts Emporium, says ‘E Morse’. That’s Ebenezer Morse, a brother to Levi Lapper. This image dates from around 1905. According to the back of the postcard this photograph features ‘W. Wilson and W. Silk, two of the many assistants’.
This shop sat on the corner of Swindon Road and Ermin Street.
But by 1881, Levi saw opportunities in the new Swindon growing around the Great Western Railway. Along with his department store on Regent Street he owned a chain of other shops in England’s south west. He also ran a mail-order business. He cut a fine and important civic figure too – but here is not the place to go into all that. If you want to know more about Levi Lapper Morse then the My Primitive Methodists website carries a decent history of the man.
The building is listed as a draper and grocers as far back as the 1848 directory, under Lower Stratton. So Charles Morse, we think, was in business from the early 1840s at least. Though it could have been the 1830s. But the information available is scant and unclear.
And that is pretty much all there is to say about 94 Ermin Street. So why, I hear you say, have I included it here? Well there’s a good reason. And that reason is Charles Morse’s son, Levi Lapper Morse (1853 – 1913). Levi Lapper grew up to accomplish bigger and better things – in many areas – than ever his father did. As Frances Bevan’s Radnor Street Cemetery blog points out, Levi opened one of Swindon’s first departmental stores, which until the 1960s stood on the present site of WH Smith’s in Regent Street, Swindon.
A Nexus
The significance of this building then, is that it serves as a link between two other buildings in this Swindon in 50 More Buildings series:
1. Stratton Methodist Church and …
2. … Granville House in Old Town
And at the centre of this Victorian brickwork triangle is Levi Lapper Morse. For he’s a literal cornerstone of Stratton Methodist Church – in the blog I link to above there are photographs of these cornerstones. And for a period he lived in Granville House. And of course had involvement with his father’s business at 94 Ermin Street.
