A great deal of the information below has been taken from electoral registers (see Acknowledgements). Although these provide names they do not indicate the relationships of those names, nor do they show anyone under the age of 21 (until fairly recently). For the first couple of decades of the century they often do not include wives as women generally did not receive the vote until the 1920s; although women over the age of 30 were given the vote in 1923, only in 1928 was this franchise extended to women reaching the age of 21. This explains, in part, the apparent increase in the number of occupants in this year.
There were no electoral registers published during the Second World War.
The date shown by each house is generally the date of first occupation, although the date of building is shown if this is known.
The houses are shown in the geographical order in which they appear in the road, starting with the south side and working from west to east. At the end of the list are several house names which do not now exist. Some of them, of course, will be former names of existing houses for which a link has not yet been made; other names, like the houses they once represented, have disappeared for good.
There is little information shown, at present, for the houses to the east of the M23, as this small group of houses is not covered in the Reigate Electoral rolls.
Every house in the Road has received at least one letter inviting them to request the removal of any personal details. Where a reply has been received, it has been complied with. Further information about any of the houses is always welcome and can be sent to info@rockshawroad.org.uk.
This corner plot of land was, during the early part of the twentieth century, the site of the annual Merstham Fair. It was moved from Quality Street when the noise became too much for the residents. Accordingly, this small area became known as Fairfield. On the site was a windmill, together with a house (the Old Mill House) and some workshops. The mill was last worked by Samuel Baker in 1903; the photograph shows the the house several years after this date. Some of the workshops can still be seen at the end of the lane.
A Samuel Baker died on 30th December 1907 aged 55 and is buried at St Katharine's.
The electoral register for 1935 records Doris Agnes LETTS as the sole voter in a cottage shown as 1 Fairfield Cottages. John LANE was living in the house in 1937; it was demolished the same year and the four Fairfield cottages built on the site.
At the end of the twentieth century two of the original cottages remained in one block; two new houses had been built on the site of the other two.
The first entry for this house is in 1938; from this date until the beginning of the 1970s the occupants were Florence Margery and Frederick George REDGROVE. In May 1959 a daughter, Mary Joy, was confirmed at St Katharine's at the age of 16. The electoral register of 1960 refers to the house as 1 Rockshaw Road.
At the end of the 20th century the owner was Ian CAMPBELL; when he moved to Portugal in about 2007 the house became home to Mandy and Michiel STENEKER
The first entry is for 1938, at which time the register shows the occupants as Doris Amy, John Howard and Reginald Howard GIBBS. However, a year later the new owners were Grace Annie Louise and William Percy JOINER. They remained in the house until at least the early 1970s. (It is referred to as 2 Rockshaw Road in the electoral registers from 1955 to 1965 but as Glenside in all other entries.)
On 18th September 1937 a daughter Susan Mary was born to Charles HUNT, a clerk, and his wife Marjorie. The address given was Little Cottage, Tanglewood. This was first thought to be a separate cottage within the grounds of the bigger house, but the Kelly's Directory for 1951 clearly shows Little Cottage between Glenside and Firle. There seems therefore to be no connection with Tanglewood although an Annie Elizabeth Hunt was living at Tanglewood in 1935.
In 1938, the first appearance in the electoral registers, Marjorie and Charles Hunt were shown on the electoral register for Little Cottage. The register for the following year, 1939, shows the VERRALL family at this address; Ellen Kate, Edmund Herbert and Sidney Herbert. Also registered at the address was Francis George ROBERTS. Several years later, from 1945 to 1955, the Verrall family appears at 3 Rockshaw Road with Phyllis M, presumably a daughter, making an appearance in 1945 although within this period Kelly's records the same family at Little Cottage on more than one occasion; it seems clear, therefore, that Little Cottage and 3 Rockshaw Road were one and the same.
Kelly's for 1959 shows Arthur BLAIR (at Little Cottage); another Blair family, that of Ada and Robert Auguste, were at Mill House between 1918 and 1925 but there is no reason to suppose that the families were related.
The electoral register for the following year, 1960, shows Shirley and Stuart D M OTTOWELL as the new occupants (of 3 Rockshaw Road) and they were still there five years later. This is confirmed by the Reigate Directory for both 1966 and 1970 (still listing the house as Little Cottage).
In 1938 Mabel Mary and Clive Charles PHILLIPS were living here and were shown as voters. A year later Mabel Mary was not shown and Clive, a bank clerk, was living in the house — at this date named Firle — with Jessie Hannah. It seems that Jessie was his wife and Mabel his mother. On 14th May 1940 a daughter, Jill, was born to Clive and Jessie and baptised at St Katharine's. The address was by this time shown as 4 Rockshaw Road. Mabel Mary died on 22nd April 1942 and was buried at St Katharine's. A Frederick Phillips, perhaps an elder brother of Clive's, was 'killed in action' on 12th November 1917 and buried in the same plot.
In May 1955 a younger daughter, Jennifer, was confirmed at St Katharine's; she became engaged to John Malcolm SHERLOCK in February 1962.
Jessie and Clive were shown at this address until about 1970, with the electoral registers showing the address as 4 Rockshaw Road and the various Directories listing it as Firle. Clive Charles's entombment is also recorded on the same gravestone as Mabel but the only details recorded are the dates 1910 - 1980.
Another Phillips family, Jane and Edward, was living at 64 Noddyshall from 1910 to 1926.
There is possible confusion here as the original name of Middle Fell was Firle Beacon. However, in both the 1938 and 1939 electoral registers the two houses occur as separate residences.
In 1930 20 cottages were erected by the Southern Region of the then British Railways to provide cheap accommodation for its employees. They are similar in design to the 24 cottages built a year or so earlier just north of Tadworth station to form a road named Ashcombe Terrace.
Kelly's Directory for 1936 is the first record of any use; the electoral registers show only a very few entries before 1955.
The occupants in 1936 were Peggy E and Percy Stanley WONES, who were living there until at least 1965. Bessie Amelia Wones died and was buried on 21st September 1954, aged 51. Peggy and Percy's daughter, also Peggy, now lives in Poole.
Catherine and Frank Robert Gordon HARRISON were the occupants from 1936 to 1960. The electoral register for 1965 lists Netta and Ronald J SMITH.
This house was occupied, from 1936 to at least 1965, by Fanny and Percy GAMBRELL.
This is one of only two houses for which there is an electoral register entry prior to 1955; that for 1932 shows Dorothy Caroline and Reginald Frederick RUSHBRIDGE as occupants, and this is confirmed by the 1936 Kelly's. From 1951 onwards, according to Kelly's, the occupants were Lilian E and Percival Charles Ashbee BETTS until at least 1965.
The 1936 Kelly's shows Frederick Arthur PRONGER resident. The Directory for 1951 gives James GOLDSON (GOLDSEN in the 1954 version) but from 1955 to at least 1965 the occupants were June E and Vivian R AKEHURST. A daughter, Jennifer Elaine, was confirmed at St Katharine's in May 1961 at the age of 13.
Horace Akehurst, employed as a gardener, and his wife Lucy lived at Pickett Wood during the 1930s.
Walter BROWN was living here in 1936, but every entry from 1951 onwards shows the CATT family — Alice R and Leslie Henry D, with David M coming of age in about 1955.
The first owner appears to have been Alfred William HAYWARD. In April 1933 Elsie and Dorothy, aged 15 and 14 respectively, were confirmed at St Katharine's.
By 1951 Edith F and Sidney Arthur SHEPPARD were living in the house, together with their daughter Joyce and son Stanley. Edith and Sidney were still there in 1965. Joyce, now widowed, lives in Meadvale; Stan and his wife Jean live in Tonbridge, although Jean (nee Allen) was originally from Merstham and her brother John still fishes in the Mere. Other Sheppard families were at Mon Repos in the early 1930s.
Kelly's 1936 Directory shows Gerald SEAGER. The ROBERTS family – Annie E and George R – were shown from 1951 to 1960 with Leslie, presumably a son, appearing on the electoral roll in 1955. George Wilham Frederick, perhaps another son, died in February 1954 aged 39. In 1965 the occupants were Sheila and William BENNION.
Walter Percy CHRISTER was the first occupant (1936). Daisy M, Edith and William WEST lived here from 1951 to at least 1965.
This is the second house to boast residents (courtesy of the electoral register) in 1932 – Teresa and William George SNAPE. In 1936 the JEALL family – Arthur and wife Annie with their three daughters Peggy, Eileen and Pauline – were living in the house. Arthur was an engine driver but employment in the railways offered no permanent residence – they had moved to Merstham from Bognor, and before long had departed again, this time to Southampton. In March 1946 four people from this house were confirmed at St Katharine's: Jean and Freda BONIFACE, both aged 17; a younger sister Dorothy, aged 15; and Derek Albert Henry SHARMAN, aged 15. The 1951 Kelly's shows Henry E F SHARMAN, presumably Derek's father; this is confirmed by the 1955 electoral register, which lists, as well as Henry, Mary C E, Derek A H and Peter C Sharman together with a John D BONIFACE. By 1959, however, Beatrice M and Albert A KEMP were living in the house. Judy Anne Kemp was confirmed in May 1961 at the age of 12 and the family was still there in 1965.
The first occupants were Leonard and Jessica LARKIN: a daughter Zoe Edith was born on 27th April 1932. Kelly's Directory for 1936 shows the resident as Mr Leslie OLLIVE (sic). By 1951 another family had moved in: Rose N and Harold F NICE with, in 1955, William HARVEY. The electoral register for 1960 shows no occupants but that for 1965 lists Beryl M and Robert F McGILLIVRAY.
Kate E A and John William MATTHEWS were the occupants from 1936 to at least 1965. The register for this last year also shows Percy PLOWMAN as a voter.
The first occupants were Catherine and James WATTS. They first appear on the electoral register in 1936 but their 3-year-old son Brian Stephen had died on 10th September 1932 from this address and had been buried at St Katharine's. A daughter, Dorothy Catherine, was born on 21st January 1938 and baptised two months later. In 1955 their son Eric James was also shown in the register; he died the following year, on 7th August, at the age of 31 and was interred with his brother Brian. Dorothy C M PRICE also appeared on the electoral roll - this was, presumably their daughter who by now was married. Five years later, in 1965, the occupants were Betty M and Roy V GEORGE.
From 1936 this was the home of Harry HOLDEN, who was a relief Station Master. In the mid-1930s a son of the family, Frederick William, married Bertha MORLEY from 65 Noddyshall, and they set up home next door to Bertha's parents at 64 Noddyshall. When Harry Holden died, in 1958, his unmarried sister Mildred and wife Nellie, together with son Anthony M, continued to live in the house until the Holden family left Ashcombe Road in 1978.
Charles Groombridge GOLDS lived here with his wife Mabel Annie from 1936. Mabel died on 15th February 1954 aged 69, and the electoral register shows that by 1955 Charles had been joined by his niece Edith Emma Sylvia DAVIDSON. He died on 4th May 1968 aged 82 and Edith died at the age of 69 on 26th May 1982. All are buried at St Katharine's.
From 1936 the residents were Edwin BASHFORD and his family – Hilda, Dorothy M E, Sophia W, and Roy C. Hilda was baptised at St Katharine's in March 1945 at the age of 16. She now lives with her husband Don at Woodhatch, and for some years looked after William and Gertrude Port when they moved from Albury Edge Lodge following Williams's retirement. Edwin died on 9th January 1956.
Roy married Dorothy BONIFACE, one of twins living at number 19: many years later, towards the end of the 1990s, he had a stroke and was confined to a wheelchair at his home, also in Woodhatch. He died in 2002.
By 1960 the new occupants were Ena E and William J WHITE. By 1965 the Whites in turn had left, to be replaced by Irene and Arthur WILLIAMS.
The occupants in 1936 were Dorothy K and Walter A MITCHELL. It seems that Walter died during the late 1950s, as he appears in the electoral register for 1955 but not in that for 1960. By 1965 Iris V M and William D J CROSS were living in the house. Iris, with her family, lives there still.
This was home to a branch of the MORLEY family – William and Elizabeth Ann Marie Morley were living here from 1936 and in April 1940 their daughter Muriel Irene was baptised at the age of 24. Four days after her baptism, however, she was confirmed - but as Muriel Irene ELKIN, perhaps her married name.
William was still at the same address in 1955 but now with Alice Morley, who may have been his sister-in-law – an Alice Morley was at Albury Edge, perhaps in service, in 1930. Alice A and William Morley are shown as occupants until at least 1965.
Muriel Irene died early in 2001.
