The Manor House and immediate area
This section comprises the Manor House and the buildings close to the Manor House. Specifically:
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The Manor House
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Manor Farm (no longer exists)
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Manor House Cottage
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The Granary
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Manor Farm Barn
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Manor Farm House
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The Mill House
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Manor Cottage.
This area includes 2 of the oldest buildings in Pirbright: The Manor House and The Mill House. Historically the Manor House was the seat of The Lord of The Manor of Pirbright, and therefore we can regard it very much as central to Pirbright in its earliest days. Unsurprisingly there are some fascinating historical facts relating to some of the buildings, supported by various archaeological digs.
We will look at each building in turn, in the order shown above. In advance, we should warn the reader that the names of some of the buildings can be quite confusing. Several start with the word “Manor”, and names have often changed as the years passed.
Below is a table showing when each building was built. Below is a map (with thanks to OS) with the various buildings highlighted. We are aware that there have been boundary disputes between various owners in the past, and want to emphasise that the boundaries shown on the map below are our approximations drawn from publicly-available documents, and should not be relied on for any purposes. We have also provided a table showing when each building was built.
The Manor House
Firstly, let’s start with a recent photo of The Manor House in all its glory.
The early days (to 1805)
In medieval times, a Manor would be bestowed on an individual by the reigning monarch for some or other service. That individual became The Lord of The Manor. He (it was invariably a man) would often build a large house somewhere in the Manor grounds and name it The Manor House. We have described this whole process more fully in a separate section dealing with The Manor of Pirbright, including a list of the Lords of the Manor of Pirbright.
The first known record of a Manor House in Pirbright is in a 1302 survey performed for King Edward I. A moat is mentioned a little later in a 1331 survey, remains of which are still visible.
Between 1323 and 1324, a lady called Elizabeth, who was the wife of Sir Richard Talbot of Goodrich Castle, Ross, Herefordshire was kept prisoner in the Manor. After a year, she agreed to give her Manor of Painswick in Gloucestershire to Hugh Despenser, Earl of Winchester, and Goodrich Castle to his son, Hugh Despenser the Younger. Both the Despensers were favourites of King Edward II. For this and other unpleasantries the Despensers were executed in 1326. Wikipedia reports that Hugh the Elder was hanged in his armour, beheaded and his body cut up and fed to the dogs, which sounds pretty bad. But out of concern for our readers’ sensibilities we will refrain from going into the details of Hugh the Younger’s end (which was even worse).
The original medieval Manor House has long disappeared, although we were told by a previous owner that the stairs leading to the cellar are earlier than the present house (see photo right.
Today’s Manor House dates from the late 1400s or early 1500s – when the Manor was owned directly by the King. Hence the house may have been built by royal decree. During the reign of Henry VIII, the manor changed hands several times. It formed part of the marriage portion of Queen Katharine of Aragon.
For the next few paragraphs dealing with the details of the Manor House we have leaned heavily (very heavily actually) on the excellent research carried out by the Domestic Buildings Research Group (Surrey) in 1995, with thanks.
The present house consists of a 3-bay timber-framed open hall, with a 4-bay cross wing at the western end. It is this western cross wing that is the oldest part of the house today. The cross wing included an open hall, and roof timbers in part of the wing are heavily sooted, indicating the location of the main fireplace. The current main part of the house was built around 100 years later, around 1600. The walls of the house have been faced with bricks from the 17th and 18th centuries. It was thought that there was an earlier, eastern, wing to the house, but if so, this has been demolished. An outline plan by the Domestic Buildings Research Group (Surrey) is shown (left) to illustrate this.
Many changes have been made to the house over the years. c1850 the moat was drained and partially filled, while the drawbridge was removed. A further extension was added between 1871 and 1895.
An investigation was carried out in 1995 by members of Guildford Museum when a new water main was laid to the property. It found 1 pottery shard from the 13th century, 23 shards of post-medieval pottery and 5 tile fragments.
A more substantial archaeological dig on the eastern side of the house was performed in 1996 prior to some new building work. Not surprisingly it threw up some interesting finds, including:
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Burnt and struck flints (15 blades and 35 flakes), which were thought to have been used in Bronze Age or Neolithic tool-making
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Sherds of Iron Age and Roman pottery
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A fragment of 13th or 14th century pottery
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Late 15th and 16th century pottery fragments
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Fragments of medieval and later roof tiles
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Some clay pipe fragments (from the mid-1800s).
The older items (the flints) are of considerable interest as there is not a great deal from that period in our area. It was hoped that the dig might unearth some evidence of the former east wing that had been supposed to exist. But it didn’t.
The inside of The Manor House provides some other items of historical interest: Some graffiti-style carvings can be seen above the fireplace (pictured below). The date 1721 can be made out, and several of the initials have a surname starting with the letter W. We wonder whether the initials “TW” belonged to one of the 4 gentlemen called Thomas Woods, who were millers at next-door Upper Mill (refer section below), one after the other, between 1713 and 1831. Also, the initials “IW”, may have (in those days) signified “JW”, and therefore could have belonged to John Woods, who was Thomas Woods’s uncle. He occupied the Manor House between 1780 and 1809 (refer paragraph below). We have set out some of the details of the Woods family tree in the section on The Mill House below.
In 1765 the window tax return recorded that the Pirbright house with the most windows – 18 – was occupied by a William Smyth. We presume that this was the Manor House. The Land Tax returns of 1780-1809 show that the occupant was John Woods. It was probably this gentleman who carved his initials (IW) above the fireplace (refer paragraph above). However the Poor Rates Book suggest that during 1777-1779 it was occupied by a Robert Dover, and between 1780 and 1797 by Thomas Woods (who was nephew of John Woods, and who carved his initials (TW) above the fireplace (refer paragraph above)). All rather confusing, unfortunately.
There are many items of interest inside the house, too many to detail, but on the right is a recent photo of the magnificent Court Room, where the Manor Court met twice a year to enact its business. It is easy to imagine the Lord’s tenants huddled outside, waiting their turn to appear before the Lord’s Steward and his scribe warming their backs at the fire.
Although they owned both the Manor House and Mill directly, as far as we know, the Lords of the Manor never lived in the house, either installing members of their family, i.e. the Brownes, or stewards who acted on their behalf. As a result, records were kept by the absent Lords elsewhere and, as far as we know, none survive.
Unsurprisingly the Manor House is a Grade II listed building. The listing details are shown below.
House. C16 with late C17/early C18 cross wing to left, late C19 extensions to rear. Timber framed, clad in red and blue brick to right, brown and red brick on cross wing; plain tiled roof with eaves courses of Horsham slabs to right. L shaped plan, parallel range across rear and projecting wing to left. 2 storeys with attic in cross wing, leaded casement attic window under diagonal brick plaque. Plat band over first and ground floors of cross wing. Square stack to rear at junction with wing, end ridge stack to right. 2 two light leaded casement windows on each floor of cross wing under brick heads, 3 leaded casement windows on first floor right. Half-glazed door in arch surround under hipped hood in re-entrant angles between main house and wing. Single storey extension to left with decorated stack under oversailing top. 1 large 5-light leaded casement window in stone surround to front.
Right hand return front: tiled gable end with two further gables set back to right.
Rear: fishscale tile hanging on first floor, diagonal brick course over ground floor.
Left hand return front: long front with fishscale tile hanging and bands on first floor. 3 multiple stacks, one oversailing gable to left. Leded casement fenestration including one through-eaves dormer window. Further glazed entrance under wide, boarded gabled porch on wooden supports.
Interior: framing visible in partition walls and ceiling. Stone floors, 2 arched oak door cases to left.
Standing in a moated site the Manor House served as the Court House for the village.
In the late 1700’s, a farm, named Court Farm, was based at The Manor, and incorporated the next-door mill (known then as “Upper Mill”). Mary Cawthorn wrote that the farmer of Court Farm in the 1700s used some of the accommodation in The Manor in which to live. We have written a little more on Court Farm in a section below.
1805-1879
The 1805 survey shows that Court Farm was owned by Henry Halsey 1. We have shown the extent of the farm (it was 148 acres in size) shaded blue in the survey map below. The survey included the Manor House and Upper Mill within Court Farm. We have also shaded The Park in green.
The survey itself recorded Court Farm land as being in the occupation of “Thomas Woods, Giles Himself.” There is no comma between the words “Giles” and “Himself”, but there is a space, and we are pretty sure that they refer to 2 different people.
Who are these 3 people?
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Thomas Woods was the miller at Upper Mill and we describe his history in that section (below). He occupied most of Court Farm at that time.
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Giles may refer to a member of the Giles family who lived in Pirbright at the time. Members of the Giles family are mentioned frequently on this site. This Mr Giles rented 2 of the Court Farm fields.
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Himself refers to Henry Halsey 1 (the owner, but an infrequent visitor – refer to the Halsey Family page.
On the right is a delightful engraving of the Manor House c1830.
In 1832 the owner of the Manor (Henry Halsey 2) agreed to allow the Manor to become the parsonage for the incumbent parson (previously the parsons had lived in a house at Cowshot). The first of these parsons was Rev Charles Bradshaw Bowles (1806-1885). He had been born in 1806 in Hull into a wealthy family and graduated from Oxford University in 1828. In 1835 he married Sophia Deedes (1806-1844) from Essex. They had 3 children. Charles Bowles was in line to inherit the Lordship of a Manor in Derbyshire from his father, and we wonder whether this played some part in Henry Halsey’s decision.
Charles left Pirbright in 1837 to become the Vicar of Woking (St Peter) but Sophia died there in 1844. He remarried Mary Eyre (1814-1889) and they had 4 children.
