Frederick John (1868-1950)

Frederick John Meadows was born in Leytonstone on 8 November 1868, the younger son of Edwin Lewis Meadows. When the family moved to Kent he followed his father into the cement works at Frindsbury, starting as a clerk and becoming a manager by 1901.

He later became a publican, keeping The George and Dragon at Westerham, The Organ at Ewell and The Alma at Deal.

In Frederick John’s time ‘The Organ’ faced directly onto London road. In 1914 it was described as a timber building, old but recently done up. There was also a timber and tiled stable with four stalls, and a coach house. At that time it was owned by Halder and Collyers Brewery Co. The Ewell Parish News Feb. 1973 suggested that the name had been given when Henry Willis built the church organ. His men had the habit of walking up to what was then a small inn on the London Road during their mid-day dinner break. Unfortunately the dates don’t match, since the church organ was built in 1865. The pub was rebuilt and re-oriented in the 1930s when the Ewell By-Pass was built. The name was lost in 1998 when the pub reopened as Jim Thompson’s. It appears that it was later revived as The Organ and Dragon but finally, in 2014, it was demolished to make way for a Lidl Supermarket.

Painting seems to have been a pastime for Frederick John rather than a profession, and only one of his pictures, The Coast Path, is known. He died in Kent in 1950. More about the family is on Edwin Lewis’s page.