Another Morley family, that of Rose and Arthur, was living at 65 Noddyshall from 1918 to the outbreak of the Second World War.
The MARSHALL family — Alice H and Francis Ernest — were living here from 1951 to at least 1965, but an earlier occupant (in 1936) was Frank ROFFEY.
Ivy M and James KING, with sons Reginald and Colin, were resident here from 1936 to at least 1965. Ivy was very involved with the British Legion. Reg still lives in South Merstham.
The
three acres of land on which this house is built had previously been occupied
by Thomas KING of Home Farm and the value had been assessed at £5 2s 10d.
In 1909 it was purchased from Lord Hylton by Paxton Hood Watson, who later lived
at Pickett Wood. He was permitted to build just one house
on the site, to be called Firle Beacon.
The baptism register of St Katharine's records the birth, on 24th August 1914, of John Hugh, a son to Mary Augusta Elizabeth and Hugh Wren STREET, an insurance official. The electoral register for the following year, 1915, records Hugh Wren Street as living at 1 Rockshaw Road. Four years later the occupants were shown as Hugh and his wife Mary Augusta Elizabeth. However, on 20th September 1918 a baby girl, Kathleen Pamela, was born to Ivy Brenda and Eric WILSON-HUGHES at this address (1 Rockshaw Road). Eric was a temporary Captain in the RSA and this family may have been staying with the Streets.
The Street family were at this address until about 1925, when they moved to The White Cottage on Shepherds Hill; they were there until about 1938, after which Hugh Street later moved to Alverstone, on the Isle of Wight. He died there on 15th November 1941 aged 63.
A document, dated 1919, is still in existence showing the conveyance of the house (now named Firle Beacon) from Paxton Watson to Henry Mear CUMMING as mortgagor and Ethelred GEE as mortgagee. The electoral registers for 1920 and 1921 show the house renamed to The Balsams and Henry Cumming as the sole voter; in 1921 the house was purchased by John PARKIN, who worked in a bank.
It appears that he renamed the house once again, this time to Middle Fell, for it is under that name that the electoral roll for 1922 shows the occupants as Jesse and John Parkin. They are the only occupants listed until 1935, although the entry for 1932 also shows Mildred Elsie JEWELL — perhaps a maid? There are several references in "The Times" of a house named Middle Fell in Whyteleafe, and it is possible that John Parkin moved from that area and brought the name with him. It is also the name of a buttress in the Langdale Valley of the Lake District.
In 1937 the mortgage was released by the National Provincial Bank to John, who was by now a bank manager. He sold it to Margaret HARDING.
Frank Dryden Morle HARDING and his wife Alice Edith Margaret lived at Middle Fell, together with Lucy Maud LILLYWHITE, for the duration of the war. The entry for 1938 shows, in addition, Clara GUTBROD. A conveyance dated 1939 indicates that the southern part of the Bartonbury land was sold to the Hardings by Merstham Park Tenants Ltd for £90.
Immediately after the war, in 1945, Ester A and Frederick B G BEVAN lived here, with Eileen O'THOMAS. The house was sold in 1946 to Barbara Waring JACKSON, the widow of Wilfrid Swinhoe Jackson, and in the 1950 electoral roll she was the sole occupant. However, she died on 25th February 1953 in a nursing home in London and the house was sold again, with Francis Jackson as vendor and acting as the executor. Another Jackson family, Margaret and Victor, lived at The Firs in 1950, moving to Clavadel by 1955, although there is no reason to assume that the families were related.
The new owners were Ethel Elizabeth and Leonard Stanley BOWRAGE. Leonard was a book-binder and they appear on the 1955 electoral roll with Albert, presumably their son.
The plot of land sold in 1909 had not included the area immediately south of the road, “front bank”, leading down to the house. This piece of land was bought by the Bowrages for £25.
In 1960 Dr Kenneth Haddon TRIGG and his wife Dr JORDAN bought the house for £6,000 and they remain there to this day.
The
first mention of Bartonbury is in the registers of St Katharine's
church, when the burial of Mary Elizabeth FLINT at the age of 59 on 10th April
1913 is recorded. Florence DRURY is listed in the 1914 electoral register as
the occupier of 2 Rockshaw Road, but the following year she
is recorded at Bartonbury.
Bartonbury is the name of an estate at Cirencester, and the name may have been brought from there.
By 1918 Marcele and Philip AMY were living in the house; they were there until 1922 although from 1919 Philip was shown as an 'absent voter'.
From 1924 the occupiers were Henry and Clara Hamilton ELSWORTHY, who had moved from The Highlands, Upper Warlingham. In 1930 Clara was sharing the house with Clara FRANKS, and in 1935 with May (or Marie) Constance WINCHESTER; these two may have been servants. In 1938 Clara was still living in the house, but she died on 22nd December that year aged 71 and by the following year the owners were Ivy Gwen Derwen and Frederick Stewart WOON together with Clara Maria MORRIS.
By 1945 Ivy was missing from the roll, replaced by Eliza A and Frederick C Woon.
Clara Bowring moved to Bartonbury towards the end of 1949 following the death of her husband Cyril, at The Georgian House, on 28th October 1949 at the age of 63. She survived a further 36 years, and died aged 98 on 29th March 1985.
Five years later, in 1950, the occupants were Ada Charlotte DODGSHON and Johanna LEMBERGER. Ada was the widow of John Julius Dodgshon, a JP, who had died on 28th October 1931. She was the second daughter of the late Captain Adam Alexander Duncan DUNDAS, and a remote cousin of Gwenyth Dundas (see Albury Edge); she died on 14th January 1951.
The 1954 Kelly's Directory shows Mrs C M BOWRING as owner of the house, but the 1955 electoral register shows the resident voters to be Clara, Joyce and Robert TAYLOR.
The 1959 Kelly's again shows Mrs BOWRING; she appears to have lived there until at least 1970. The registers for both 1960 and 1965 show, additionally, Brenda J and Albert E LAWRENCE, their daughter, Jacqueline Ann, was confirmed at St Katharine's in May 1960 at the age of 13.
The house later became the residence of Ruth and Philip BOWYER.
(Photograph of Mill House omitted by request of the owners)
There is a reference to Mill House as the residence of Violet WATERMAN and George BAKER, a miller, who were married on 20th August 1901. However, it is likely that this is the Old Mill House on Fair Field, which was demolished in the 1930s.
A Rachel BATTERS, of Mill House, died aged 50 and was buried at St Katharine's on 14th May 1914.
The first occupant of the present house, according to the 1915 electoral roll, was Cecil Joseph WALDRON; three years later Ada and Robert BLAIR were living here.
By 1926 the Blairs had left and Alice Constance and John JOHNSTONE were resident until at least 1930; in 1932 John had (presumably) died and Alice was there with Mary Ann POTTINGER, who had moved from Mon Repos.
By 1938 Alice had left and the new occupant was Adeline Constance WIGG, sharing the house with Violet Victoria ELLIOTT; Adeline, aged 32, was the widow of George Lloyd Wigg (see Rockshaw House). There is no entry for 1939 but Adeline reappeared in 1945 together with Lilias C DRYBURGH and Adolf G T LAGERFELT. By 1945 Adeline Wigg had moved to Albury Edge; Violet Elliott had moved to West Cross, perhaps indicating that she was a servant.
In 1950 the list shows the occupants as Betty and Alexander SAMPSON; they were there until the end of the 1960s.
The present owners have requested that their names are omitted from this history.
Kelly's
Directory lists Revd Alfred George ROGERS (listed as Arthur George in the 1913
and 1915 electoral rolls) from 1911 onwards as Rector of Gatton. The house was
named after his first appointment, as curate, to Kingsdown, Sevenoaks. Revd
Rogers was the Rector of Gatton from 1894 to 1937. Although the house served
as the Rectory for Gatton Church (St Andrew's) until Revd Rogers retired, Gatton
Rectory was an entirely separate dwelling, off Gatton Bottom, which had been
the previous house of the family.
The two sons of the family both served in the Great War; the younger, Wilfred Frank Rogers, was killed in action and is commemorated on the War Memorial in the village. Revd Rogers remained there, with his wife Mabel Fanny Gertrude, until he died in 1946.
In 1929 Gladys HILL and Lucy PAYNE are also shown as voters, although Gladys was not listed the following year; in 1932 she appears on the electoral register at Roemarten. In the same year Lucy too had gone but three years later Ada PAYNE (a younger sister?) had replaced her.
Around the war years there are several other occupants besides Alfred and Mabel and their family: in 1938 they were joined by Maud Lilian BOND, Edith ELLIS and Agnes Ann MATTHEWS; by the next year Edith Ellis had been replaced by Lily Mary BIRD.
On 26th July 1943 the elder Rogers daughter, Barbara, who was in the W. R. N. S., married Lieutenant Eric EVANS, of the Black Watch, at St Katharine's.
By the end of the war, in 1945, Agnes Matthews and Lily Bird had both left leaving just Maud Bond with the Rogers couple, whose son Philip W. had now attained his majority.
Revd Alfred Rogers died on 29th April 1946 aged 88 and the funeral service was held, naturally enough, at Gatton. Mabel, his widow, died some seven years later on 23rd December 1953.
By 1950 Ann D and Cecil E MOY were living in the house; see Tanglewood and Clavadel, which were homes to Sybil and Arthur MOY from 1921. Kelly's Directories for 1951 and 1954 show Horace GHINN as the owner, and the 1955 electoral register records Florence, Joan and Frank MURRAY at the address.
John K KIDSON is shown in the 1959 Kelly's Directory and for the 1960s and early 1970s the house belonged to Elizabeth W and John Kidson. Their children, Elizabeth Fay and Peter Galbraith, were confirmed at St Katharine's in May 1960 at the ages of 14 and 12 respectively.
Again, various other names appear during the years, perhaps domestic staff: Annie MURRAY and Alexander O'MAY in 1960 and just Annie in 1965. Mrs Kidson's sister Gail (shown in the registers as Catherine G) ROWLEY lived with them; she was an artist and used to draw pictures of the children in the road. She later moved to Hove.
From some time in the 1970s until 1996 the owners were Eva and Piers BULL. When the Bulls moved out, leaving the house empty, there was a move by the local Mental Health Authority to purchase it for use as a residential home for some of the inmates of the Royal Earlswood Hospital, then in the process of being closed down. This was resisted by the Residents' Association, which was hastily reformed for that specific purpose, and after some negotiation the house was bought by one of the residents.
It was sold some time later to Michelle and Jonathan ELLIS, with their sons Tom and Dylan.
The
plot of land on which this dwelling now stands was sold by Lord Hylton to Paxton
Watson at the end of the 19th century. The house was designed by M H Baillie-Scott
(see also Noddyshall) for a Mr Samuels in 1898, although
it appears that building did not commence until about ten years later as it
was first occupied in 1910 by William SALMON. Although Mr Salmon appears in
the electoral register for 1913, by the end of 1912 he had already sold it to
John Keble BELL, who lived in the house with his wife Florence Pearl. They changed
the name to As You Like It. It appears with this name in Alex
Hunter's “Gentlemen of Merstham and Gatton” and it also appears
in Kelly's Directory for both 1913 and 1919. John's niece later married Dr WEIR,
Merstham's first GP.
The Bells lived here until 1919. On 28th March 1917 a daughter Margaret Elinor was born to Alexander James WEIGHTMAN and his wife Ursula Margaret, and the address shown was As You Like It; possibly they were relatives of the Bells, or perhaps the house was rented out to them at the time. A Mary Bell lived at Tanglewood in the mid-1950s, and another Bell family was resident at Orchard End in the 1960s, but there is no reason to suppose that these families were related.
By 1920 the house had reverted to its original name of Little Shaw when it was bought by Ella Janie and Colonel Norman Thomas ROLLS. Col Rolls moved to Rockshaw Road from The Corner House, in Church Hill, and was President of the Merstham branch of the British Legion. The Rolls family moved again in 1926.
The electoral roll in 1926 records the occupants as Saide and Howard HOULDER. A Howard Houlder had been an Alderman and Mayor of Croydon for three years during the First World War. He was a member of Houlder Brothers, a shipping firm, and bought the Heathfield Estate, at the top of Gravel Hill, Croydon, for £30,000 but after the war became bankrupt.