Charles died in 1885 leaving an estate of £7,000 (worth £740,000 today), houses in Woking, Onslow Square and Tunbridge Wells, and estates in Derbyshire and Edmonton. Some of this was inherited from his parents (for example, he inherited the Lord of The Manor of Abney and Abney Grange in Derbyshire from his father), but it seems like a tidy sum for a village rector. A photo of Charles (in an apparent snowstorm) is shown below, together with his death notice.
Between 1838 and 1849 the incumbent parson was amusingly named Rev William Henry Parson, which must have caused many chuckles across 19th century Pirbright on dark winter evenings.
William had been born in Chiddingfold in 1804, the son of a parson. Actually his father’s name was James Freakes (born in Worplesdon), but by 1806, James was signing himself James Parson, a practical move, possibly. William had married Charlotte Onslow (born in 1817, the daughter of a parson) in Send in 1838 and they had 6 children (2of whom became vicars).
In 1838 the Manor moat was drained and the drawbridge removed, we think for reasons of health and safety (or the Victorian equivalent thereof) initiated by William. In 1840 William applied for (and was granted) a Game Licence, which enabled him to shoot pheasants and partridges. In 1849 the Parsons moved to Linchmere, just south of Haslemere.
As Lay Impropriator, Henry Halsey 2 had the power to appoint the Rector. In 1847 Rev. Robert Wedgwood married Mary Halsey, Henry’s daughter, at Pirbright Church, becoming the incumbent in 1849. Their 5-month-old daughter, Mary, died in August 1849, when they were living at Henley Park. Thanks to the patronage of Edward Halsey, Robert became Rector of Dumbleton, near Evesham the following year. He is seen here in later life with his wife and three daughters.
From 1850 the incumbent was Rev Newton John Spicer, who was born in Middlesex in 1823, and was therefore only 27 when he came to Pirbright. He had graduated from Oxford University in 1845. Newton’s wife Matilda had been born Matilda Daniell in Macau in 1829. Her father had attended (as a page) the coronation of King George IV in 1820 and was a Director of the East India Company, working in China at first in Canton, but later in Macau. Quite possibly her family had decided to leave Macau after China had ceded Hong Kong to the British in 1842 (which drew shipping away from Macau to Hong Kong, thus affecting Macau’s trade). Her father was decidedly wealthy, as he and his family lived in Sandown House, Esher, on his return to Britain. He and his wife also had the distinction of having 16 children over a 22-year period.
The Spicers’ first child, Matilda, was born at The Manor House in Pirbright in 1851 and was recorded on the census form of that year as being just 1 day old. We have shown Matilda’s birth record in the register (below), and the sharp-eyed will note that Newton signed it off himself (with some pride, we would imagine).
But within 6 months, Newton had been appointed to be Rector of Byfleet, where he held the post for several years. They had 9 further children.
The next curate in 1851 was Rev Francis Owston. He was born in Driffield (Yorkshire) in 1819, the son of a farmer. He graduated from Cambridge University, was ordained in 1849 and promptly posted to Over Darwen (near Blackburn). In 1850 he married Eliza Stedman, the 26 year-old daughter of a surgeon, in Guildford. Goodness knows how they managed this when Francis was living in Lancashire and Eliza in Guildford, but they obviously did manage it somehow. Later that year it was announced that he was being posted to The Cape of Good Hope. For reasons unknown, this never happened, and the couple ended up in Pirbright instead.
Francis and Eliza had 3 children and stayed in Pirbright for a long while – Francis was curate from 1851 to 1868, and then vicar from 1868 to 1888. He was a keen local historian, compiling many notes which Henry Curtis, with Mary Cawthorn, used in ‘Notes and Collections for a History of Pirbright’. In the book, Mary describes him as:
‘A very handsome and venerable looking man. Occasionally he made us very nervous by pausing in the middle of his sermon and asking the Churchwarden to fetch a tumbler with some brown liquid in it from the vestry; or he would fix his eyes on some boys at the back of the Church and say: “Boys, if you do not behave better, I shall request Mr Churchwarden to remove you’
In 1871 his name was mentioned in a tender for builders of a new National School in Pirbright (see cutting below). In 1885 Francis was elected to membership of The Pirbright School Board, where he
taught Religious Education and Eliza needlework.
In 1879 the Owstons moved into a new Vicarage on Pirbright Green. In March 1888 Francis was re-elected to The Pirbright School Board. But the same year, the Owstons moved to a Rectory in Layer Breton, near Colchester, where Francis continued his clerical work. Francis died there in 1908, aged 89. Eliza died there 8 years later, aged 92. A photo of Francis is shown below.
1879-Date
By 1879 the Manor House was being rented from Henry Halsey 2 by Major William and Charlotte Armstrong. William was born in Dublin in 1830, the eldest son of John Strong Armstrong (1782-1864) and his wife, Emily. We are very grateful to findagrave.com for the following interesting information about this John Strong Armstrong, told in the late 19th century by an Irish curate.
"I must here relate a curious circumstance which occurred at Ballynahinch..... The circumstance was told me by the man (I think) to whom it happened. His name was John Armstrong, he was the son of Mr. Armstrong the Postmaster at Ballynahinch. He dreamt one night that he had drawn a ticket in the Lottery of a certain number which brought him a prize of £10,000 or £20,000, I forget which. He got up, and with his pencil marked the number on the back of his window-shutter; but forgot all about his dream in the morning. The next night, or a few nights after, he dreamt the like dream, and found on comparing the numbers that they exactly corresponded. He at once wrote up to the office in Dublin, to purchase the ticket of that number, but telling the Agent if that ticket was already disposed of, to get the nearest to it that he could. That ticket had already been been disposed of, but the Agent bought for him the nearest to it, and when it was drawn a prize of the value he had dreamed of fell to his lot."
True or not, it makes a great story. Apparently, at some point (probably c.1816) he had won a substantial sum of money in a lottery which was enough to allow him to pursue his interests without concern for income and live as a gentleman. We have shown a rather fine portrait of John, left.
Back to William Armstrong, whose life history is recorded in his obituary below. We are not sure when he moved to England, but in 1866 he married Charlotte Priscilla Godwin-Austen at Shalford in an elaborate wedding, with 12 bridesmaids and a triumphal arch across the main street. Charlotte (born in 1838) was one of 18 (yes, 18) children of Robert Alfred Cloyne Austen. [The eldest of these 18 children was Lt Col Henry Haversham Godwin-Austen, who was the first person to survey K2 (the second-highest mountain in the world). K2 is also referred to as Mt Godwin-Austen in his honour.]
In 1833 Robert Alfred Cloyne Austen had married Maria Austen, the only daughter and heiress of Major General Sir Henry Godwin KCB. Robert was so impressed by his father-in-law that he later changed his surname to Godwin-Austen by Royal Licence. Robert became an eminent geologist during the mid-19th century, specialising in the Cretaceous rocks of Surrey (which include the well-known chalk beds). Robert lived at Chilworth Manor House and then bought Shalford House in Shalford and died in 1885, leaving an estate worth £10,000 (worth £1 million today).
An early photo of Charlotte is shown below, together with a later photo of her, and a drawing of William.
William first appears at the Manor House in the Electoral Register for 1879. A new wing was built and in 1896 the Armstrongs converted their short-term lease of the Manor House into a 76-year lease from Henry Halsey 4, who by that time was searching for means to fund his extravagant lifestyle, as set out in the Halsey Family section.
The Armstrongs had no children, and William died in 1906, leaving £10,000 (worth £1 million today). A newspaper obituary is shown below (left and centre), which describes his life and achievements better than we could. On the right there is a more military-oriented obituary.
William was buried in Brookwood Cemetery, and for a long while his tomb was hidden from sight due to over-enthusiastic vegetation. However, the Cemetery has been transformed in recent years under Woking Borough Council and their clearance work has now revealed the long-hidden tombstone of William (see photo right).
Mary Cawthorn took a photo of the remains of the moat around The Manor House in 1910. At the time it still contained water. A copy of the photo is shown below.
After William’s death in 1906, Charlotte remained in the Manor House with a number of servants until she died in 1943, aged 104. She had lived there for 64 years. A newspaper report on her 104th birthday and an obituary of her are shown below. The “faithful maid, Annie” referred to in the article was Annie Maria Duck, born in 1873 in Westminster, the daughter of a “Gentleman’s servant”. Annie lived at the Manor House from 1921 (and possibly earlier). She never married and, after Charlotte’s death, moved to Frimley Green. She died there in 1950, aged 77.
After Charlotte’s death, the house was purchased (or inherited) by one of her great-nephews, Robert Annesley Godwin-Austen and his wife, Katherine. Robert (1885-1977) was the eldest son of Lt Col Alfred George Godwin-Austen (1844-1939), one of Charlotte’s (many) younger siblings and his wife Sara (1854-1942, nee Orred). He had been born in Waterford and became a Government Land Surveyor, working in The Colonial Service. He travelled overseas several times in the early part of the century, to South Africa, Canada and the US, giving his nationality as “Irish Free State”. On a US entry form in 1928, he referred to returning to stay with “his mother, Lily Godwin-Austen, who lived at Manor House, Pirbright”. In reality, his mother’s name was Sara, and she didn’t live at the Manor House, so maybe his memory was playing tricks on him there. In 1943 he was appointed CBE, working as Director of Land Registration and Surveys in Cyprus.
Robert married Katherine Beryl Odling in Marylebone in 1931 at the age of 46. Katherine (known as Beryl) was born in 1901, and her father had been a tea planter. They had 2 children. A photo of Robert and Beryl is shown, left.
