Historical information

The historian Dorothy Rogers records (A History of Kew, p.5) that "In 1888 he [Arthur Wills] took over his estate, 'Willsmere', and conducted it as a dairy farm. He was an architect by profession, and having established the farm he rented it, and returned to live in Barry Street, Kew, where his only child, Dorothy was born in 1889. He entered Kew Council in 1891, and three years later built a new house in Fellows Street, on land that Thomas had purchased at the 1846-47 sales. He became Mayor of Kew in 1896-97, and during his term of office sold this house and built the present 'Willsmere' [pictured] on the corner of Willsmere and Belford Roads. ... Never a house of great distinction, it has now been demolished to make way for a freeway."

Significance

This work forms part of the collection assembled by the historian Dorothy Rogers, that was donated to the Kew Historical Society by her son John Rogers in 2015. The manuscripts, photographs, maps, and documents were sourced by her from both family and local collections or produced as references for her print publications. Many were directly used by Rogers in writing ‘Lovely Old Homes of Kew’ (1961) and 'A History of Kew' (1973), or the numerous articles on local history that she produced for suburban newspapers. Most of the photographs in the collection include detailed annotations in her hand. The Rogers Collection provides a comprehensive insight into the working habits of a historian in the 1960s and 1970s. Together it forms the largest privately-donated collection within the archives of the Kew Historical Society.

Physical description

Willsmere, the home of the Wills family of Kew, designed by the architect Arthur Wills, circa 1896.