In 1930 the occupants were listed as Sarah Kennedy and Howard Freeland Houlder — Saide and Sarah were, presumably, the same person. Rose Eva DYER, possibly a maid, was also living in the house. The Houlders stayed in the house until at least 1935, in which year Phyllis AUTON was also living there. Howard was the organist and choirmaster at St Katharine's, and a lay reader. In the years before the war they moved to live in Hoath Meadow, in Church Hill, renting the house in Rockshaw Road to Mary HILLS. Mary was the widow of Arthur Hyde Hills, and she had two daughters, Marie Louise and Evelyn Jean. Evelyn was the younger, and her engagement to Robert Gerard Baynes REED was announced on 17th April 1937. They were married on 24th November 1937. By 1942 Robert had been promoted to the rank of Major, and the birth of a daughter on 29th September that year was announced in "The Times".
The Houlder family remained in Church Hill until 1940, when they returned to Little Shaw as Hoath Meadow had been requisitioned by the Canadian Army, the Hills ladies moving to Chicksands (Church Hill) which they renamed Chequerside. After the war the Houlders returned to Church Hill while their son Philip Alfred Findlay Houlder remained at Little Shaw. Five years later, in 1950, Sarah and Howard were once more back in Little Shaw with Philip. In 1955 another name, that of Joyce E PERRY, appeared on the electoral roll with the Houlder family; five years earlier she had been with the Webbe family at Ash Pollard.
Sarah died in November 1955 aged 70. The Houlders had always been regarded as devout Christians and Howard expressed a wish to pay for cleaning and whitening the church as a memorial to his wife. However, this would effectively obliterate for ever some wall-paintings which, it was believed, were of some significance – a letter dated November 1959 from the Central Council for the Care of Churches states that " . . the painting over the chancel arch must have been the background of the original Doom . . . of the 12th century . . .". There was thus significant opposition to Howard's generous offer but this seems to have been overcome when he threatened to withdraw his offer, and the interior of the church was indeed whitened: the event was commemorated by a plaque, which reads: "The walls within this church were cleaned and whitened in 1959 in memory of SARAH KENNEDY HOULDER (SAIDIE FINDLAY) dominus illuminatio". On his death in 1969 a second commemorative plaque was erected close to the font; the inscription reads: "HOWARD FREELAND HOULDER 1886-1969 for forty years lay reader in this church". He was buried in the churchyard with his wife, and later their son Philip was interred in the same plot when he died in 1999.
Following his death Pam and Stephen SEAGER bought Little Shaw. Steph had been a Gunner officer during WW2 and served in Special Forces in Greece. He was a highly-placed fencer and met Pam when taking one of his classes. He served on the first Residents' Committee during the latter part of the 1960s. Pam and Steph stayed in the house for over thirty years, moving in 2000 to South Close Green.
The
first recorded occupants, in 1913, were Mary Eleanor and Miles Atlee HOFFMAN.
A Clara Hoffman, possibly a relation, is shown as living at Bovey
Tracey from 1915 to 1925. "The Times" records the birth of a daughter
to Major and Mrs DE RENZY MARTIN on 6th March 1916; the connection with the
Hoffman family has not been established.
Miles Hoffman is recorded as the sole voter at Standish in 1925, and on 22nd May of that year the property was advertised for sale by auction.
By 1926 the new owners were Alice and Frank GUTHRIE.
In 1929 two additional voters were listed: Martha Annie HALE and someone whose surname was HOWELL (no forename appears in the electoral register). The entry for 1930 shows Alice and Frank together with daughter Mary Cree, although there may well have been other children not of voting age.
In 1932 William Sydney GAMMEL, whose sister was head of the Girls' School, was in residence with his wife Mary Muriel. They shared the house with Beatrice Dorothy and Ernest James JEAL although by 1935 the Jeals had left. Their place had been taken by Emma Isabella MITCHELL and Christina SADLER.
The Gammels too had left by 1939 and the house was occupied by Maude M NEILL and Jessie Louise SASSE. "The Times" of 6th April 1940 announced the birth, two days earlier, of a son to Hilda and Mr F. H. MEERES YOUNG (shown as of P. W. D., Nigeria). No other mention of this family has been found.
Maude was still there in 1950, though without Jessie, but by 1955 the house belonged to Sonia and Ronald Russell PRENTICE, who had married in 1949. Sonia was a daughter of the BOWRING family and had been brought up at The Georgian House. Ronald had, like Steph Seager from Little Shaw, been in the Greek Islands during the war. He was a member of Lloyds, and from 1966 chaired a committee set up to protect the interests of residents during the period of motorway construction.
Caroline, daughter of Ronald and Sonia, married Michael ALCOCK, of St John's Wood, on 24th June 1972, and six years later to the day her brother Christopher Norman Russell Prentice married Marie-Josephine KING at the Waldensian Church of Courmayeur, Italy. She was the daughter of John Andrews King, of Washington, DC, and Contessa Marie-Rose d'Entreves Bocca of Turin. Canon Philip Duval, from St Katharine's church, assisted at the service.
Ronald died on 10th September 1984 and was buried at St Katharine's.
During the 1980s and early 1990s the house was owned by the WINCHESTER family; the current owners are Carmelita, Natasha, Reza & Bhye SHAMTALLY, owners of the nursing home at Chaldon Rise and others.
An
un-named house is shown on this site on a map dated 1912 and the house that
best seems to fit is Bovey Tracey. This house was occupied
from 1913 to 1925 by Clara M HOFFMAN, although there is no voter listed at the
house between 1918 and 1920; another, probably related, Hoffman family was resident
at Standish, the neighbouring house, from 1913 to 1925.
In November 1922 "The Times" carried an advertisement, from 'Hewett',
for a 'children's useful maid' for two small girls, stating that the household
already included a cook and house-parloumaid..
There is no record of Bovey Tracey after 1925.
The first mention of Valencia is in the electoral roll of 1928, when the occupants were Harriet BANKS and Louise CHESHIRE. In the next year a Maud Banks was living at The Red House, although there is no reason to assume that Harriet and Maud were related.
The following year, 1930, gives different names: Kathleen Maud and Sydney John VINE, together with Hilda May HUTSON. "The Times" of 9th November 1931 carried Mrs Vine's advertisement for 'Chow puppies, from 3 gns'.
Kelly's Directory for 1934 shows the resident as Captain S J Vine. In 1938 Hilda Hutson had gone, having been replaced by Doris Gwendoline KNOWLES, and the Vine family had increased by two (presumably children reaching the age of 21), Donald Martin and Patrick John.
The electoral roll of 1945 shows the house, now renamed Linacre House, occupied by Gladys E and Oswald MARRIOTT – Kelly's shows Oswald as an MD. Eileen Maud MURRAY was also there in 1945; by 1950 she had left and been replaced by Rhoda M B BISHOP. Although the Marriotts were still listed at this address in the 1954 Kelly's Directory, the electoral register for the following year shows the occupants as Kathleen A and William M RUSSELL, who were there until at least 1960. During the course of their residency they changed the name of the house to Egypt Wood – Kelly's for 1959 and the 1960 electoral register both show Kathleen and William Russell at Egypt Wood and, to confirm this, Egypt Wood, at the location of Valencia, is shown on a map dated 1964. There was a large house named Egypt Wood at Farnham Common, in Buckinghamshire, and it is possible the name was taken from there.
During the late 1960s John and Bridget HEYWORTH lived in the house, renaming it Pucklechurch after the village where John's father had been brought up. They had moved from Bushetts Grove. John worked for the family rubber business and often travelled to Nigeria. He had been in the Royal Greenjackets during the war. During a meal with some parents of friends of their children at Merstham Grange School, he mentioned that he had been in Greece during the post-war EOKA riots, sending daily signals to Alexandria to advise of the current situation. He was amazed to learn that Maurice Chapman, another of the parents at the meal, had been stationed at Alexandria and had been the recipient of his signals!
At the end of the 20th century the owners were Rita and Phil MARGRAVE, with daughters Lauren and Lucy.
This house has certainly seen more name changes than any other house in the road!
Between Pucklechurch and Whitmore once stood an old garage, set back from the road. During the war this was used as the ARP / First Aid Post. The entrance was built up with sandbags and extended out to the footpath. It was demolished in the 1990s when the Simpson family bought Whitmore.
The
first mention of the house as Whitmore is in 1925, although
it is certain that the house had been built earlier as the plot of land on which
the house is built was sold by Lord Hylton to Paxton Watson in February 1910
for £922 10/- and a 1912 map shows a house in this position. It is likely
that the house was built around 1912, as the house is externally similar to
Lowood, and later renamed. The most likely contender is
Lamberden, which was occupied from 1913 by Agnes Ivy and Douglas
SPICER. A daughter Diana Mary was born on 1st October 1914; but sadly the St
Katharine's register records, on 6th April 1915, her burial at the age of six
months. By 1921 they had moved, and the new occupants were Vera Jean Hamlyn
and Joseph Wilson DAVIE. "The Times" of 14th July 1923 carried an
advertisement for the auction of 'Lamberden, Merstham', with six bedrooms and
grounds of about one acre, and the freehold had been sold by October; the electoral
registers list nobody at Lamberden after 1925, although the
register for Spring 1925 shows Lamberden and Whitmore
as separate entries.
The first occupants of Whitmore were Marjorie and Henry Ramsey MUNRO, who lived there from 1925 to about 1931. The 1930 electoral roll shows, in addition, Margaret Hyale ADAMS, Flora BLACKBURN and Annie DIMON.
From
1931 Kate and Francis John TOMS (who was a partner of J D Wood & Co., estate
agents) lived in the house. The photograph on the right, taken from the south,
dates from that time. In March 1936 daughters Kathleen and Mary were confirmed
in St Katharine's at the ages of 15 and 16 respectively.
Towards the end of the decade there were other occupants shown, perhaps servants: Lucy JONES in 1938 and Amy BRAZIL in 1939. On 10th August 1942 Ruth Frances announced her engagement to the Revd Kenneth Frank BRAY, of Ealing. Perhaps she was too young, for four years later, by which time she had reached the age of 21, her engagement to Howard R. KIRK, of Bowling, was announced in "The Times"of 28th August 1946. The marriage, the report said, would 'take place quietly'.
Three years later, on 14th June 1949, her elder sister Mary Elizabeth married Doon CAMPBELL, of Linlithgow, West Lothian, at St Katharine's. He was the chief Reuters correspondent with the 21st Army Group throughout the war in Northern Europe and was awarded the OBE; he later became managing director of Reuters and then of United Newspapers.
On 23rd September 1951 Francis Toms died: a short obituary appeared in "The Times" of 26th September. In 1955 the sole occupant listed was Kate Toms, his widow. Doon and Mary Campbell, her daughter and son-in-law, bought the house. After 40 years they moved to Cucksmead, in Church Hill, in about 1995. After Mary's death Doon moved to Reigate, where he died in 2003.
The current owners are Valerie and Rod SIMPSON, who live there together with son Michael.
The
first record of occupancy is in 1910, when a daughter Patricia Christine was
born on 7th December to Gwendoline & Edward SANT. In March the following
year, a register at St Katharine's records the confirmation of Beatrice Annie
MILES at the age of 19; she was, presumably, a live-in servant. By 1918 the
Sant family had moved, as the baptism register at St Katharine's records the
birth on 26th September 1918 of Raymond Pasteur, a son for Graham and Marguerite
Norah ALDERSON. Graham was a Captain in the RAMC and the family may have been
billetted here during the war, for by 1920 the electoral register for that year
shows Esther and Henry Thomas MILLER in residence; Henry, a director of John
G. Rollins & Co. Ltd., died on 25th April 1933. His will was proved by Jessie
Dorothea Miller, perhaps a daughter: he left a little over £22,000.
There was another Miller family, that of Elizabeth and John, resident at The White House in the late 1920s although this may have been a coincidence. By 1930 Esther was no longer shown on the electoral register, having perhaps died; the list showed instead Jessie Dorothea. Also in the house that year was Bessie WILLIAMS, perhaps a servant, since she had gone by 1932. A couple of other Williams ladies make brief appearances: Mary was at Innesfree in 1930 and Doreen was at Tanglewood in 1935.
Kelly's Directory for 1934 shows the resident as Mrs Jessie Steuart CROSHAW, and the 1935 electoral register shows, in addition, Beatrice Gertrude ETHERIDGE and Gladys Catherine FINCH. All three ladies had been replaced in 1938 by Clara May and Alfred GRIMMER together with Herbert LEDGARD; but by the very next year, 1939, Eileen Mary and Sidney Vavasseur FIGG had moved in together with Elizabeth and Vera WISE. Sidney Figg was second-in-command to Cyril Bowring (The Georgian House) in the Merstham section of the Home Guard during the Second World War.