In 1972, the Godwin-Austens moved to Tilsey, at Burners Heath, and we continue their story there. They sold the Manor House to Geoffrey Victor and Sally Burton. Geoffrey was born in 1936 in St John’s, the son of Lt Col Victor and Gwendoline Burton.
They were married in Wimbledon in 1968 (see cutting right). By this time the Armstrong’s 76-year 1896 lease would have (nearly) expired, and so we assume that The Manor House was now owned freehold. The couple had 3 sons and Sally ran a mail-order business from the Manor House.
As the cutting states, Geoffrey’s mother was living at Lindenhurst, and we cover her family there. Lindenhurst is only 2 doors from Tilsey, so it seems that the Godwin-Austens and Burtons did something approximating a house-swap (though in actual fact, this wasn’t the case).
In 1994 the Burtons sold the Manor House to David Lees and Fiona Smith. Their wedding notice in 1997 is shown below. It mentions David’s Australian background, but overlooks his love of fast cars and social occasions. A son, Nicholas George, was born in 1998. David also hosted occasional cricket matches in the field behind the Manor House.
They built a new East Wing (with an indoor swimming pool) onto the house in the 1990s, a development that had led to the archaeological exploration mentioned at the start of this section (for which we are all very grateful). An agent’s photo of the inside of the (impressive) East Wing extension is shown below (with thanks).
David and Fiona sold the Manor House in 2012 to Jonathan and Lisa Swinney. Lisa became Vice-chairman of Pirbright Parish Council. The Manor House was sold to the current owners c2022.
Below is a wonderful agent’s aerial photo (with thanks) looking to the north-west towards Church Lane and photos of the southern and western faces of the house from the same year. We have also shown 2 agent’s photos (with thanks) of the interior.
Manor Farm (no longer exists, previously Court Farm)
This is a short section devoted to Manor Farm, which was farmed by the person appointed by the Lord of the Manor, who was also permitted to live in the Manor House. The farm was originally called Court Farm, presumably as a reference to the Manorial Courts which were held at the Manor House. It was a large farm, but almost all of its land has since been sold off and absorbed into other properties. In this section, we therefore only consider the farm as an entity, rather than any specific buildings.
The first reference to Court Farm is in 1302. From these early years onwards, Court Farm was part of the Lord of the Manor’s “demesne”, ie kept for the Lord’s personal use, rather than being let to tenants. It included the mill (refer Mill House below), which was also part of the Lord’s demesne.
This arrangement was still in place at the time of the 1781 Land Tax return (when the Lord of the Manor was Solomon Dayrolles).
We have shown the 1805 survey map with Court Farm (which included the Manor House and Upper Mill and amounted to 136 acres) shaded in blue. We have shaded the Park (10 acres) in green.
We assume (although we can’t be certain) that the park shown on the map is in the original park location from the 1200’s. The park’s origins are discussed briefly in the section dealing with the History of the Manor of Pirbright.
By the time of the 1841 Tithe map (when Henry Halsey 2 was Lord of the Manor), there had been some changes. Some of the fields had been transferred to other Halsey-owned farms or sold, and 8 acres had been designated as being allocated to the Mill (though still owned by Henry Halsey). The name Court Farm is not mentioned in the Tithe documentation, so perhaps it was no longer used.
And a small cottage had been built near the Manor House (on the site of the current Manor House Cottage). It was divided into 2 dwellings. One of the 2 dwellings was used by the farmer of Court Farm, which by then had been reduced to around 100 acres in size. The other dwelling was used by various people who worked on the farm. We have covered the history of this cottage in the section dealing with Manor House Cottage below.
By 1851 the farmer of Court (or Manor) Farm was James White and he and his family were to continue running the farm until the late 1870’s. He and his family lived in one half of the cottage until the early 1870s, and we cover the rest of their story in the section below dealing with Manor House Cottage.
By 1861 the name of the farm had been changed to Manor Farm and we only occasionally see references to Court Farm thereafter.
By 1881 the Whites had relinquished their tenancy of Manor Farm and John Lovelock took over the lease, living at Manor Farm House. John died in 1887.
By 1922 (the time of Henry Halsey 4’s sale of his remaining property in Pirbright), Manor Farm is shown as slightly different in detailed shape, but still 110 acres in size. We have shown it below on the sale plan – it is coloured brown and marked as Lot 17. A comparison with the 1805 map indicates that some of the detail has changed, but the bulk of the farm hadn’t altered shape.
In the sale particulars, Manor Farm was described as “The useful Corn and Dairy Farm”, which included a newly-built farmhouse (today, this is Manor Farm House, rebuilt not long ago) and a 7-room cottage (today Manor House Cottage), divided into 2 tenements. It was noted that the farm had “considerable road frontage, much of which was ripe for development”. Fortunately, most (although not all) of the frontage remains green to this day.
At the 1922 sale, Manor Farm was bought by a Mr FF Ramez of Southend for £2,173 (worth £100,000 today), as shown in the newspaper cutting right.
The Park (shown as green and marked as Lot 18 on the map above) was described as “The ornamentally timbered Parkland Building Site, suitable for an erection of a Gentleman’s Residence” (7 acres), which sounds ominous, but 102 years later, it still hasn’t been built on. It is referred to in the above cutting (2nd paragraph).
There are 2 obvious questions at this point: Who was Mr Ramez, and why did he buy Manor Farm?
Well, Frederic Francois Ramuz (as his surname was actually spelt) was a land agent (or in today’s parlance, an estate agent cum property developer) in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, who became a freemason and then Mayor of Southend in 1900. He had been born in France in 1855, the son of a Swiss wine agent, but arrived in England by the time he was 5 years old. He married Maria Priest in 1875 and they were to have 11 children.
The Ramuz family initially lived in Walthamstow, but moved to a nice house overlooking the sea at Westcliff-on-Sea, which was rebuilt in the 1930s and 1940s to become the Cliffs Pavilion, today a theatre and conference hall with 4 bars. Maria died in 1940 and Frederic in 1946. One of Frederic’s children, George, joined Frederic’s estate agency business, which lasted until 1950, 4 years after Frederic’s death. We have shown a photo of Frederic to the left.
As to the second question (“Why did he buy Manor Farm?”), there seems to be no question but that Frederic’s motive was commercial gain. He had a track record in Southend of buying and then developing properties, and this would seem to be an attempt to do the same in rural Surrey.
In fact Frederic didn’t do any development. Instead, Frederic sold Manor Farm on the same day he purchased it to Esdor David (Ned) Faggetter, the local Pirbright builder, developer and property owner for £1,500.
What was going on here? Why did Mr Ramuz sell to Esdor at a £673 loss? We don’t know. Both Mr Ramuz and Mr Faggetter were developers, and there must have been some sort of a pre-agreement between them. Perhaps Mr Ramuz was putting up some of the finance, while Esdor would do the building. In the post-WW1 years money was tight across Britain, and there wasn’t much demand for new housing, which may have had a bearing on it. Answers on a postcard, please.
We have made notes on Esdor and the rest of the Faggetter family history on a dedicated Faggetter family section. We have shown 3 photos below of the Manor Farm buildings from 1923.
Esdor didn’t do much in the way of development either, as he sold 30 acres of it in 1924 to the owner of nearby Millcroft, Major William Heyland. We give details of him in the Millcroft section below. But very soon after that (in 1924) the remainder of the land as well as today’s Manor Farm House and Manor House Cottage were sold (or leased) to one James Etherton. James had a rather complicated association with Lois Harding at The Mill House (refer below). We have spelt out the details of this in the section dealing with The Mill House.
James stayed at Manor Farm House until his death in 1946. During this time (in 1924) he converted Manor Farm Granary into a cottage and we have covered its later history in the section below dealing with The Granary. After 1946 various pieces of Manor Farm were sold off. What happened to these different pieces is covered in the sections below dealing with each of the individual properties as follows:
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Manor Farm House
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Manor House Cottage
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The Granary
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Manor Farm Barn.
Manor House Cottage (previously Manor Farm Cottage, Manor Farm Bungalow)
Manor House Cottage is shaded blue on the map below.
Between 1807 and 1841, a small cottage – now Manor House Cottage - was built near the Manor House (refer section above). Why was it built? One possibility is that, in 1832, when the Manor House became the Rectory, the farmer of Court Farm, Thomas Woods, may have offered to downsize. He was 70 years old, and Henry Halsey 2 may have been happy to build Manor House Cottage for him. In fact the new house was divided into 2 dwellings – one for Thomas, and one for servants of the Manor House possibly.
Over the next few years, one of the 2 dwellings was used by the farmer of Court Farm (later renamed Manor Farm), which by then had been reduced to around 100 acres in size. The other dwelling was used by various people who worked on the farm. The 2 dwellings didn’t seem to have an official name, but were referred to (most confusingly) as Manor Farm Cottages, Manor Cottages, Manor House Cottages and the like. On the grounds of simplicity, we have referred to them as Manor House Cottage(s).
We have tried to work out who lived in which cottage with limited success. We have arbitrarily called them Cottage 1 (the larger of the 2) and Cottage 2 (the smaller).
We have shown below (left to right, then top to bottom) maps of the immediate area in 1805, 1841, 1873, 1915 and the current OS map (with thanks). We have indicated the location of the original Manor House Cottage in blue, and the current Manor Farm House in red. These maps confirm that the original Manor House Cottage was built between 1805 and 1841, while the later Manor Farm House was built between 1841 and 1875. Sharp-eyed readers will notice that today’s Manor Cottage (see section below) only appears (towards the bottom right) in 1915, while Lindfield does not appear until later.
