ELIZA WILLIAMS
1898-1993
TICKET OFFICE CLERK AT CROWBOROUGH
Eliza Louisa Williams was born on New Road, Rotherfield around 1898, the only child to Ellen
Izzard and Arthur Williams, a railway platelayer and underman.
From 1916 she was a ticket office clerk at Crowborough, and continued in that role at Rotherfield
for the London, Brighton & South Coast railway according to the 1921 census. Around this time
the family, still on New Road, had a lodger, one of Eliza’s fellow railway clerks called Gladys
Carpenter.
In 1926, ten years into her job, Eliza married a nursery gardener and fruit grower called Harold
Hammond. He appears to be the youngest of nine children, and had been working as a gardener
since he was at least 14. He was wounded while serving in the First World War.
In those days it was expected of a newly married woman to give up her job to have a family and run
the marital household. Eliza was no different. However it seems they had no children and this may
have contributed to Eliza returning to work four years later. By 1939 they were living near Harold’s
plant nursery in the village of Town Row close to Rotherfield station, just a few doors from the
Railway Inn. She lived to 95