The Figgs were still there at the end of the war, with Edith M ATKINS and Violet V ELLIOTT for company. Violet had been resident in Mill House in 1938, indicating perhaps that she was a live-in maid. Another Elliott family, Helen and Harry, lived at Rondels just before the War but these families may not have been connected.
The house changed hands again in 1949 and the new occupants were Sheila K T and John R ALEXANDER; John was one of four sons of Sir William Alexander, Conservative MP for Glasgow and Managing Director of Charles Tennant & Co. Ltd, the family business. Sheila remembers that the house overlooked fields of woodland, and at times the Surrey and Burstow Hunt was to be seen galloping across the fields. All that became history during the next few years with the coming of the 'estate'. In 1961 Sheila and John moved to Oakwood and an American couple, Teedee and Bill JOHNSON, bought the house. They had three daughters.
By the mid-1960s Marjory and Robert BATTERSBY had moved to the house, from Baldwyns in London Road North. Bob had been a Gunnery officer during the war, and was later transferred to the Intelligence Corps. He was in Special Forces in Italy and in the Balkans and later discovered that he had served in the same Special Forces Unit as Steph Seager (Little Shaw) and Ronald Prentice (Standish) without any of them ever meeting one another. He had taken a First in Russian at Cambridge, and spoke most European languages as well as Arabic and Chinese. Marjory was a wartime Wren officer. After the war Robert spent ten years in Poland and Russia, first as the representative for Glacier Metals and then with Guest Keen. Later he became an MEP and was, for over four years, the MEP for Humberside. He died in 2002.
Until recently the owners were Jill & Riccardo CAPPELLA. The house is now occupied by Helanka and Pharose BHANA.
In 1908
Lord Hylton sold 3 1/2 acres of land to Mrs Watson for £962 10s although
there was no building on the site for some years – a 1912 map shows no
building. Mrs Watson sold the house to Roberta and Guy Capper BIRT for £1,850
in 1913 and Guy’s name appears in the electoral roll for 1915 although
he also owned a house in Cavendish Square, London.
A son, Alan Beckett, was born on 24th June 1915, and a second son on 20th July 1917. Guy was the brother of Kenny Birt, who had lived in Merlebank, Church Hill, since its construction in 1903. He was a very successful dentist, counting King George V and Queen Mary among his patients.
In 1929 there was a third voter, Florence Maud PHILO, listed together with Roberta and Guy.
In 1930 the occupants were listed as Kathleen Davidson and William Henry GRAHAME, together with Mary MORRISON and Mary O’SAUGHNESSY; the house was still owned by the Birt family and was presumably rented out.
Two years later the occupants were Phoebe Kate Howard and Sydney Betham ROBINSON, with Eveline HORSLEY and Mabel Irene MOON. It is interesting to note that an Eva Horsley was living at The Mere for much of the early 1930s and at Relf House in 1939 together with a Margaret Horsley; it is possible that Margaret, Eveline and Eva were sisters, all in service.
Towards the end of November 1932 the engagement of Barbara Violet, the Birts' only daughter, was announced; she was married to Richard Alfred CHADWICK on 14th December in South Africa. In the same year the family sold the house for £2,750 to Winifred (later Lady Winifred) and Gilbert WILES, who took up residence together with Emily SWAN. Gilbert was closely involved with the Merstham Cricket Club. Perhaps he was posted abroad during the war, as by 1936 the house had been let to Dorothy Ida and Charles Leslie COX, with Anne Theresa CALDICOTT and Maud NOBLE also resident. However, by the beginning of the war a completely new family had appeared, Blanche May and Oswald Cuthbert BORRETT.
"The Times" of 9th August 1942 announced the engagement of Antony Wiles, of the 2nd/5th Royal Gurkha Rifles, to Pamela HOLDSWORTH. The wedding was to take place in Simla. Antony was described as the son of Sir Gilbert Wiles KCIE CSI and Lady Wiles of Lowood, Merstham; though, of course, they may not have been resident at the time. However, eighteen months later, on 22nd January 1944, Pamela, the Wiles's younger daughter, announced her engagement to F/Lt Peter TOWNSHEND, of Norwich, and they were married on 17th March 1944 at St Katharine's.
Gilbert and Winifred Wiles were again shown on the electoral register for 1945, along with Pamela G Townshend (their married daughter) and Helen F GRAY, but in 1946 the house was sold again. The new owners, who paid £7,500, were Barbara J and George B C JOHNSTON (there was a Dorothy and Robin Johnston at The New House from 1950 to 1955, and later at Rondels). George was a Director of the Bowater Paper Company. Their son Alasdair announced his engagement to Christine GILBERT, from Bristol, in July 1969.
Barbara and George lived at Lowood until 1971 when they sold, in turn, to Tom RILEY and his wife for £19,500. Tom was an American oil expert concerned with, among other things, the development of North Sea oil; the family had previously rented Noddyshall for some six years and then Saranda Hill for a shorter time; they hoped to remain in England but Tom's job forced a return to the USA after about four years.
The current owners are June and Danny KEE (Danny is presently the Deputy Chairman of Surrey County Council), who bought the house in 1975 for £36,000 when they moved from Gayhurst.
Records of Court
Lodge first appeared when the 1911 electoral register showed Hartley
F STRAKER as the voter. He was registered there until 1914.
On 11th March 1913 St Katharine's records the burial, at the age of eleven months, of Barbara Valence ELY of Court Lodge. An entry for the following year, on 27th October, records the marriage of Agnes Gladys WEIR, a 30-year-old spinster living at the house, to Frank Thomas LEWIS, a clerk in Holy Orders and a widower, of Fulham.
The next mention of the house is in April 1918 when Mary and William James STEVENS came to live at Court Lodge.
“They at once entered into the village life and were generous and quick to support every good cause. They were most hospitable, and gave many whist drives and tennis parties, and were loved by everyone. Mr Stevens took an active part in the life of the parish church; he was vice-chairman of the PCC for many years and could always be relied on for wise judgement and courtesy. He also carried out his duties faithfully as a sidesman” according to an obituary published in the parish magazine for October 1958, shortly after his death. “He was chairman of the Village Club, and a trustee of the Village Hall, and took a great interest in the Scouts as his son was Scoutmaster for several years.”
In 1925 he was a committee member of the Merstham Housing Society Ltd. William Reginald, their only son, appeared on the roll in 1926, but he had left two years later. He married Armorel Joyce TONGE, from Reigate, on 16th April 1932.
On the list of 1928 Jeanie ISAACSON-WOOTTON appeared, perhaps a lodger. Two years later, in 1930, Jeanie had gone but William Reginald had returned. Also in the house were Ellen JEFFREY and Bylett LIDBETTER.
In 1932 William Reginald had again left but Marjorie Curtis STEVENS appeared on the electoral roll. Bylett had also been replaced, by Violet Lily Lidbetter — perhaps a sister. Ellen too had gone and Maud Violet BURCHELL had taken her place.
There were some other fresh names in 1935; Margaret POST and Ethel GRANTHAM had replaced Violet Lidbetter and Maud Burchell.
"The Times" of 25th November 1938 announced the engagement of Marjorie, the Stevens' only daughter, to Eric Ralph COLWILL of the Highland Light Infantry. They were married in the King's Chapel of the Savoy on 10th June 1939.
During the 1940s William Stevens was a proprietor of the Great Western Railway Company Ltd.
Mary Stevens died in November 1948 at the age of 74. William Stevens, Margaret Post and Ethel Grantham were still there, now with Isabella IMPEY and Marjorie and Eric Colwill. The household was just the same in 1955, and William died a few years later after 40 years in Merstham just before his 87th birthday. He left a most generous gift of £250 to the church (St Katharine's) he loved so well.
The Stevens family were at Court Lodge for over 35 years.
The PEPPAS family was living in the house during the 1960s. They renamed the house Villa Katerina – after their daughter, a pupil at Dunnotar – and this is shown on a map of 1964. The family moved to Tanglewood at the end of the 1960s and the house was subsequently renamed back to Court Lodge by the new owners, the BUCKLAND family. It appears that this is not the family from Fairmead, who moved to Little Piemede, although it is possible they were related. The Peppas family renamed Tanglewood, in turn, Villa Katerina.
During the 1980s the house was let by the Buckland family to the HOLTANS, a family from Australia.
By the end of the century the owners were Jacqueline and Stephen LUFF.
The
first owners were Rhoda Holms and William Henry FERGUSON. The register for St
Katharine's (which shows Williams's occupation as “gentleman”) shows
the baptism of two daughters, Jean born on 12th October 1909 and Sheila Lucy
born on 23rd June 1913. "The Times" of 21st January 1922 reported
that Little Ganilly (Ganilly, incidentally, is a type of trumpet daffodil) had
been sold, but no price was given.
The new occupants were Ellen and Clifford RENNISON, and they renamed the house Rondels. They lived there until at least 1932; in 1929 other voters shown were Margaret BUTCHER and Daisy TALBOT, and by 1930 they were sharing the house with Ivy BAILEY, Winifred PEACOCK and Francis SHOUKER (some of whom may have been staff). By 1932 the only resident, apart from the Rennisons, was Doris Evelyn COOPER.
The next occupants were Guy SAVORY, who came originally from Norfolk, and his wife Beatrice Muriel, always known as Mulie. Also in the house were Peggy GODFREY, a nanny, and two maids, Margaret CARVER and Lilian TAYLOR. Guy was a flour miller, the owner, chairman and managing director of A. H. Allen & Co. Ltd, Croydon, and he also part-owned a family farm in Norfolk. The maids had earlier worked for Guy when he had been living in Croydon with his first wife, who had died some years earlier. He had recently remarried and was several years older than Mulie.
The Savory’s daughter Diana Muriel was born on 6th April 1933, and her sister Judith Algar on 17th February 1937. When the two maids left in June 1937 Mrs Savory advertised in "The Times" for 'two maids, friends, wanted as cook and house-parloumaid'. The advertisement ran for a week. The two maids that were taken on (Thea and Clarie) came from Austria, but on the outbreak of war they were interned as 'aliens'. To replace them, Helen and Harry Edward ELLIOTT joined the establishment. A Violet Victoria Elliott lived at Mill House in 1938 and at West Cross in 1945.
Mary Dulcie ('Mollie') SECRETAN was a Norland Nanny who came to the house shortly before Judith was born, and she became a very important member of the household. Her family home was in Sussex, and during the war the two daughters were evacuated there for a while. Mollie died a few years after the start of this century.
The ‘man of all work’ was Ernie BLOWES, who lived at Fairmead with his family. He looked after the estate, the car (he was also the chauffeur), the tennis court, the chickens, the orchard and did small electrical and plumbing jobs. He and his wife Ethel also sometimes house-kept when the Savory family was on holiday, and sometimes he was asked to fire-watch at the mill in Thornton Heath. He was there on 17th June 1944 when a doodlebug landed on Croydon.
The house originally had high iron railings and gates, but these were removed for the ‘war effort’; all that now remains is the nameplate ‘Rondels’ on the (replacement) front gate. The railings are also replacements and were installed only towards the end of the 20th century.
When a doodlebug hit Innesfree in August 1944 Ernie BLOWES, the gardener-cum-handyman, was working outside the house and the blast blew him through a doorway into the garden. The neighbouring houses to Innesfree were unoccupied at the time otherwise there might have been many more casualties.
At the end of the war the Savory family was still living in the house, together with Beatrice Ethel CHAPMAN, Mrs Savory's mother, who was the widow of Henry Surtees Chapman; they came originally from Standon, Hertfordshire. In September 1951 Beatrice died aged 87. In 1955 Elsie N HARRINGTON was shown on the electoral register along with the Savorys: she was the resident housekeeper and kept house for the two daughters while their parents were in Norfolk
On 4th March 1955 Guy died; he left an estate of some £63,000. By this time both daughters had married and left home and Guy’s widow sold the house (for £7,000) and moved to Reigate with both daughters. a few years later Judith emigrated to New Zealand, and Diana married Robert Spence, whom she had met on moving to Reigate. Mulie herself later married an old family friend, Alan RUSSELL of Sandfield Farm, Hever. She died on 8th April 1974.
The next occupants were Robin Arnold F. and Dorothy JOHNSTON, who had moved across the road from The New House (see also Lowood); he was an under-writer at Lloyds. They had three or four children; one daughter was named Auriol. Dorothy died a few years later on 20th July 1958, aged only 37.
"The Times" of 27th July 1959 reported the engagement of Robin Johnston, of Rondels, to Elizabeth-Ann TODHUNTER, from Nutfield, in which Robin was reported as being the youngest son of Mr and Mrs E. Johnston, of Hove. Elizabeth-Ann gave birth to a son on 1st August 1960, and a second on 22nd May 1962. In all Robin and Elizabeth-Ann had four children to add to those from his first marriage.