Cottage 1
We are fairly sure that one of the occupants of this cottage in 1841 (and in fact since it had been built) was Thomas Woods No 4 (born Pirbright in 1761). He had married Elizabeth Knowles-Woods (born Horsell in 1765) in 1782. They had 5 children, but Elizabeth died in 1795, aged only 29. Thomas remarried the following year to a lady called Sarah Woods. Her surname in the marriage register (Woods) is probably not a mistake. A lady named Sarah Woods was indeed born in Pirbright in 1769, which tallies exactly with her age at death. She was Thomas’s first cousin. They had 9 children before Sarah died in 1821.
Thomas appears in the 1841 census (aged 80) as living with 2 of his sons and Frances Woods (a lady aged 63, possibly a third wife, but who died in 1849). Thomas also died in 1849, aged 88.
By 1851 the farmer of Manor (or Court) Farm was James White, and he lived in one half of the newly-built cottage. James was born in Dunsfold in 1811, the son of William White, a farmer. In 1844 he had married Jane Andrews (born 1821 in nearby Alfold, the daughter of a butcher). At the time of their marriage they were living at Bushes Farm at Wood Street. Their first child, Naomi, was born in Worplesdon in 1848, and so we can deduce that the Whites moved to Manor House Cottage between 1849 and 1851, which fits well with the death of the previous occupier (Thomas Woods) in 1849. James and Jane had 5 children.
By 1861 one of the 2 dwellings was occupied by James (then a farmer of 100 acres, employing 3 men and 3 boys), Jane and their family.
In 1871 James, Jane and their family were, we think, still living in the same cottage and James was now farming 120 acres. 3 of their children were living with them, as well as an adopted daughter, Clara Stonard and 2 servants. We have told Clara’s story in the shaded box below. The absence of any occupants of Cottage 1 in the 1871 census together with the size of the White household suggests that they may have been living in both halves of the cottage.
Clara Stonard was born in 1863 when her mother, Harriett Stonard was aged 16 and unmarried. Harriett married Samuel Hockley (1842-1891) the following year (1864), but died 2 years later in 1866, having given birth to another child (Samuel Hockley). In 1871 both young children were being looked after by different families.
Clara kept the surname of Stonard, moved to London and married an Alfred Staples (a shop assistant) in 1893. In the marriage register, she gave her name as Clara Stonard, and gave her father’s name as Samuel Stonard, which is clearly incorrect. She died in 1904, having had no children. Who knows what the truth behind Clara’s story was, but it seems tinged with sadness. Clara’s brother Samuel went on to marry and have 6 children. In 1911 he was a nursery labourer in Woking and died in 1931.
By 1873, the first Manor Farm House had been built and the Whites moved out of the cottage and into the newly-built Manor Farm House. We finish their story there.
From 1873 onwards, we can’t always identify who was living in the 2 cottages. The occupants usually worked either on Manor Farm or (later) for the occupants of the Manor House. Many of them stayed only briefly, and the absence of a proper name for the cottages doesn’t help. But we have been able to identify some of the occupants as follows.
In 1881 James and Caroline Stevens and their son, George were living in the cottage. James had been born in Pirbright in 1815, one of 10 children of John Stevens, a labourer. You can read about the Stevens dynasty in the Stevens family section. Caroline (nee Croney) was born in Pirbright in 1819. James and Caroline married in Pirbright in 1838. James was a railway labourer and they lived in various places in Pirbright. They had 10 children, thereby doing their bit to keep up the number of Stevenses in Pirbright.
In his later years James turned to agriculture for his labouring work. By 1884 the Stevens family was living in a cottage at Burrow Hill. However, Caroline died in 1884 and by 1891 James was a lodger in one of the houses on The Green. He died in 1897.
The 1911 census shows 2 families living in the cottages. In the larger (3-room) cottage were William and Caroline Chapman. William was born at St John’s (Woking) in 1881, the son of an unmarried lady called Elizabeth Chapman (who was 16 when William was born). 3 years later Elizabeth married a nursery labourer called Isaac Chowney. Although William lived with Isaac and Elizabeth and their 9 subsequent children, the surname of Chapman was used throughout his life – it was even used in the 1881 census when William was just 4 years old. Was this a case of Isaac rejecting William perhaps? In 1892, Isaac spent 3 months in Brookwood Asylum. In 1916 his unusual death was reported in the local newspaper (shown left).
In 1904 William Chapman married Caroline Simms, born 1880, the daughter of Henry Simms, a farm carter living at Burrow Hill. In 1911 William was a shepherd. In 1921 William and Caroline were living in School Lane. William was now a gardener for a Major Fletcher, who lived in Brookwood. They had no children. William died in 1938, living at Sandpit Cottages. Caroline died in 1964, living at Rapley’s Field.
During 1913-15 Walter and Harriett Stonard were living at one of the cottages. Walter was born in Pirbright in 1868, the son of George Stonard, a gardener. Their story is told on the Stonard family page. Harriett (nee Sinclair) was born in Lambeth in 1866, the daughter of a boilermaker. They were married in Wimbledon (where Harriett’s family were living at the time) in 1903.
Walter was a farm labourer (or as he reported on the 1901 census an “Ordinary agriculture labourer”). They had 2 daughters in the early 1900s, and only spent 2 years at the cottage. After WW1 they moved to 13, Model Cottages in Vapery Lane, where Walter worked at Wickham’s Farm. Below is a photo of Harriett and Walter with their 2 daughters, taken at Model Cottages in the 1920s, together with a slightly earlier photo of Harriett.
By 1933 the Stonards had moved to Rose Cottage in The Broadway, Knaphill. Harriett died there in 1933, and Walter in 1966, at the age of 98.
In 1921 Walter’s younger brother, William Stonard, was living in the larger of the 2 cottages with his newly-married wife Mary Jane. William (born 1878) had left it quite late to marry – he was 42. Like his elder brother, he was a farm labourer. Mary Jane had been born Mary Jane Coxhead in Newbury in 1876, the daughter of a fish seller. In 1898 she had married William Knight (a farm carter) near Newbury and they had 8 children. The family moved to Petworth and then Cranleigh, but William Knight died there in 1920 at the age of 49.
1 year later, in 1921, Mary Jane remarried William Stonard, and it is quite possible that they moved into the Manor House Cottage as a direct replacement for Walter Stonard, who had recently vacated it. At that time William was working at Wickham’s Farm for William Thompson (as was Walter). In 1939 William and Mary Jane were living in the Council Houses near West Hall Farm.
They had no children. Mary Jane died in 1953 and William in 1970 (aged 92). A newspaper announcement of William’s death is shown right The AE Knight mentioned was Albert Knight (1905-1976), the 4th child of Mary Jane’s first marriage.
At the time of the 1922 sale of Manor Farm by Henry Halsey 4, there is no mention of any lease on the cottages, suggesting that they were let on a short-term (eg weekly) basis, and that the tenants could therefore be easily ejected, should the buyer wish it. The building was described as “Brick and Tile Cottage, divided into 2 tenements... containing 7 rooms”.
From 1922 on, the house seems to have been demolished and converted to a bungalow (with single, rather than double, occupancy).
We must now go back 13 years. From 1909, George and Alice Smith may have moved into the cottage. Although we are assuming that they lived in Manor House Cottage (along with 2 other families), this does not fit very well with the facts. But exactly where they lived is not clear: the 1911 census shows them living at Manor Cottage, whereas the other 2 families occupying the cottage were living at Manor Farm Cottage. It is all quite possible, although it means that for the 13 years 1909-1922 there were 3 families living in a 2-tenement cottage, which doesn’t seem right.
George Smith was born in 1850 in Martyr Worthy, Hampshire (right next to the M3 near Winchester). His father was an agricultural labourer. In the 1870s, George married Eliza (born in Overton, near Micheldever c 1862, surname uncertain). In 1882 they were living near Martyr Worthy and had started a family. By 1891 they had moved near to Micheldever and had 3 children. George was working as a dairyman. For some reason Eliza gave her name as Mary to the census-taker.
Eliza (or Mary) died during the 1890s, and by 1901 George was living with his children, working as a stockman on Rails Farm. In 1906 he married Alice Lavinia Farrow Ellis in Pirbright. Both were widowed. Alice was born Alice Lavinia Farrow Clarke near Ipswich in 1864, the daughter of Solomon Clarke, a gardener. She had married Benjamin Ellis, a labourer, in Blackheath in 1887. George was living at 3, Longhouses at the time, but his name in the Rates Book was recorded as William Smith. It seems that the Smiths were not too hot on first names.
George died in 1921, by which time their children had all left home. Alice stayed in the cottage, living alone, until 1945, when she moved to Palmers Green in London (possibly to live with a relative). She died there in 1949.
From 1950 a Doris Emily Ingleby was living at the cottage. Doris was born in 1905 in Keighley. She was the daughter of Robert Ingleby, a professional cricketer (as an all-rounder for Longsight Cooperative, Manchester, but not at county level). We think that Doris married 3 times: To a bus driver from near Manchester named Harry Kerry in 1924 (from whom she was later divorced), to Albert Giles in 1952 (they lived in Seale, but Albert died in 1957), and finally to Lewis Quarman in 1967. She outlived all 3 husbands by at least 30 years, dying in Guildford in 2002, aged 97. Her short time in Pirbright was in between marriages 1 and 2 (1950-51).
