Place Name
Anne Isabella (Annabella) Milbanke (May 17, 1792 – May 16, 1860) was the put-upon wife of the poet Lord Byron who, as Lady Noel Byron, came to live in Ealing in first half of the 19thCentury. Lady Byron was only child of Sir Ralph Milbanke and his wife Judith Noel, sister of Thomas Noel, Viscount Wentworth. Even from an early age she showed great intellect excelling at mathematics, a fact encouraged by her parents who hired a former Cambridge University professor as her tutor. Often described as cold and prim, she seemed an unlikely match for the man who would become her husband, the dramatically dark and “morally fractured” poet Lord Byron. Their first meeting occurred in March 1812. She later said to her mother that though she would not venture to introduce herself to Lord Byron, she would certainly accept his introduction if it were offered. For his part Byron was attracted to her intellect. In September 1814 he proposed, apparently hoping to seek an escape from his love affairs in marriage. The pair wed a few months later and in December 1815, Lady Byron gave birth to a daughter, Augusta Ada (a brilliant mathematician herself she went on to work with Charles Babbage, the pioneer of computer science). However this happy interlude apart, the marriage was doomed almost from the start as the gulf between Byron and his unimaginative and humourless wife widened. A month after giving birth she left Byron to live with her parents, amid swirling rumours centring on his relations with his half-sister Augusta Leigh and his bisexuality. The couple obtained a legal separation. Wounded by the general moral indignation directed at him, Byron went abroad in April 1816, never to return to England. For her part Lady Byron moved to Ealing sometime around 1822, living at Fordhook, a large property noted for its gardens. She was an active member of the local parish and helped establish the Ealing Grove School, for the children of poor locals, sometime around 1833. But her interests went much further, she committed herself to social causes, such as prison reform and the abolition of slavery, attending the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention, where she was one of the few women included in its commemorative painting. She died of breast cancer. The house itself was demolished in 1902 and the houses here and on Fordhook Avenue were put up between 1905 and 1910 by builders Blount and Kendall.
