The story of Ovanessoff and Benlian families have been interconnected, since Maral Ovanessoff’s father, Stepan Ovanessoff moved to London from Birmingham and met Edward Benlian when he started attending the Youth Club at newly founded Hay Dun (Armenian House), where the hub of the London’s small Armenian community was then (500 people approximately in the 1950s).
Edward Benlian was born in Istanbul (then Constantinople), whose father moved his very profitable Tabriz carpet business to London in 1889. He was too young to serve during WW1 but has been running his father’s business from a very young age when his father tragically passed away in a railway accident. Edward was very active in the community, founding a society to support the Genocide refugees in 1920s, and becoming one of the founder members and later the director of the Armenian Community Council.