From 1955 Ian and Valerie Ayton lived at the cottage. Ian was born in 1926 in Biggleswade. He was called up into the Welch Guards shortly before D-Day (aged 17 yrs 9 mths), ended the war in Germany, went to Palestine with 1st Paras, signed on for 3 years in 1948 and left the army in 1952, having married 19-yr-old Maidenhead nanny, Valerie Merritt, in Wycombe in 1949.
They had one son, Paul, in 1951, who later worked as a heating engineer for the Rices (who lived on The Green for many years. Valerie was employed by the Godwin-Austins at the Manor House, while Ian was a gardener at the Manor House and surrounding properties. The Aytons lived at Manor Cottage for around 5 years, before moving to Furzehill c1960. Ian died at Addlestone in 2013.
In 1970 an Albert and Violet Smith lived in the cottage. Between 1979 and 1992 David and Helen Stacey (with others) lived at the cottage.
Various extensions were made to the property in 1974, 1975, 1995 and 1998. But by the 2000s the property was looking pretty dilapidated (“extremely poor condition”, as one planning application put it). At this time several applications were made to build a larger single-storey dwelling (the initial effort included a basement for a Home Cinema – in an area prone to flooding - oops). In 2015 the house was completely rebuilt, and reverted to one of its earlier names Manor House Cottage.
Between 1992 and 2020, the property was sold no less than 6 times. We have not listed all of the owners during this period, except for between 2012 and 2016 when Jonathan and Monika Driscoll owned both this property and The Granary (see section below).
Cottage 2
The occupants of the other cottage (“Cottage 2”) in 1841 were Sophia and Sarah Pratt, who were servants from Merton, aged 33 and 20 respectively. Sarah married John Eade a gamekeeper and they moved to Shalford. Sophia ended up in the Croydon workhouse as a pauper.
Cottage 2 was unoccupied in 1851 according to the census of that year. In 1861 it was occupied by 17 year-old William White, born at Loxwood, near Dunsfold, and probably a relative of James White, who lived at Cottage 1
In 1861 and 1871 we think that James White and his family (who were living at Cottage 1) also occupied Cottage 2. Given the increased size of his family (4 children) and his need for 2 servants, he may have regarded this as a necessity.
The cottage was occupied in 1881 by George Henry and Eva Rose. George was born in Pirbright in 1855, the son of Arthur and Mary Rose, who had lived at Stanford. Eva (nee Cranstone in 1856) was the daughter of Jesse and Jane Cranstone, who had lived and worked on the Bridley estate, including Lawfords Farm.
In 1877 George and Eva married, and by 1881 George was a gardener, presumably at the next-door Manor House. Eva died in 1898, aged only 42, having had no children. In 1900 George remarried (to Emily Mann, born in Hastings in 1871). The same year they moved to Henry Cottages on The Green, and had 6 children. George became a market gardener and died in 1936. Emily died in 1954. A photo of George, Emily and their family outside Henry Cottages is shown below.
In 1899 George was one of 14 signatories of a letter to the West Surrey Times, supporting Lord and Lady Pirbright, and emphasising what a good landlord he was. In 1902, George was one of 21 signatories to an address read to Lord Pirbright on the occasion of King Edward VII’s coronation. This address was even more complimentary than the previous newspaper letter, using phrases such as “unequalled generosity and beneficence” and “splendid munificence”.
Lord Pirbright was highly impressed (at least that is what the local newspaper reported). George can be seen in the photo (right) of the unveiling of the Little Girl statue to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. He is on the left of the photo, standing 6 along from Lord Pirbright, wearing a white suit.
In 1901 an Albert Lovell (a domestic coachman) was living in the cottage. In 1905 William and Jane Vokes were living there. William was a coachman, born in Farnham in 1870. Contrary to our expectations we could not find a family link between William Vokes and Cecil Gordon Vokes, the inventor, whose company bought the Henley Park estate and built the Vokes factory in 1940 (today it is the Henley Business Park). William and Jane stayed in the cottage until 1908.
In 1911 we know that John and Emily Woolford lived in the smaller (2-room) cottage (ie Cottage 2). John was born in Pirbright in 1857, the son of James (a railway labourer) and Mary Ann. In 1881 John was a gardener, living with his widowed mother and 2 of his brothers at Appletree House. Emily (nee Pannell) was born in Essex in 1874, the daughter of a wheelwright.
By 1901 John was a farm labourer, living with one of his brothers, and in 1905 John and Emily married, when John was 48 and Emily 31. They only lived briefly at the cottage, before moving to West Heath with John’s brother. John died in 1936, living in the Council Houses. Emily remained there until at least 1939, but died in Gestingthorpe, Essex (the place of her birth) in 1947.
Cottage 2 was occupied from 1918 by Henry and Ida Hankins. Henry (“Harry”) Hankins was born at West Heath in 1887. His father, James Hankins, was a labourer in Brookwood Cemetery. His grandfather, also James Hankins, had the distinction of being the second landlord of The Fox pub between 1870 and 1878). His mother was Jane Woolford, born in Pirbright in 1860, and sister of John Woolford, who had lived in one of the cottages 1911-12 (refer above), but who in 1918 was living with another Woolford brother at nearby West Heath. The Woolfords were obviously a close-knit family.
Ida (nee Betsworth in 1891) was born in Kingston, the daughter of a gardener. Harry Hankins and Ida married at Liss in 1916 and they had 3 children. Harry was then a gardener at West Hill Golf Club, but was a postman in June 1917 when conscripted into the Royal Flying Corps.
In 1939 Harry and Ida were living in Liddington New Road, a little south of Fairlands, next door to 2 of their children and Ida’s father. In 1966 they celebrated their golden wedding anniversary, and some touching details of their life are set out in a newspaper article of the time (reprinted below, but apologies for the picture quality). The author is particularly impressed by Harry’s ability at the age of 78 to walk (part of the way) from Fairlands to Bagshot twice a week. Harry died in 1974 and Ida in 1977.
Harry and Ida stayed at Cottage 2 until c1924, at which point the 2 cottages seems to have been knocked down. The new house (a bungalow) was thereafter usually referred to as Manor Farm Cottage. This was a subtle and rather annoying (to historians) change from its previous name of Manor House Cottage. We have talked about the occupants post-1924 in the Cottage 1 section above. In 2015 the bungalow was knocked down and a new bungalow built, again discussed under Cottage 1.
The Granary (previously Manor Farm Bungalow)
The Granary is shaded green on the map below.
The 1841 Tithe map shows no clear signs of The Granary, but early OS maps (from 1873) show a building where The Granary sits today, which gives us a good indication of when the original granary building was built.
In 1924 James Etherton, who was living at The Mill, gained permission to convert the existing Manor Farm granary building into a bungalow. We have shown below the “map” which James submitted to support his application – to our eyes, a pretty poor effort.
To start with, it was directionally 180 degrees inaccurate (ie north is pointing downwards), which makes it rather tricky to work out where the proposed bungalow is supposed to be. Secondly it is clear that James was at pains to point out his own land (we can count 6 instances), with a cursory single reference to anyone else’s. It also did not fit well with the OS map of the time. But hey-ho, the application was approved anyway. We have told James Etherton’s story in the section dealing with The Mill below.
The new bungalow was named Manor Farm Bungalow, and from c1927 the occupants (probably as tenants rather than owners) were Oliver and Evelyn Baker. Oliver had been born just south of Devizes in 1903, the son of a farm carter. By 1921 he was still living at home, helping his father in his work as a farm labourer. Evelyn (nee Drew) was born in 1888 in a small village called Conock, also near Devizes, the daughter of a labourer turned gamekeeper. Her Christian name was spelled in a variety of different ways in the records, and she sometimes (eg on her marriage certificate) called herself by her middle name of Mary. They came to Surrey sometime in 1926 and married in Westbury, Wiltshire in 1927. Mark’s best man was James Etherton of The Mill (refer below), who had built the Bungalow. They (Oliver and Evelyn, that is) had 2 daughters.
In 1939 Oliver was working as a lorry driver (heavy work). In the register of that year, Evelyn gave her date of birth as 1905 (ahem, we think she meant to say 1888). The Bakers left the bungalow in 1937 and moved to 1, Apple Tree Cottages until the 1960s, when they moved to No 21, Rapley’s Field.
In 1939 the Bungalow was occupied briefly by Stanley Ralph and James McNally. The same year Lois Jane Harding moved into The Bungalow from The Mill where she had been living previously. Her story is told in the section dealing with The Mill below. She died in Ashford, Middlesex in 1962, aged 92, having never married.
Lois Harding left the bungalow c1955. After she left, we are not sure who owned Manor Farm Bungalow, but the following people lived there:
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1948-56: Reginald and Edith Bullock. They were both born in the Guildford area in 1924. Reginald was the son of a kitchen gardener, and in 1939 he was living with his parents in Saunders Lane, giving his occupation as a domestic gardener. Edith (nee Devonshire) was the daughter of a heavy machine labourer, and in 1939 was living with her family in Knaphill. Reginald and Edith married in 1943, and initially they lived with Reginald’s parents in Saunders Lane. After WW2 they moved to Manor Farm Bungalow and had 6 children. In 1957 the family moved to Old Woking.
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1959-60: Roy and Maureen Watts.
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1970: Alan Goodman and Maureen Stonard. Also David and Valerie Gray (at “No 1, Bungalow”).
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1981: Alan Goodman and Joyce Cook.
In 1988 the existing bungalow was demolished and new bungalow built with a new name (The Granary). The owner at this time was called A Karon. We don’t know who lived in the new bungalow until the early 2000’s when a succession of short-term occupancies ensued. Perhaps it was rented at this time.