John and Valerie MacDonnell bought the house in about 1970. John, a native of Florida, owned several hairdressing shops.
The sole mention of Relf Cottage is in 1950, when the occupants were Kate S and Albert F TICKNER. It is shown between Rondels and Relf House, and the assumption is made that the cottage was within the grounds of the latter; there are two distinct buildings shown on the plot in maps of 1933 and 1964. However, the land across the road (on which Kingfisher Cottage now stands) formerly beonged to Relf House and it is possible that there was a cottage on this plot.
A map dated 1912
shows an empty plot where the house now is.
The earliest record for Relf House in the electoral rolls is for 1924, when John Granville FEARON, a wine merchant, was the occupier. He and his wife Gertrude Mary were there until 1928, by which time they had two sons; John Richard Carter was born on 5th April 1924 and Phillip Malleson Austen on 15th March 1927. However, the following year the voters listed were Barbara Mary and Cecil George William EVE together with Charlotte BRYANT. In 1930 Charlotte had gone, replaced by Gladys Isobel PEEL.
There were no residents shown for 1932 but by 1933 Marjorie and Kenneth York LONG had bought the house; May HANCOCK, Lily MALONEY and Elizabeth WARD were also living there in 1935, as shown by the electoral roll for that year; in April that year both Mary Hancock and Elizabeth Ward were confirmed at St Katharine's. An Ada Ward lived at Albury Edge during 1929. The Longs stayed for almost ten years, although the other names changed: in 1938 Clara Ann GOMM was at the house, and in 1939 Clara had been joined by Eva Madeleine and Margaret Mary HORSLEY. It seems that Eva had moved from The Mere where she had lived earlier in the decade.
In September 1939 Mrs Long advertised in "The Times" for a 'Young girl or Nannie required to help with two children, girl aged five and boy eight months; comfortable and happy home'. Whether or not that advertisement was filled successfully, the following month she advertised for a 'Man and wife required as Handyman and Cook-General respectively'. They were to have their own private sitting-room , and bedroom with fitted basin. A couple of years later, on 3rd November 1941, she advertised for a Nannie to look after a girl of four years and a baby that was expected in January. It is not clear where the four-year-old girl came from! Almost a year later, on 16th October 1942, she again advertised for a 'Man and wife'.
At the end of the war the Longs were no longer in evidence. The new owners, from about July 1945, were Aida and Lt-Col. Eric G S WALEY together with Marion, Marion D and Stuart D GREIG, Sylvia BATCHELAR, Gertrude L JOHNSON and Bessie E WHITEHEAD. Five years later, in 1950, Aida and Eric Waley had been joined by (presumably their now grown-up children) Joan L and Anthony C S Waley. Bessie Whitehead was still there but the others had gone.
By 1955 the residents were Sophia and Michael CALLOW (Sophia, née WATSON, was the daughter of Lord Thankerton). Michael was working for British Gelco Engineering, at Edenbridge, by 1960. In 1973 Sophia and Michael made an extended visit to New Zealand, where their daughter was teaching in Wellington. They asked friends, Geoffrey and Mrs Elspeth HOWE (later to become Lord and Lady Howe), to care for the house while they were away. Geoffrey, failing to be elected as the Conservative member for Cardiff, declared that he would not stand again. Ted Heath, then Prime Minister, persuaded him to stand in Reigate as Sir John Vaughan Morgan was about to retire. He agreed, on the understanding that if he were not elected he would not be asked to stand again. The Howes, with daughter Carrie and twins Alec and Amanda, stayed in the house until the Callows returned the following year. They owned a Jack Russell, named Quintin (after Quintin Hogg), who would race into Clavadel's garden. Following a phone call Elspeth would emerge from Relf House with a walking stick, capture Quintin with the curved end, and return through the party hedge with him while he tried to attack her shoes.
Michael died on 7th July 1977 at the age of 73, and following the death of Sophia later the same year Relf House was bought by Mr A LOGIE, whose wife was the daughter of Mrs BRODIE (Russet Cottage). Mr Logie was a manager with Unilever, and after a few years was moved to Bristol. He sold the house to Jenny, John and Stephen FARMER, who are the present occupants.
A recent
owner, Basil West, remembers finding a newspaper dated 1902 behind a large wall
mirror many years later and for some time it was believed that this gave the
date of building. However, the first piece of evidence relating to Clavadel
is the original conveyance, dated 3rd July 1906, in which Rt Hon. Baron Hylton
agreed to sell 'that piece of freehold land' to Henry Nicholson for £275.
The plan attached to the conveyance shows no existing building on the site and
therefore the house cannot have been built before this date, although the plan
does show a building on the next plot to the east (Oakwood).
Various covenants appear in the document, stipulating that no more than one
dwelling house was to be built and that this must cost at least £1,000.
Henry Withnall NICHOLSON was a solicitor (he had offices at 27 Lawrence Lane
in the City) and Clerk to the Commissioners of Taxes.
On 6th March 1908 Mrs Wood, from Blackheath, a widow, entered into a mortgage on the house when she advanced Henry Nicholson the sum of £1,150 against 'all that piece of freehold land . . . and with the dwelling house and buildings lately erected . . . and called Clavadel'. It appears, therefore, that the house had been built by early 1908. She remained the mortgagor until June 1928, when Mr Nicholson transferred the mortgage to the Midland Bank. The 1910 electoral roll shows him as owner of the house, but living at 255 London Road, Thornton Heath.
"The Times" records the death of George Harold MEDHURST aged 57, of Clavadel, on 2nd August 1917; the St Katharine's burial register records his burial on 17th August. He is recorded as being 'of Hong Kong' and was a Director of Dodwell & Co. Ltd. and had, presumably, been a tenant in the house. He was the youngest son of the late Thomas Medhurst of the Soho Iron Works, London, and it is possible that he was a relative of the Frederick W Medhurst recorded as a voter between 1909 and 1911.
Blanche and Henry’s son Kenneth Nicholson was first shown on the electoral register in 1924, although he had placed an advertisement offering his services as those of a 'public schoolboy aged 21' wanting work in "The Times" of 2nd February 1922. He last appears on the electoral register in 1929, and on 20th June that year he married Ruth EDINGER, from The Red House. In that year Mary Louisa HARRIS (perhaps a maid?) was also living in the house but she had been replaced in 1932 by Violet May GIBBONS. By 1935 Blanche and Henry were living in the house by themselves.
The mortgage was again transferred in August 1938 to the Revd G H Nicholson of Burghfield, in Berkshire. Four years later Henry and Blanche transferred the mortgage, now standing at £1,850, to Henry Wilkinson of Cornwall and Robert Wylie of Oxford. The former died in November 1942 and three months later Robert transferred it yet again to Col W T Wilkinson of Yorkshire and A E Barton of Leeds.
Henry Nicholson died on 8th February 1943 aged 82 and his son Kenneth, by now a Chartered Accountant, transferred the property to his mother Blanche although she died only five months later on 19th July.
The house was sold to Vera Marian CARTER, of Tadworth, for £4,150; she stayed only a short time and in March 1945 sold to Mrs Grace HUNTER, of Ludlow, for £4,475. Grace's husband John A (Jock) Hunter MBE was a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Gunners at the end of the war. He became a Director of Messel & Co., Stockbrokers, and Deputy Chairman of Ranco Ltd. Later he became the deputy director of the Stock Exchange.
When he found that the house had become too small for him and his family, Grace Hunter entered into a Deed of Exchange with Mrs Sybil O A MOY, of Tanglewood on 1st October 1949. With a payment of £2,500 in consideration of the different sizes of the two houses the two families exchanged houses.
Later that same month Sybil Moy used a Deed of Gift to transfer Clavadel to her son, Arthur R Moy, who worked for Moy, Bandervell (Stockbrokers).
Her daughter Pamela Alison became engaged in November 1948, and two years later Pamela's brother Arthur announced his engagement to Pamela Mary McKENLAY of Redhill.
In 1955 the voters recorded as resident in the house were Sybil Moy together with Margaret S and Victor C JACKSON. The house remained in the possession of the Moy family until September 1964; by this time Sybil had become too frail to live alone in Clavadel and went to live with son Arthur and his wife in Kingsdown. The house was sold to Basil and Louisa WEST and their three sons and a daughter, who moved from Grange Close where Basil had designed and built their house.
Louisa, originally from South Africa, was a grand-daughter of John HARRISON, the only British member of the Founders of Johannesburg; he was also Captain and wicket-keeper of one of the first South African cricket teams. Louisa lost her mother when she was young; her father was on active service with the South African Air Force and her elder brother had been killed in action in Europe. She qualified as an SRN and midwife and was one of a small group of midwives in their early twenties who were taken at dusk into shanty towns in Durban and left at homes where births were imminent, as it was too dangerous to leave the ambulance in the town after dark. She delivered 48 babies in this way.
Basil had served overseas as navigator of a Fleet Destroyer from age 19, as a sub-lieutenant in the RNVR, and then with a submarine flotilla before graduating at Oxford and qualifying as a chartered accountant in the City, He was headhunted for several appointments, and one of his tasks was as Managing Director of the Automobile Association, which he turned into a viable business from a moribund institution faced with bankruptcy. After the war he continued in the permanent RNVR (which became the RNR) and was appointed Captain of HMS President. He was an ADC to HM the Queen and made a Freeman of the City of London. He then went on to become Group Finance Director of Lonrho. Basil, together with Steph Seager (Little Shaw) and Ronald Prentice (Standish) were foremost among the residents in limiting the effect of the motorway construction at the end of the 1960s.
Later he took up an appointment in the Arabian Gulf with a large international group, and remained there for over eight years before retiring and moving back to Clavadel towards the end of 1989.
The Wests had therefore been at Clavadel for almost forty years, with an 8-year break while Basil was in the Gulf, and were amongst the longest-resident families. They moved in 2002, and Basil died towards the end of 2005.
The current owners are Andrew and Julie FINDLAY.
According to the electoral
rolls, Louisa Mary and Percy Rowland SAVILL lived in the house from at least
1910 to 1918. Sidney Rowland SAVILL is shown (as a lodger) in 1915. However,
the register at St Katharine's shows the birth of a son, Rowland Alexander,
on 20th June 1917 to Alexander Croydon and Geraldine Louise PALMER. Alexander
was a Captain in the RAMC and it is possible that the family had been billeted
at the house during the war.
There is no entry for 1920 but the next residents, who were to stay for over thirty years, were Amy Margaret (shown as Annie Margaret from 1932) and Ernest Stapleton WARD, with son Ivan. They first appeared in the roll of 1921 and were still listed in 1950. Ernest, besides breeding pigeons, was a member of the MCC. From 1929 onwards Alice Mary DUDMAN is also shown and, since she forms part of the household for the next twenty years, it is possible that she was a relation. In 1929 and 1930 they were sharing their house with Lily Rose BROOKER and Mercy Ellen TERRY. Two years later Lily had gone and by 1935 Alice was the only other occupant besides the Wards. In March 1936 Ivan was confirmed in St Katharine's at the age of 16.
Margaret Elizabeth Gilmour, the elder daughter of Annie and Ernest, married George Stuart STEPHENS on 29th September 1937. She had, presumably, been given her third Christian name after her maternal grandfather.
Two more names, those of Irene Florence Harriet LEGGETT, a maid, and Margaret STONE, who was the cook, appeared by 1938 but by the following year they had been replaced by Marie Irene HOUGHTON.
By the end of the war, together with the Wards and Alice Dudman there were two new names on the electoral register: Rebecca BROWNE and Margaret Ann WILSON. Margaret was the widow of William Gilmour Wilson FRIBA, who had died on 12th May 1943 aged 87; they were the parents of Nan (Annie or Amy) Ward.
On 27th December 1947 the engagement was announced of Joan Stapleton Ward, the younger daughter, to Roger Crawford BLACKNEY, of Bigbury-on-Sea. They were married on 10th April the following year.
Ernest died on 25th February 1950. Later that year Nora R BALCHIN and May K S PAY are shown on the electoral roll; Rebecca Browne and Margaret Wilson were no longer listed, having perhaps moved away or died.
The entry for 1955 shows that the Ward family had left. The new occupants were Winifred N and Norman M WALKER and Margaret E CORKE. They in turn sold the house to a Mr and Mrs LUIDERVELD, although after only a few years they moved to London and in 1961 Sheila and John ALEXANDER moved to Oakwood from West Cross. John owned a horticultural company; he was also the President of the Village Hall and gave that concern much time until his early death in the 1970s. On 12th July 1975 their only daughter, Cheryl, married Geoffrey VAN-HAY; their engagement had been announced in March. She was given away by her brother Stuart. Geoffrey and Cheryl now live in Quality Street.