In 2013 The Granary and Manor House Cottage was owned by the same people (Jonathan and Monika Driscoll), who we think had previously been living in Goose Rye Road, Worplesdon. They applied to make alterations to both houses (with mixed success).
It was sold in 2014 and sold again in 2016 to the current owners.
Manor Farm Barn
The approximate position of the current Manor Farm Barn property can be seen on today’s OS map (coloured turquoise in the map shown below, with thanks).
Manor Farm Barn was originally built in the 1700s as a set of barns supporting Court Farm (which was the main farm of the Manor House and has its own section above). The barns were set out in a U-structure, which can be easily seen on the 1841 Tithe Map (relevant extract shown right) and can be just about made out on the 1805 survey map. So they go back a long way, and it is no surprise that they are Grade II listed..
The barns stayed as barns, used by millers through the years until the mill stopped operations in 1939. We’re not sure what they were used for during the following 47 years, apart from Tony Fulk (who lived in Manor Farm House – refer section below) using the buildings to keep pigs, but in 1986, Gareth & Sonia Pike (the then owners of the Mill House), obtained planning permission to convert the barns into living accommodation.
It appears that they did nothing to the property for the next 16 years. Below are 2 photos of the barns in 1996, which perhaps help to explain why the Pikes were reluctant to start work.
And then in 2002 the Pikes sold the Barn to a developer, Crownhall Estates in Cranleigh. This company tastefully converted the old barns to living accommodation and sold the converted property to the current owner in 2004. An agent’s photo of the interior is shown below, with thanks, together with a later photo of the exterior. Crownhall Estates was the same company that the following year developed the old Pirbright Institute Administration building into 11 flats (now called Bakersgate Gardens, and also in 2003 converted the ancient Bakersgate Barn into offices in the newly-formed Bakersgate Courtyard.
The listing particulars for the barn are set out below.
Early C18 re-using some earlier timbers. Timberframed on brick plinth, clad in weatherboarding. Half-hipped roof part covered in metal sheeting at time of survey. Central east entrance. 3 bays.
Queenpost roof. Wall frame has diagonal braces. Attached to side is an C18 range, timberframed, clad in weatherboarding on red brick plinth. At the time of survey, the roof was not tiled. Roof has tie beams and queen posts. Diagonal braces to wall frame. 4 pivoting casements.
Manor Farm House
By 1873, the building which is today’s Manor Farm House had been built, as it is shown on the OS map of that year. The first occupants were James and Jane White, who had previously lived in the cottage located where Manor House Cottage is today (refer section above). James and Jane moved out of Manor Farm House in 1881. We think that James died in Aldershot in 1891, aged 80, but we can’t trace Jane’s death.
After the Whites moved out, John Oliver and Louisa Lovelock became the tenants of Manor Farm, living at Manor Farm House. [John gave his name as either John Oliver or Oliver John in various records. The more commonly used name was the former, so that is what we will assume]. John was born in Ash in 1847, the son of a farmer (of 68 acres) at Flexford. He married Louisa Mitchell, born in Bisley in 1858, the daughter of James, a farmer) in Pirbright Church in 1880. At the time John had been the innkeeper of The White Hart since c1877. Prior to that, he had been a farmer at Little Flexford Farm in Normandy.
John’s marriage certificate records that he was a widower at the time, but we can find no trace of a previous marriage. Strange. John and Louisa had 4 children. John was also the Collector of Rates for Pirbright, but died in 1887, aged only 39.
In the 4 months after John’s death, Louisa, aged only 29, acted as the Collector of Rates pro tem. But the local Board of Guardians (which included Henry Halsey) had to appoint a permanent officer and there was a lot of debate as to her suitability. One gentleman said that “he did not think a female was the proper person for an office of this sort”. Well, it was 1887. 8 candidates put their names forward, but Louisa had very strong local support and gained the votes of 21 of the 27 members of the Board. She was duly appointed to the post, with a remuneration of £35 pa (nearly £4,000 today).
By the time of the 1891 census Louisa had moved out of Manor Farm House, and was living on The Green, near The White Hart with 3 of her children. She gave her occupation as a “Rate and tax collector”. Her 4th child was living with his grandfather, James Mitchell, who was the farmer at Cowshot Farm. Louisa remarried (to an Aldershot bricklayer named Arthur Corkett) in 1896, and retired from the post of Rate Collector in 1897. She died in 1910.
By 1891 Miss Anna Emilia Lydia Brander was occupying Manor Farm House. Anna was born in 1848 in Bexleyheath, the daughter of a Welsh Army Captain. She seemed to live her life on the move, living in London in 1881, Pirbright (1884-93), then moving to Herefordshire where in 1901 she was a cookery teacher and ran a boarding house, in 1911 living in Fulham, and dying in 1913. She never married.
During her short Pirbright visit she farmed initially at Linnards Farm and threw herself into the Pirbright social scene, judging by the local newspaper references.
A staunch supporter of womens’ rights, she stood for membership of the Board of Guardians in 1887 (successfully) and again in 1890 (we think unsuccessfully). She was one of the strongest supporters of Louisa Lovelock in her efforts to become the local Collector of Taxes (refer above).
She gained the highest number of votes in the election of the Pirbright School Board in 1888 and was also a member of the Guildford Rural Sanitary Authority Board.
In 1893 she placed several ads for the sale of farming stock, which signalled her imminent departure from Pirbright. We have shown one such ad right.
The next tenants of Manor Farm House from 1893 were James and Jane Martin, who had been farming Whites Farm since 1880. James and Jane’s stories are told in the Whites Farm section, so we will not repeat them here. James died in 1907, and the farm was taken over by one of his sons and his wife, Henry and Sarah Martin, who had previously been living at West Hall Farm. Henry and Sarah moved to the newly-built Brooklands (now Millcroft – see section below) c1911 and we continue their story there.
In 1924 Manor Farm was sold by Henry Halsey 4 as described in the Manor Farm section (above). After passing through a few hands, the property was acquired (freehold or more likely we think, leased) by James Henry Etherton. We have written about James and his relationship with a Lois Harding in the section dealing with The Mill (refer below).
James was born in Lower Beeding, just south of Horsham, in 1874, the son of an agricultural labourer. In 1895 he married Sarah Bailey (1875-1954) from nearby Slaugham. They lived in Rowhook, just north of Horsham, and had 1 child, Alice, in 1897. But then the marriage went pear-shaped, resulting in a separation order in 1913 on the grounds of James’s persistent cruelty. The acrimonious legal battles that followed were reported in some detail in the local newspapers (refer to the Mill section below).
James left the Horsham area during WW1 with another lady (Lois Harding), and they rented The Mill and Manor Farm House. Lois’s story is told in the section dealing with the Mill House (refer below). We are not sure what their relationship was, or who lived where (it seemed to vary). But we do know that James farmed Manor Farm over the ensuing 25-odd years.
In 1924 James gained approval to convert the Manor Farm Granary into a dwelling (which he proceeded to implement – refer the section on The Granary above). In 1940 Lois was fined £4 for selling milk adulterated by water from Manor Farm (which was managed by James). James protested his innocence, saying that he “was unable to get cake for the cows”. James died in 1941 in Pirbright.
Meanwhile in 1939, James wife, Sarah, was living in Cuckfield and identified herself as widowed (which she wasn’t). She died in Cuckfield in 1954.
In 1946 Doris Hodges and Harold Stubbs briefly lived at Manor Farm before moving to Springfield Farm. They were brother and sister, and their story is told in the Springfield Farm section.
The next owners of Manor Farm House were Charles George Baden (“Bob”) and Ivy Fulk. The Fulk family is of course very well known across Pirbright for their high-quality butcher’s shops (Fulk Bros Ltd). Bob (1899-1981) was the son of Charles Henry and Emily Fulk. Charles Henry had been born in Haslemere in 1875, and it was he who started the first Fulk butcher’s business. He ran a butchers’ shop in Star Hill, Woking, and the family lived in Wych Hill, St John’s (in a house named “Haslemere”). Ivy (1903-1990, nee Jolly) was born in Stockwell in 1903, the daughter of a postman. The Jolly family soon moved to Guildford, and Ivy’s father ran a newsagent’s shop at North Place (near Haydon Place).
When did Fulks first arrive in Pirbright? Fortunately the Fulk Bros website has a detailed early history on its website at https://www.fulkbros.co.uk/index.asp?pageid=696094 We won’t repeat it here, except to say that the Brookwood shop opened in 1927, and the first Fulks shop in Pirbright opened on the present site in the late 1930s. The site was previously an old cart-shed belonging to Grove Farm. We encourage the reader to visit the site and read the full history for themselves.
Bob and Ivy married in Woking in 1927, and Bob was immediately tasked to run the newly-created Brookwood shop. The couple lived initially next door to the Fulk family home in Wych Hill. However, in 1932, Bob, Ivy and their first child moved to 216 Connaught Road, Brookwood to be closer to the new shop. Bob’s younger brother, Donald was helping to look after the shop at this time, which is no doubt how he met Ella (“Babs”) Carpenter of No 2, Pirbright View, Dawney Hill. Donald and Babs married in 1933.
Bob and Ivy had 2 more children and moved to Manor Farm House in 1946, presumably to be nearer to the new Pirbright shop. They leased 15 acres of land at Haselacre from Sir Adrian Jarvis of Admiral’s Walk. Bob died in 1981 and Ivy in 1990, but one of their sons, Derek Fulk and his wife, Patricia continued to live at Manor Farm House until 2003. We understand that there was the occasional heated dispute between neighbours in the Manor area around this time and between Derek and his brother Tony, who kept pigs at Manor Farm Barn.
At some stage we think that the house was demolished and rebuilt. In 2003 the current owners bought Manor Farm House.
The Mill House
The earliest reference to a mill in Pirbright was in a 1302 survey carried out for King Edward I. The survey also mentions the Manor House. In 1574 it was mentioned in a survey carried out for the then Lord of the Manor, Sir Anthony Browne, Viscount Montagu. We have given more detail about him in the section dealing with The Manor of Pirbright, where we refer to him as Sir Anthony Browne 2.
Sir Anthony installed his younger brother, Francis Browne, as miller (Francis lived at Henley Park between 1576 and 1588). We have shown below a document confirming this. In case any reader is struggling to read this (it is in Latin), a rough translation is “Francis Browne …holds by indenture… third 21st ….. ……on the Feast of the blessed Archangel Michael the year Queen Elizabeth 23 (ie 1580) a water mill in Pirbright with its millers house and [pond?] … … … … [pond?] by …Francis … ….. ….. the same place near the lodge. And pays per annum 13s 4d”
In those times, the Lord of the Manor’s tenants would be obliged to bring their wheat, barley & oats to the mill to be milled. The miller in most villages was rarely a popular figure, as it was widely believed that the miller’s thumb was used to tip the scales and short weight the farmers. At Pirbright, no doubt the miller would also have been unpopular with the tenant at Lower (ie Heath) Mill, as, particularly in summer, he would have first choice of the flow of the Hodge Brook, holding back the water and only releasing it at inconvenient times.
In these early years, the mill was part of the Lord of the Manor’s “demesne”, ie kept for the Lord’s personal use, rather than being let to tenants. It was treated as part of Court Farm (refer section above), which was also part of the Lord’s demesne. It was generally known as “Upper Mill”, which distinguished it from Heath Mill (built in the early 1500’s we think), which was unsurprisingly known as “Lower Mill”.
From its style, the present building is not the mill and house described in 1580. It was probably rebuilt in the 18th century in two stages, the mill with a small house first and the L-shaped north addition later that century, though it appears that an earlier chimney and fireplace was kept.
Mary Cawthorn did her best to compile a list of the millers of Upper Mill, although she freely admitted that she had to make several assumptions. Her list (updated by more recent discoveries) is as follows:
We will now look at these people (except James Finch, about whom we know nothing) individually. Unfortunately there are no Court Roll records for Upper Mill, because it was part of the Lord of the Manor’s demesne (ie his own property). Therefore we have had to resort to a little guesswork....
William Collynes may have been the same William Collins that was bailiff for Stanislaus Browne (documents evidencing this are shown in the section dealing with The Manor of Pirbright. We think that William was born in 1598, married Katherine Martin in 1667, and died in 1686. We deal with him in the section dealing with Burners Farm.
But why was the mill transferred from the Collins family to the Woods family at some point during the 102-year period between 1663 and 1765? The best answer we have is that William Collins’s son, John Collins (1675-1713) became the miller once he had achieved a suitable age. We know that he then married Elizabeth Woods (1681-1738) in 1702. When John Collins died in 1713 at the age of only 38, their only son was aged 5, and probably a little young to take on the miller’s role. So perhaps the tenancy passed to Elizabeth’s brother, Thomas Woods (1682-c1759). Both Elizabeth and Thomas were born in Guildford, appearing in the Quaker registers. Their parents were Caleb (1655-1713) and Hannah Woods (nee Smith, 1660-1734). We will refer to him as Thomas Woods 1.
Thomas Woods 1 married Mary Taylor (1675-1738) in Chobham in November 1697, when Thomas would have been aged just 15. Hmm. They had 7 children. In 1736 Thomas purchased Heath Mill from the previous owner who had gone bankrupt. Having the 2 mills under common ownership could have brought the Woods family significant economic benefits (eg cooperation over flow of water down the Hodge Brook, and perhaps a little price-fixing?). This story is told in the Heath Mill section.
In 1759 Thomas Woods 1 died and perhaps the job of miller (and the copyhold of Heath Mill) passed to his son, Thomas Woods 2 (1706-1766). Thomas married Mary Wynn (1710-1782) in November 1729. Although they were both from Pirbright, they chose to marry in Effingham, and it seems that their first child, Thomas, may have born in Bookham in February 1730. Perhaps they were making themselves scarce (ie living 10 miles away) during this period.
On Thomas Woods 2’s death in 1766, we are unsure who took the miller’s job at Upper Mill. Meanwhile the job at Lower Mill may have gone to Thomas Woods 2’s eldest son, Thomas Woods 3 (1730-1801). He married Mary Otway (c 1730-1770) and they had 8 children.
In 1801, the miller’s job at both mills may have passed to younger hands in the form of Thomas Woods 3’s son, Thomas Woods 4 (1761-1849). (Our apologies that this all seems a little repetitive, but it really is no fault of ours – blame the Woods family.)
Thomas Woods 4 married firstly Elizabeth Knowles (1765-1795) in 1782 in Horsell. They had 5 children, but Elizabeth died aged only 30. Thomas remarried the following year in Pirbright to Sarah Woods (1769-1821), with John Honer witness to the event. Sarah was the grand-daughter of Thomas Woods 2, and therefore the happy couple were first cousins. They had 9 children. By 1805, Thomas Woods 4 had sold Heath Mill to James Honer for £1,300 (today worth £110,000). But he remained working as the miller at Upper Mill until 1831, at which time he appears to have retired at the age of 66.
At some stage during the early 1800s the resident miller moved into the Mill House (which was attached to the mill itself). This could have happened c1832, when The Manor House became the parsonage, lied in by the resident parson and his family.
One of his children (by Sarah), William Henry Woods (1801-1880) took over the running of the mill until 1836. William never married and in 1861 was living with his brother, John Woods, the butcher and his wife on The Green. William died in 1880.
Despite the size of Woods families in the past, by 1881, there was only one Woods family left in Pirbright: Sarah Woods (a widow who had married James Woods, one of Thomas Woods 4’s children), and Jesse, her unmarried son.
By 1838 George Inwood was the miller at Upper Mill. George was born at Holybourne, near Alton in 1801, the son of another George Inwood. Young George had been left his father’s business (we don’t know what it was – it could well have been a mill). He and his wife Elizabeth Eames had 3 children. Elizabeth died in 1835, and in December 1837 George remarried - to Mary Eames, Elizabeth’s elder sister. This was a forbidden practice (it was within the “prohibited degree of kinship”), and so the couple had to marry some way away (in Portsmouth, as it happens). [Marrying one’s deceased wife’s sister was legalised in the very aptly-named “Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act” of 1907.]
c1838 George and Mary had perhaps felt they needed to escape any local gossip, and so decided to leave the mill at Holybourne, and rent Upper Mill at Pirbright, out of sight.
While George was there, he was persuaded (along with 8 other esteemed persons) to lend his name to endorse a medicine named Blair’s Gout and Rheumatic Pills, described as “one of the greatest discoveries in medicine”. A box of 14 pills cost just over 1 shilling (£5 today). The BMJ later calculated that the ingredients of 14 pills cost one seventh of a penny to buy. So the profit margin was several hundred percent. The ad appeared in dozens of newspapers, so George could claim to have been a forerunner of today’s social media influencers. At the time of writing this page, eBay was offering an unopened box of Blair’s pills for $45.
In 1841 the Inwoods were living in The Mill House, but George soon tired of Upper Mill and c1845 the couple returned to Holybourne where they stayed. There were no children from George’s second marriage. George died in 1864 and Mary in 1870. A photo of George is shown right.
The next miller at Upper Mill from 1845 was Henry Thomas Cowdery (1823-1868). Henry was born in Farnham in 1823, the son of an agricultural labourer. Henry arrived in Pirbright and fairly soon met and married Charlotte Honer (1828-1916) in Pirbright in 1828, the daughter of James Honer III, who was the miller at Heath Mill. It is possible that James used his influence to get Henry appointed to fill the gap at Upper Mill created by George Inwood’s departure. At any rate, Henry gave his address on the electoral register as Upper Mill over the next 3 years.
After that, the Cowdery family’s movements seem quite puzzling. Their first child was born in Pirbright in 1847. But then their next children were born in Frimley, Farnborough and finally (in 1854) Pirbright again. In the 1851 census Henry was a “mealman master” living at Frimley with 2 of their children and Charlotte’s sister. But Charlotte was at Lower Mill (maybe visiting her parents) without Henry or any of her children, giving her occupation as “farmer’s wife”.
What does all this mean? We think that Henry was probably not cut out for the job of miller, and the Cowderys left Pirbright for Frimley c1848, where Henry took on some farming-related work. Charlotte’s appearances in Pirbright in 1851 and 1854 were to visit to her family at Lower Mill. By 1861 Henry, Charlotte and their family were living in Horsell where Henry was a brickburner. Henry died there (living at “The Brickfields, Woking”) in 1868, aged only 45. Charlotte remarried (to John Giles, a bachelor gentleman 13 years her junior) in Guildford in 1871. She died in Farnham in 1916, aged 88.
After 2 short spells under different millers, there was stability once again at Upper Mill. The next miller was Thomas Leftwich (1790-1864). Thomas was born in Southwark in 1790, the son of a “Bread and biscuit maker” in Tooley St, next to where London Bridge Station is today (although of course there was no railway in 1790). In 1820 he married Lydia Tilt (1797-1876) in Lee, Kent. They had 6 children and lived initially in Blue Anchor Road (now Lane), which is right next to the main railway line out of London Bridge Station (though there still wasn’t a railway line there at that time).