Sheila also moved to Quality Street, where she still lives.
The current owners have requested that their names are withheld from this history.
The land to the
west of Albury Edge, and the lake, was sold by David
Dundas SELLON to Leonard Greenwood BARTON and his wife Merle in 1945, when David's
mother Gwenyth, widow of Percy Sellon, died. Heronswood is
one of the more recent houses to be built in the road, and does not appear in
any electoral roll before 1956. A Margaret Mary Barton had been living at Ash
Pollard some 25 years earlier, although there is no reason to suppose that
she was related.
Leonard was a Cambridge Food Scientist who, during the War, worked on the staff of Lord Woolton, Churchill's Minister of Food. Heronswood was one of a number of houses in the road from which trees had to be removed from the front garden; they were impeding the flow of air over the roof, causing the tiles slowly to flake away. While he was doing so, Leonard realised that a number of silver birch tress had been planted along the frontage and these had become hidden.
The Bartons lived there with their two children until the early 1970s, when Jock and Dulcie ARCHER moved in. They were there until they died in the late 1990s and Andy BARKER became the new owner. He has enlarged the house considerably, winning an award from the Reigate Society.
An indenture dated 1900 (see below, under Noddyshall) indicates that the land to the west of the cottages, on which Albury Edge was to be built, was owned by Robert Percy SELLON (born 1864). He was, by trade, an electrical engineer and prospered during the electrification of London at the end of the 19th century. Later in life he became a director of Otis Elevators and various other companies, and Managing Director of Johnson Matthey & Co.
Albury Edge, designed by the architect Paxton Watson (of Pickett Wood), was one of the first houses (see also Clavadel) to be built along the road, and in the opinion of some remains the best example of Watson's local work. The 1905 electoral register shows Percy Sellon living at 'Albany House, Merstham' but this may have been a misprint for 'Albury Edge': certainly Percy and his wife Gwenyth Annie (nee DUNDAS) were living at Albury Edge by 1st June 1907, when their first son Robert Dundas was born, as the announcement in "The Times" of June 4th makes clear. However, the family does not appear on the electoral roll until 1915. Gwenyth, born in 1868, was the daughter of Canon Robert James Dundas, the Vicar of Albury (from where, presumably, the name of the house was taken). Their second son David Dundas was born on 16th June 1912; they also had a daughter, Rachel Dundas, although she was not baptised at St Katharine's. Another Sellon family, Ernest Marmaduke and Barbara Ann, were living at the Old Manor House in Quality Street in July 1906 when their daughter Elizabeth Margaret was born.
A few years after the initial construction of Albury Edge some alterations enlarged the back quarters and created the marble-floored sun porch. Percy Sellon and his wife loved trees and clothed what may earlier have been a bleak hillside. Some time before the 1987 storm the then owners, Mary and Alan FOGG, counted the mature trees in the garden and found about 60 different varieties.
Percy Sellon was active and generous in the village, and in 1925 he, together with Mr W J Stevens, of Court Lodge, was a committee member of the Merstham Housing Society Ltd. He was, at that time, a Director of the County of London Electric Supply Company Ltd., as shown in share offer notices carried by "The Times" on July 2nd 1925 and May 3rd 1927.
Percy suffered from a mental problem in later years – he was found on several occasions by William PORT, the head gardener, standing in the pouring rain watering the flower-beds with a hosepipe. He died on 11th January 1928 of a heart attack, aged 63, and was buried on the 16th, although he appears on the electoral roll for that year. He left an estate valued at £105,932, and gave £1,000 'to the executors for such societies, institutions and charities with which he had been connected', £200 to his secretary, Edith PATTINSON; and £1 a week for life to his children's nurse, Alice WATERER.
Rachel married Robert Stephen McNAUGHT, a lieutenant in the Royal Scots Fusiliers, on 16th July 1927 at St Katharine's and the announcement was placed in "The Times" of 18th June. Robert's father was a Lieutenant-Colonel. They had two daughters, both of whom were baptised in the church: Sheila Rosemary Sellon, born 10th April 1928, and Margaret Gillian Sellon, born on 2nd July 1933. For both of these baptisms the address of the family is shown as Albury Edge. Later, when Robert's regimental depot was stationed at Ayr, they had a son Michael, born in 1939. When war broke out the family moved back to Merstham and lived at 'Wayside', a house on London Road south of the village. Rachel died in 1994 and is buried, next to her parents, in the churchyard at St Katharine's, where her husband Robert and younger daughter Jill are also buried. The older daughter, Sheila, was buried at St Mary's, Bletchingley. Michael now lives in Cape Cod (near Boston) in Massachusetts.
In "The Times" of June 20th 1930 the Sellon family was advertising the sale of Centre Court tickets for Wimbledon at £1 each for the first week, £2 for the second.
In 1929 Robert Dundas reached the age of 21 and made an appearance on the electoral roll for the first time, and he was recorded each year until at least the start of the War. In 1931, when he was in the King's Own Scottish Borderers, his engagement was announced in "The Times" and he married Joan Alice Vera RENNY. Joan was a daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel and Mrs G. S. Renny of Whinrood, Fleet. They moved to Kenya, but he was forced by the Mau Mau rebellion to sell his farm and shortly afterwards moved back to England. He died in Swanmore, Hampshire, in 1974, leaving three children of whom one, Andrew, survives and now lives in Ipswich.
Alice MORLEY was also living at Albury Edge in 1930, and Alice Ruth WATERER (the children's nurse mentioned earlier) was resident in the house from 1930 until she died, just after the end of the War. Another Morley couple, Rose and Arthur, lived at 65 Noddyshall between 1918 and 1945 and a Morley family had lived at 6 Ashcombe Road since 1936.
Robert Dundas's younger brother David Dundas had appeared on the electoral register by 1935. Alice Waterer was still present; so too were Annie REDDER and Winifred STANDEN (see Noddyshall). In the years leading up to the War Jane QUIN and Reginald Da Costa PORTER were living in the house along with the three Sellon family members and Alice Waterer; both Robert Sellon and Reginald Porter were shown as 'absent voters'. Reginald Porter was a cousin twice over, both on the Sellon and Dundas sides. He was in the Royal Navy and retired from the service as a Lieutenant-Commander, and died at the end of the twentieth century.
John PORT, son of the head gardener William Port, who grew up in what is now Orchard End, told how, on wet days when Mrs Sellon was confined to the house with arthritis, the gardeners of the road would gather in one of the orchard-level huts and he (John) would be sent off to buy beer. He also told us of her love for a particular apple, ‘American Mother’. He told later occupants, the Foggs, a little of life ‘below stairs’, or perhaps ‘behind the green baize door’ in friendly terms. This was confirmed by a lady who had been a domestic part-timer in the house. Another glimpse of the past was given by the Sellons’ daughter, in later life Mrs McNaught. She was a spirited lady who entertained the Foggs with the parallel life to that of Mr Port. She told them of spying on, and even interrupting, the servants’ courtships from her bedroom window; and also of her mother sitting, in old age, by the smoking room (now the sitting-room) fire with a high pile of magazines, which nobody might throw out because those at the bottom became the most interesting.
During the war, according to David Sellon, Canadian convalescent officers stayed in the house. As well as pieces of shrapnel the Foggs found a pig trough and a duck-pond in the orchard, suggesting some war-time self-sufficiency.
At the end of the War Gwenyth was the only Sellon in the house, although Alice was still with her; the other occupants were Edith M GOLSBY, Margaret H RILEY and Mary F E WEBB. Margaret (Peggy), though employed as a cook, was really more of a housekeeper as – according to Michael McNaught – her cooking was not up to much! Mary Webb (Webbie) was Gwenyth's companion. Gwenyth died on 9th November 1945 (after, according to "The Times" of November 10th, 'years of suffering heroically borne') and was buried on the 12th; she was 77. She left £46,515, including a bequest of £500 to Brabazon Home, Reigate. Alice was buried a little over six weeks later, on 31st December 1945, leaving the younger son David Dundas Sellon in the house.
"The Times" of January 22nd 1946 reported the death, at the age of 73, of Mary Winifred VESSEY, wife of Canon George Vessey, late Vicar of Lenton, Lincolnshire, and one-time a Canon of Lincoln Cathedral. The funeral, which took place at St Katharine's church, was from Albury Edge. Mary Vessey, known as 'Polly', was the youngest sister of Gwenyth, and George and Mary lived in Quality Street during the war. George died in 1956.
David divided the property, believing that the house was too large to sell as it was: at the time, just after the war, there was considerable uncertainty as to how property prices and the economy as a whole would perform in the future. About the same time he sold off the wood, the lake, and the gardener's cottage; he retained the croquet lawn and other portions of the garden with the possible intention of 'returning, like an elephant, to die in the place of his birth'. In December 1955 he placed an advertisement in "The Times", selling a 1955 Humber Hawk - 'as good as new' - for £950. The announcement of his engagement appeared in "The Times" on January 3rd 1956, and he later married Gwendolyn Kathleen BATTY, moving to Blackheath; George Vessey, whose wife Mary had died in 1946, presided at the service, which was at St Katharine's. Gwendolyn was the only daughter of the late Bishop Staunton Batty of Horsell, Woking. She and David had no children and they moved to Bexhill in the early 1980s. David died in 1987, followed by his wife six years later.
The land to the west, and the lake, was sold to Leonard Greenwood BARTON, who built Heronswood. The main house, Albury Edge, was divided into two substantial semi-detached dwellings, sharing the driveway.
became Albury Edge West
In
1950 David SELLON was shown on the electoral roll, with Margaret Riley and Mary
Webb still there, and there were five other occupants in the house, which had
by now been divided into flats: Wilfred Howell COOKE and his wife Lilian Maud
were in Flat 2, and the other occupants were Phyllis G BRIDGEMAN, Vivien L H
MOSTERT and Adeline C WIGG. Adeline, the widow of George Lloyd Wigg, had previously
lived in Mill House from 1939 to 1945, and she later
moved to Kingsbridge, in Devon, where she died on 9th December 1967 at the age
of 84, without re-marrying, leaving an estate of some £10,000.
Lilian Cooke died on 7th August 1950 after a long illness.
In 1955 the electoral roll shows four occupants (of voting age). Vera JENKINS was in Flat 1, Wilfred Cooke, who had married again, was still in Flat 2 with his new wife Sissylt , and Evelyn MONTAGUE in Flat 3 (also known as the Garden flat). Wilfred died on 23rd July 1959 aged 79.
Five years later, in 1960, the registered voters were Vera Jenkins, Sissylt Cooke and Ernest BLOWES (who had moved from Fairmead via The Firs to occupy Flat 3 over the double garage). Ernest later married Hilda BARNARD.
A few years later still Albury Edge West was occupied by Joan and Peter ORAM with their friendly Afghan hound. Earlier one of the flats had been used at one time by Eleanor Brent DYER, who wrote girls’ school stories that still had a fan club and new editions produced in the 1990s. Sidney MATTHEWMAN was also a one-time tenant, living there at the end of the 1960s, as was Bryan T HALL.
Until 2006 the occupier was Bernard THORNTON, although the house was frequently let out; Bernard now lives in the former Garden flat, now renamed to 'Little Albury'.
and Albury Edge East
Following the
division of the house Albury Edge East had, roughly, the servants’
and nursery quarters together with the billiard room. This became a fine sitting-room
leading on to the sun porch. The first owners after the house was divided were
the MARSHALL family, to be followed by the SOMAKs. Mr Somak was an architect
and he specialised in shops; he was responsible for much of the then very fashionable
glass mosaic decoration in London. A gift from his Italian suppliers was the
complete floor and wall covering, in glass mosaic tiles, for the bathrooms –
totally child-proof and flood-proof!
Alan and Mary FOGG bought the house in 1961 and stayed for 41 years, bringing up three children in the house. Alan was a Cambridge graduate in chemistry, and commuted to Philips in Holland in a major management consultancy operation. They made only minor structural alterations and added a carport; their main contribution was to the garden. Percy Sellon had planted a fine Edwardian garden but he had died in 1928 and it seemed that from about 1940 only the top lawn had been properly cared for; much of the rest of the garden (some two acres) was a mass of nettles and brambles. It was an interesting challenge but Alan had limited free time and was often away on business. However, when they had established reasonable control they became enthusiastic enough to double the size of the garden by buying the patch of land to the east that David Sellon had kept, hoping to build for his retirement. In earlier years this had been a croquet lawn but it had long since become overgrown. Repeated building applications had failed to produce planning permission and although the Foggs took it over in 1976 it became another wilderness of nettles and brambles. Purchase of the land did, however, give access to the lake at the bottom of the garden and a splendid Edwardian greenhouse with the ruins of a 6in heating pipe fed by its own furnace. The woodwork seemed to be on its last legs, but it survived more than 25 years despite more than one large tree falling on it. Now, however, it is beyond repair.
The 1987 storm did enormous damage. A large wellingtonia, and other large trees, lay across the lawn and two blue cedars fell next door in Albury Edge West. About 26 mature trees came down or were broken. It took Alan, by now retired and with an MBE, over a year to clear away the mess and to replant.
The Foggs moved to Nutfield Road in 2002.
Percy SELLON,
the first occupant of Albury Edge, built the lodge
at the eastern end of the property as a ‘tied cottage’ for staff.
In at least two electoral registers there are two distinct dwellings listed;
Albury Edge Lodge and the Lodge, Albury Edge.
Further information has revealed that this was, however, the same dwelling.
The first occupants seem to have been Jeanette Anne and Albert Silbourne SLOGROVE. Albert was baptised on 27th July 1879 at Gatton, while his family was living in the Lower Park Lodge. He was the fifth child and fourth son of William Slogrove (born 2nd May 1844 in Ashdon, Essex) and Ruth Ellen ROSE (born 1850 in Gainsborough, Lincs.).
He married Jeanetta Ann JONES on 1st January 1906 at Hanham, Gloucs., when his occupation was 'market gardener'.
Albert and Jeanette are shown in the electoral rolls in 1915 (at Albury Edge Lodge) and in 1920 (at the Lodge, Albury Edge). Albert was employed as the Sellons' gardener. They had two (known) children: Marjorie Edith and Cyril Walter.
On 31st May 1915 William, Albert's father, died at the age of 71 and was buried at St Katharine's church. His address at the time was given as 'High Street'. Almost two and a half years later, on 8th November 1917, George Silbourne Rose was buried at St Katharine's; he died at the age of 70 and the address was given as Albury Edge Cottage. He was the brother of Ruth Ellen Rose and thus Albert's uncle.
One of the other gardeners employed at Albury Edge was William PORT, who lived at Chaldon. He fell in love with and courted Gertrude COLLINSON, from Newdigate, who was employed at the house as a parlourmaid. On Albert Slogrove's death in 1919 William was promoted to Head Gardener: he and Gertrude married and moved to take up residence at the Lodge.
The Lodge had no hot water or heating; just a cold tap and a rather ugly plain mustard-coloured sink. There was no bathroom, just a tin bath and the water was heated in a copper. There were two large wooden troughs adjacent to the sink. Mrs Slogrove used to do the Sellon’s laundry – there was also a mangle in the scullery and the lawn next to the cottage was always referred to as the ‘laundry ground’. When the Sellons asked Gertrude to take on the task William flatly refused to let her do it and that was the end of the matter.
William was the head gardener over a team of three others, one of whom, Gertrude's brother Arthur, also carried out chauffeuring duties and lived at the Lodge for a few years from 1926. Possibly his services were not required after Percy Sellon's death as he does not appear after 1929. The others were Ernest PAYNE, the under-gardener, and Jack MORLEY. There was also a gardener’s boy, Sydney. There were four staff in the house: a cook, two maids and a Nanny.
William, as head gardener, had a responsible job. Albury Edge had a very large garden with a rose garden, croquet court, tennis court, a large vegetable garden with a fruit enclosure, poultry, geese and ducks. There were swans on the lake, a very large orchard and cultivated hazel trees. The lake had a dam at its west end and this had to be maintained. There were clusters of bamboo canes by the water’s edge and masses of rhododendrons. It was a beautiful place, especially in the springtime. He was also responsible for the central heating; that was, keeping the large coke-fired boiler going and also supervising the large greenhouses that were heated by a similar boiler.
The Ports lived there until at least the end of the war. They had a daughter and five sons, one of whom died after only a few weeks. The eldest, John, was born in 1920; he now lives in Maidstone but lived until recently in Warwick Wold and used to visit the house regularly. Edith Margaret Emma was born on 27th July 1923, Cyril on 25th February 1927 (died in 1990), Dennis Basil on 3rd September 1929 (and died four years later) and Ronald Keith on 31st May 1934.
After the war, when Gwenyth Sellon had died and the main house was divided, the cottage was also sold. William and Gertrude had to leave the Lodge to live elsewhere, and he became green-keeper to the bowls club in Reigate.
By 1950 Beatrice and Henry NOYLE were living in the house, at which time it was still known as Albury Edge Lodge and it is shown with this name on a map dated 1964. The MASSEY family were resident in 1963, as evidenced by the death of Edmund Ingoldsby Massey on 5th February 1963; Beatrice and Henry Noyle were executors of his will.
By 1966, however, the name had been changed to Orchard End and the occupants were Mary and John BELL, who moved to Rockshaw Road from Grange Close.
In September 1979 the Bells moved to Devon and sold the house to Molly and Ken BIRCH. They extended the house from its original size of 2-up, 2-down. Molly's mother, Rose JENNER moved in during May 1980, to live in the flat above the garage, and lived there until her death in 2001. In 2004 the garage and the flat above it was extensively renovated; it became home for Molly and Ken while their daughter and her family moved into the house.
David BYLETT, probably a grandson of the Abraham and Mary who were buried in the 1820s (see the History), and his wife Rosannah are recorded as living in one of the cottages from 1841 (and probably earlier) until at least 1891. Evidence indicates that the Bylett’s cottage was probably the present Noddyshall. The name of the dwelling changes over the years, being shown as ‘Noddes Hall’ in 1841, ‘Noddy’s Hall’ in 1851, and the more familiar ‘Noddyshall’ from 1861 onwards. Another branch of the family were living in the present Noddyshall Cottage.
The history of the BYLETT family, and those related to them, is examined in a separate section. Click here to discover more about them.
The East Surrey Water Company connected mains water to the two southernmost cottages in 1899; a document to that effect is still in existence. At that time the occupants of the four cottages were John BYLETT and George BALES (southern cottages) and George MARTIN and Harry MORLEY (northern). Although the Water Company shows George Bales as the occupier of the cottage, the electoral roll for the same year shows his son James.
An indenture dated November 1900 transferred the two southern cottages, together with the adjoining land down to the Mere, from the ownership of the Rt Hon. Hylton George Baron HYLTON to that of Mrs Annie Laurie STONEHAM of Godstone Court, although it appears that she continued to live at Godstone Court and rented out the cottages, as indicated by the census return for 1901.
This shows three families resident at Noddys Hall. The occupants of the present Noddyshall seem to have been James and Harriet KING, both from Essex, with their children Emma (aged 44, a domestic servant) and George, aged 29. However, the King family appears to have moved on soon after the census date in April as they are not shown in the electoral roll for the same year: instead, James Bales had reappeared. The present Noddyshall Cottage was home to Arthur CHEASLEY, a local man, who was a gamekeeper, together with his wife and daughter, both named Blanche. At the time of the census the third cottage was uninhabited, while the northernmost was occupied by the JODE family. John Jode, the father, was a stockman on the farm and came originally from Merthyr, in Glamorgan; his wife Francis [sic] was from Gatton, and they had six children living with them, ages ranging from 16 to 1. Harry Morley had moved to Albury Road.
A year later, both John Bylett and George Martin appear elsewhere in Merstham, the former in Elm Cottages and the latter at Hoath.
The electoral roll of 1903 shows only four names on the Electoral Roll for that part of Reigate ward, and all four were shown as living at Noddy’s Hall. They were (in order from south to north) James BALES, Arthur CHEASLEY, James GRADY and John JODE (or Joad). However, the register may have been a little out of date as on 12th April 1903 a daughter Lily was born to Ernest ELLIOTT, a gamekeeper, and his wife Edith Gertrude; sadly, Lily died at the age of only 14 days and was buried on 1st May. The baptism register for Lily records the address of the Elliott family as 62 Noddyshall, although the burial register shows simply Noddy's Hall. The following year another daughter, Dorothy Florence, was born on 28th June.
Two years later, in 1905, the electoral register reflected the changes: Arthur Cheasley and James Grady had been replaced by Ernest Elliott and Thomas DEVERALL.
On 09 JUL 1907 the two southernmost cottages and the adjoining land, with a southern boundary of the Mere, were sold by Mrs Stoneham to Jessie Mackinnon SCOTT, wife of Walter de Hylton SCOTT, for the sum of £500. James Bales was still on the electoral register until 1908, in which year he moved to live at Worsted Green. Edmund PHILLIPS, a shepherd, first appears at Noddyshall in this year, although Edmund is probably a misspelling of Edward, as Edward was to remain at the house (see the “northern cottages” below) until the late 1920s. In the same year (1908) the St Katharine's register records the marriage of his daughter Charlotte Mary Kate Phillips, aged 27, to Charles William PRICE, a 25-year-old widowed engineer, on 26th December.
The Scott family first appears in the electoral registers in 1910, although the address is listed only as 'Rockshaw Road'. In the same year Edward Phillips at 64 Noddyshall and James COCHRAN at 65 Noddyshall were shown as voters.
Although
this section properly appears later, with the houses on the north side of the
road, it is included here for ease of reference. The photograph is one of the
few known pictures of the cottages to the north of the Road.
The cottages were known as ‘64’ and ‘65’ Rockshaw Road – although no explanation for this has been found – and appear as such in the electoral rolls from 1910 until they were no longer inhabited. It has already been noted (above) that St Katharine’s register shows an entry for ’62 Noddyshall’ and it is therefore possible that the four cottages were shown, for some reason, as ‘62’, ‘63’, ‘64’ and ‘65’. Unlike the two to the south, the two northern cottages were semi-detached. One possible explanation is that the numbers refer to references on an estate map, although no such map has been found.
As indicated above, in 1910 James Cochran and Edward Phillips were shown as voters. By 1918 Jane, Edward's wife, was also shown as a voter and they continued to appear each year (at 64 Noddy’s Hall) until the mid 1920s. The occupants of 65 were Rose Ellen and Arthur MORLEY.
1918 a third name appeared at 64, that of Harry Phillips, who was presumably a son reaching his majority in that year. He was not present in 1919 or 1920 but returned the following year. Jane Phillips died aged 78 and was buried on 19th March 1925, but Edward remained in the cottage (64) until about 1928. In The electoral register for autumn 1926 shows Edward as the only voter; Harry does not appear again. In 1928 Edward was sharing the cottage with Ellen and Edward Charles WATTS; the roll for 1929 gives Ellen and Edwin Charles but no mention of Edward Phillips.
From 1930 to at least 1935 the occupants of 64 Noddyshall were Clara and Alfred George STANDEN. A son Reginald James died at the age of 12 and was buried on 26th July 1932. The 1935 electoral roll shows a third Standen, Alfred George; he is, presumably, a son who achieved his majority in this year. A Winifred Standen is shown at Albury Edge in 1935, although of course this may not be the same family.
The next occupants were Bertha Ethel and Frederick William HOLDEN, a van driver. Bertha (née Morley) had previously lived with her family next door, at 65 Noddyshall, while Frederick had lived at 14 Ashcombe Road. A son Robert William was baptised on 28th November 1937 at St Katharine's church; although Bertha's father was against this, having been brought up 'chapel' (see below), Frederick was Church of England. Frederick’s mother Nellie, aunt Mildred and brother Anthony were still living at 14 Ashcombe Road in 1955.
Neither of the cottages had ever had running water or proper sanitation and in 1937 64 Noddyshall was deemed unfit for human habitation by the Council. The Holden family moved to Wood Street. By this time Frederick was a lengthman on the railway, a job arranged for him by his father who was a relief Station Master.
The electoral roll for both 1913 and 1914 shows Walter CRATE as the sole voter at Noddyshall Cottage, although it is probable that the address refers to the other 'northern' cottage, elsewhere referred to as 65 Noddyshall. A couple of years earlier, on 13th April 1911, a daughter Mary Elizabeth had been born to Walter and Helen Crate, living at the “Old Mill”. Walter was a chimney sweep, and it is likely that this is the same family. In 1915 the Crate family had left, to be replaced by Edgar Thomas COOK, but from 1916 the MORLEY family was resident. An Adelina Cook later lived at Noddyshall, in 1929; she was just possibly a daughter of Edgar.
The Morley family, albeit with slight changes to its composition, is shown at 65 Noddyshall from 1916 to 1945 – and a Harry Morley had been living in one of the cottages in 1899 (see ‘The hamlet at Noddys’). The 1901 census records Henry and Catherine Morley living in one of the cottages with seven children, ranging in age from Henery [sic], 15, to Elsie B aged 1.
On 19th February 1916 a son Lennard [sic] George was born to Percy Sidney Morley, a gardener, and his wife Elizabeth Mary. Percy, born in 1899, is likely to have been another son of Henry and Catherine. The British Legion Debt of Honour Register records him as a wartime fatality.
From 1918 to at least 1939 the electoral register records Rose and Arthur Morley (another son?) at the address; there were, in total, twelve children in the family. In 1930 George Frederick is listed; he achieved his majority in that year, having been born in 1908. In the same year an Alice Morley was living at Albury Edge; she may well have been part of the same family but it is difficult to tell: between between 1885 and 1908 over 100 Morley births were registered in the Reigate district alone! In May 1931 a P. S. Morley was confirmed at St Katharine's at the age of 15.
The electoral register for 65 Noddyshall also shows Margaret Edith MORLEY in 1932. Three years later, in 1935, George had left; Margaret was there still with her parents, together with her sister Bertha Ethel who had been 'in service' to the Coleman family at Gatton since the age of 12; she had (probably) been born in 1894. In the mid-1930s Bertha left home, to marry Frederick William HOLDEN whose family lived at 14 Ashcombe Road, but following their marriage they moved next door to 64 Noddyshall. In that year, 1938, Percy Leonard was listed along with Margaret and his parents Rose and Arthur; Arthur died, aged 75, in December 1942.
In April 1907 George and Alice Maud Morley were living at Parkstyle Cottages, when their son Ernest George was born; this may have been the same Alice who is shown on the electoral roll at Albury Edge in 1930, although by this time she would have been in her mid-40s, and later living with her brother-in-law William: a William and Elizabeth Ann Marie Morley were living at 6 Ashcombe Road in April 1940 when their daughter Muriel Irene was baptised at the age of 24. William was still at the same address in 1955, together with Alice Morley.
By the end of the war Percy was the only Morley still living at 65 Noddyshall; he was sharing it with Margaret E and James JOY. There is no entry for the house later than 1945.
After the war the two northern cottages slowly fell into disrepair and at the end of the 1950s they were demolished. The land was bought by Mrs de Rose (of The Firs) and when that house was sold, part of the land was used for a new house, Shepherd's Corner, and although the land had now become part of the Green Belt, because there had previously been buildings in that position permission was obtained for two bungalows, Sarum and Fircroft, to be built.
The
photograph shows the house following the division into two dwellings in the
early 1970s - see later. The original cottage is that part to the right of the
brick chimney stack shown.
Documentary evidence shows that from 1841, and probably earlier, the present Noddyshall was occupied by Rosannah and David BYLETT and their family. They had a total of 12 children, all born in Merstham and baptised at the local church. David was an ‘agricultural labourer’, working for Michael Stacey who was the tenant of Home Farm at the time. The 1851 census records that in that year the cottage was home to 11 children and their parents (the youngest, Caroline, was born later that year)! Eventually all but one of the children left home, the boys to become labourers and the girls perhaps to go into service; the exception was Matilda, born in 1835, who was a cripple. By 1871 David, aged 66, was blind and – presumably – no longer able to work in the fields. Further details of the Bylett family can be found here.
In 1899, when mains water was connected to the cottages, George BALES was living in the cottage; he was succeeded by his son James who later moved to Worsted Green.
Following their purchase of the cottages in 1907, Jessie and Walter Scott took up residence in one of the southern cottages and they – or at any rate Walter, since few women were entitled to a vote at this time – appear in the electoral roll for 1910. Perhaps surprisingly Scott is listed as an occupier, rather than as an owner. Very son after the Scotts' purchase of the two cottages they were converted into one large house by the addition of a substantial structure joining the two. This addition was designed by M. H. Baillie-Scott, a renowned architect of the time (see also Little Shaw), and the result is documented in several books and periodicals of the 1920s and 1930s.
An entry in the baptism register at St Katharine's records the birth of a son John Alexander Fyffe to Charles Alexander and Charlotte Dorothy SOUTER on 6th May 1911. Charles was in the Indian Civil Service, and was probably a descendant of Thomas Alexander Souter, a Captain in first the 44th, later the 22nd, Regiment of Foot who was one of only a dozen survivors of the Battle of Gundamuk in which over 60,000 were killed. Thomas was also grandfather of Robert Percy Sellon (see Albury Edge). The Souter family appears in no electoral register and it is possible that they were staying in the cottage as guests of the Scotts.
Walter Scott is shown as the resident voter (still as occupier, rather than as owner) on the electoral registers for both 1912 and 1914; no entry appears against either of the southern cottages for either 1911 or 1913. In 1915 Harold Livingstone ADAM was listed as a lodger at Noddyshall, paying 10/- per week for ‘one room, first floor, furnished’.
Scott appears in the electoral roll for 1915, but this is his last appearance; his wife Jessie does not appear in any electoral register, probably because she was not eligible to vote. The register for 1919 shows Walter and Edith Mary SOUTHEY resident at Noddyshall and it seems that for the next few years the house was rented out.
By 1920 the house was occupied by Margaret Major and Richard PRYCE, who were tenants, together with Walter Browning Pryce, perhaps a son. Richard Pryce worked for Hambros Bank. The baptism register for St Katharine's shows the birth of a daughter Dorothy Pamela to Jack Mackey and Dorothy Margaret WOOD (of Noddyshall) on 3rd July 1921; it is likely that Dorothy Margaret was the daughter of Margaret and Richard. The Pryce family was at the house until 1924, but the occupant in 1925 was George HETHEY, presumably another tenant.
'The Times' of July 27th 1925 carried the following advertisement: For Sale, with possession September, charming freehold old-world cottage residence, "Noddys Hall", Merstham, Surrey. Three sitting, six bedrooms, usual offices, garage, tennis lawn, garden about two acres. Price £3,500. The appointed solicitor was named Pryce, of Abingdon, Berkshire; this may have been a relative of the Pryce family who lived in the house five years earlier.
There is no entry in the electoral register for Spring 1926; that for Autumn of the same year gives Jack TATHAM as the sole voter.
There is only one name listed for 1928, that of P Morris SANGER, perhaps another tenant. The electoral roll for the next year, 1929, shows that Jack Tatham was again living there, together with Adelina Patti COOK. Another Cook family was at Withyshaw in the 1960s although these families are unlikely to be related.
Five years after the advertisement in "The Times", the same newspaper of September 16th 1930 announced that "Noddys Hall, Merstham, a house restored by Mr Baillie Scott, has been sold by Messrs Moseley, Card and Company (Reigate) . . .". The purchasers were Margaret and William Philip SCOTT, who were resident during the 1930s and 1940s – from at least 1932 until the end of the war. They are possibly relatives of Jessie and Walter Scott, although this has not yet been proved. Information suggests that William Scott was an air-raid warden during the war; also that Margaret was from Iceland. Their younger son (as yet unnamed) was an artist. During the latter half of the decade a Margaret (sometimes Margrit) Jane BRADFORD was also shown as living in the house with the Scotts. Another Bradford family was living at Bytheway Lodge during the 1920s, although there is no reason to suppose these families were connected.
During the 1930s the SEEX family were living here: on 4th June 1932 Christina Anne Seex married John THOMAS, a surgeon from Norwich, and three months later, on 3rd September, her younger sister Victoria Katharine McKinley married George JOHNSTON. Apart from knowing the name of their father to be Henry William, and that he was a civil servant, there is no other occurrence of this family.
Although the name of the house was shown in Noddys Hall in 1932 and 1934, by 1935 – and for the next ten years – it was known as Noddys.
By the end of the war the occupants were William Scott, and Hilda M and Frank J STONE. A Margaret Stone was living at Oakwood in 1938.
In November 1948 the property was offered for sale by auction by Harrods; the vendor was Derrick Robert MORGAN. The price was £7,000 and the successful purchasers were Philip George and Susan Rowena RICHARDSON, from Windlesham. They lived there until at least the end of the 1960s; with them during the mid-1950s were Violet MOODY (1950) and Pearl TYLER (1955).
For about seven years from 1965 the house was rented and occupied by the RILEY family, which comprised eight children - five boys and three girls. Tom, the father, was a chemical engineer whose speciality was designing oil refineries. He travelled extensively while the family was growing up. When the rental lease expired they moved to Saranda Hill, further along the road.
In the early 1970s, when it was bought by the DAVIS family, the house was again divided into two dwellings. The cottage nearer the road became much as it had been before the ‘join’ while the rest of the building (less, of course, the ‘join’ itself) became Noddyshall. It was sold again in 1981 by Vernon Smith, a firm of estage agents in Reigate, for £110,000. The new owners were the GOLDSMITH family; following a divorce Trudy Goldsmith remained in the house until 1995 when it became the property of the current owners, Libby and Chris GREEN.
The second
cottage from the south was also occupied by a BYLETT family; in 1841 David and
Richard Bylett were living there with wife Mary (although whose wife she was
isn't clear). It is likely that David and Richard were brothers, and uncles
of the David living in the neighbouring cottage. Ten years later, the cottage
was home to James Bylett and his wife Mary; they had six children and David
– probably James’s father – was also living there. The two
oldest children had been born and baptised in Chaldon while the others had been
born in either Bletchingley or Merstham.
James and Mary continued to live in the cottage, producing one more daughter. Mary died during the 1870s, and by 1881 James was sharing the cottage with their son John and his wife Elizabeth. She had been born in Shere, in 1852; her maiden name was PORT (see Albury Edge Lodge). By the time mains water was connected to the cottage, in 1899, James too had died.
The cottage, together with the adjoining one to the south, was bought in 1907 by the Scott family. See under Noddyshall for the history until 1970.
From Autumn 1926 Albert Victor WALTUS was shown as living at Noddyshall Cottage. However, there is no doubt that the two cottages to the south of the road had been joined into one dwelling by about 1920 – so where was this family living? Further research has shown that this cottage was not, in fact, one of the Noddyshall group at all, but the building that later became Uplands Cottage in what is now known as ‘The Close’.
When the house was once again divided into two cottages (about 1970 or shortly thereafter) the smaller and more northern of the two, now named Noddyshall Cottage, was bought by Peter WHEELER, a quantity surveyor, and his wife Joyce. Peter, who owned his own company, retired in 1983. Joyce, who for some years had become increasingly agoraphobic, died in 1997 and Peter was persuaded to move south to Steyning to be closer to his sister and her family.
The house was bought by Edward MARSTON, a London solicitor, and Anita MAYHEW.
The
indenture of 1900 (see Noddyshall) shows that land
to the east of Noddyshall was owned by Lord Hylton and leased to Thomas Robert
MALTWOOD, who is shown on the electoral rolls of 1910 and 1915 as living in
The Mere. Earlier than that, however, the birth of a son Ryder
Landyne on 12th April 1906 to Thomas Robert and Blanche Gordon Maltwood is recorded
in the baptism register at St Katharine's church. The birth was also announced
in "The Times".
The house was therefore built prior to 1906. It comprised three reception rooms, the largest of which was 20ft x 15ft, six bedrooms - four on the first floor and two on the second floor - and the 'usual domestic offices', which included a maid's sitting room and WC.
From 1918 until 1935 the house was occupied by Charles John and Horace Carew ELTON, although for practically all of this span Horace was listed as an ‘absent voter’.
In October 1925 the house was to be sold by auction, which implies that the Elton family were living there as tenants. In 1929 an additional voter, Margery Alys Eveline Elton, was listed and in 1930 they had been joined by May CHARMAN and Alice STANBRIDGE. Two years later Horace (still listed as ‘absent’!) and Charles were alone in the house with only Winifred HANDY and Eva Madaleine HORSLEY for company.
Winifred had left by 1935, although Eva was still there. Another family had moved in together with the Eltons: Alice Elizabeth, James Harold and James Henry WORTHY. By 1939 Eva had gone to live at Relf House, presumably when the Eltons moved house, with Margaret Horsley, perhaps a sister.
A year or two before the outbreak of war Ian CLUNIES ROSS moved to The Mere with his wife Janet and daughter Hannah Elizabeth (named after his mother); the electoral roll for 1938 shows this family, but continues to show Horace Carew Elton as an absent voter. Ian was 39 at the time; he had been born