By 1841 Thomas was working as a miller at Trump’s mill in Virginia Water (very close to where the M3 runs today, just before the junction with the M25), living next-door to William Cowdery, a farmer, and his family. This William Cowdery had been born at Aldermaston (between Reading and Newbury) in 1793. We can’t trace any family linkage to the Cowderys who were the Leftwich’s predecessors at Upper Mill. But it is a very strange coincidence (given the unusual surnames), so we think there probably was some connection somewhere.
By 1851 Thomas was installed as the “Master Miller” at Upper Mill with Lydia. One of their sons, William, was living with them as a “Miller by trade”. They were still there in 1861.
Thomas died in 1864, and Lydia in 1867 in unusual circumstances, as reported below.
Upon Thomas’s death his son, William George Leftwich (1826-1899) took over the running of the mill. He had been apprenticed to his father for some 15-odd years, so should have been well-prepared for this role. In 1849 he had married Martha Baker (1826-1861) from Ockley, the daughter of a baker. They married at Shere in 1849 and had one daughter, but Martha died in 1861, aged only 35.
In 1868 William remarried Ellen Collier (1846-1900) in Westminster. They had one daughter (Louise Kate) in 1879, when William was aged 53 and Ellen 33. In 1882 William advertised for a journeyman miller to work a small grist-mill. William died in 1899 and Ellen in 1900. In 1903 Louise Kate married a grocer named George Barnes near Staines. We have shown below a painting by Ada Long of “Leftwich Mill”, painted during William Leftwich’s tenure, probably during the 1890s. To the right of it is a photo from the same direction, taken a few years later in 1903.
From c1901 the miller was Richard Budd (1851-1918). Richard was born in Paddington in 1851, the son of a house painter. He spent his youth at Silchester (between Basingstoke and Reading), before marrying Alice Close (1857-1936) in Marylebone in 1881. That year they were living in Hammersmith, where Richard was a corn dealer.
They had 1 daughter, and in 1891 he and Alice were living on Wood Street Common at Worplesdon, where Richard was now a farmer. He doesn’t appear to have had any milling experience when he took on the role at Upper Mill, and perhaps that explains why he only lasted 2 years in the role. By 1911 Richard and Alice had retired to Durrington, near Worthing. Richard died in 1918 and Alice in 1936. Pictures of Richard and Alice (with daughter Flora) are shown right.
The next miller from 1903 was James Gurr (1850-1918). James was born near Rye in Sussex in 1850, the son of an agricultural labourer. He became a gardener and married Eliza Gilson (1848-1932) in Lewes in 1871. Eliza had been born in central London in 1848, and was living with her widowed mother (who was working as a laundress) in 1861 in Clapham.
The couple had 6 children and moved first to near Deal (where John was working as a butcher in 1891). c1895 the Gurrs moved to Worplesdon, living at Perry Hill. James was a flour miller, almost certainly working at Rickford Mill. When the opportunity came in 1903 to be the miller at Upper Mill, James grabbed it. At the same time he took out a tenancy from Henry Halsey on some land at Wickham’s Farm. He was a member of the Providence Mission Chapel in Chapel Lane, but his daughter Ellen Eliza (Nellie) was married at St Michaels in 1909 (see press cutting below). The sharp eyed will note that her husband, Albert Thompson, was the younger brother of William Thompson at Wickhams, farming West Hall Farm in partnership with him as Thompson Bros. James Gurr rented some land at West Hall. No doubt this is how the happy couple met.
The Gurrs stayed at Upper Mill until James’s death in 1918. Within a month of James’s passing, Eliza had decided to leave the mill and had made arrangements to auction any property they owned. A copy of an ad for the auction is shown below.
We are not sure where Eliza moved to, but she may have died in the Guildford area in 1932.
The next tenant of the mill was Lois Jane Harding (1869-1962). She was born in Burpham in 1869, the daughter of Richard (a journeyman miller) and Lois Harding. In 1871 the Harding family was living at Bowers Mill (on Clay Lane, just west of the bridge over the A3 today). In 1881 and 1891 they were living at Ifield Mill, near Crawley.
In 1901 the Harding family were living at Little Millfields, Rudgwick Mill (today a listed building), near Horsham. By this time her father was aged 72, and had stopped his milling work, instead running a shop. Lois and her younger sister, Alice, were helping out in the shop. By 1911 Richard had died, and so Lois and Alice (and an even younger sister, Elizabeth), were living at Millfields with their mother – Lois was the housekeeper, Alice the shopkeeper, and Elizabeth a dress maker.
Lois (the mother) died in 1915, aged 75, and Lois (the daughter) moved to Pirbright, where, in 1918, she was living at Manor Farm House. However the 1919 cutting below indicates that she was then living elsewhere (the Electoral Registers record that she still lived at Manor Farm House until the 1930s, but we suspect that she was actually living at The Mill House). We have also shown 2 further cuttings from 1920 (the name Etherington in the first cutting is either an accidental or deliberate mistake. It should be Etherton).
What do we make of all this, and who was James Etherton? Well some facts might help:
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In 1911 Mr Etherton and Miss Harding were indeed living close to each other in Rowhook. Mr Etherton was a farmer there.
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The Electoral registers for Pirbright 1918-1939 show Mr Etherton living at the Mill House and Miss Harding living at Manor Farm House, although in 1937 they seem to have swapped over.
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The 1921 census shows Miss Harding as the head of the household at “Manor Mill”, with James Etherton as a “servant”, working as a labourer (miller). One of Lois’s brothers, Ernest Harding, was also living there as a carter for the mill.
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In 1924 James Etherton, who was living at The Mill, gained permission to convert the existing Manor Farm granary building into a bungalow. This means that he was the occupier (and possibly the owner) of The Granary, and therefore likely the whole of Manor Farm as well.
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The 1928/29 Rate Revaluation exercise showed Lois Harding as owning The Mill, including 12 acres of land. There is no mention of Manor Farm or James Etherton (which looks like an omission).
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In 1939, James Etherton was living at Manor Farm as a dairy farmer and wood merchant. Lois had moved out of The Mill and lived in the bungalow next to Manor Farm doing dairy work.
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When James Etherton died in 1941, the Surrey Advertiser’s death notice stated that he had managed The Manor Farm for 24 years (ie since 1917).
So putting this lot together, it looks as though Sarah Etherton’s original assertions were true. That is:
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Yes, James Etherton and Lois Harding left Rudgwick and settled in Pirbright together. Whether or not they were “an item” is not known.
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Yes, James Etherton probably owned (or more likely had leased) Manor Farm, and therefore probably had more cash than he was letting on.
There are some other unusual aspects to this arrangement.James and Lois’s addresses are inconsistent over the period.And it seems odd that James (a farmer by trade) would have lived at the Mill House, whereas Lois (a miller) lived at Manor House Farm.We think this may have been a deliberate obfuscation on their part, but can’t be sure who lived where.And James’s protestations during the court hearings seem less than 100% true to us.Altogether, a pretty nasty story.So we’ll finish it with a nice photograph from 1920 – of Elsie Barnes (who lived at Rails Farm with an impressive-looking bull in front of The Mill.
c1939 Lois moved into The Bungalow, Manor House Farm (see section above) until 1960. She died in Ashford, Middlesex in 1962, aged 92, having never married.
By 1939 the mill itself was not operational. That year, Cyril and Charlotte Stephens bought The Mill and they proceeded to renovate it thoroughly. The story of how they managed to do this is told in the 1951 newspaper article below
Cyril was born in Enfield in 1909, the son of a manager in a wholesale stationers’ company. Charlotte was born in Louisville, US in 1908 and they married in the US in 1932. They returned to the UK the same year, living in Southgate. By 1939 Cyril was a manager of a book publishing firm and the couple embarked on their adventure in Pirbright.
They had 3 children. Cyril died in Windsor in 1981, although we think that Charlotte was still living in Pirbright at that time. The Mill was then sold to Clifford and Jacqueline Dean who had been living at Chapel Lane. They had 2 young children both of whom had been born in Pirbright.
Soon afterwards, The Mill (including the barns and 3 acres of land) was advertised for sale in Country Life in 1985 (see ad right) and was sold for nearly £185,000.
The purchasers in 1985 were Gareth and Sonia Pike, who immediately set about improving the living accommodation at the mill, as well as converting the barn to a dwelling. Gareth was born in Camberwell c1949 and married Sonia (nee Perry) in Bath in 1972. He was a Noel Coward fan, but apart from that we know little about him.
The Pikes decided to move to Castle Cary (near Bath) and the Mill House was offered for sale again in 1992 with a guide price of £450,000.
The purchasers were Mike and Rhoda Nevins. Mike was well known locally for his work as a councillor and as Mayor of Guildford in 2007. Rhoda is also well known – in part for her embroidery skills. She helped to embroider Kate Middleton’s wedding dress, and designed (and sewed part of) the massive Guildford tapestry produced in 2012 (pictured left, with thanks) and the framed gold and silver wire embroidered Pirbright crest in Lord Pirbright’s Hall. Mike sadly died of cancer in 2010.
In 2016 the house was sold to Mr & Mrs S Hollis. 3 pictures from the agent’s details are shown below (with thanks).
The Mill House was sold in 2019 to the current owner.
Unsurprisingly the Mill House is a Grade II listed building. The listing particulars are shown below.
House. C17 refaced and extended in 1780 and C19. Timber framed core with red brick extension to entrance front on rendered plinth, red and blue brick extensions to left. Timber frame of thin scantling with brick infill set back to left end. Plain tiled roofs of varying heights with slate roof to left of centre. Irregular plan: extending back from entrance front at right angles to lane. Entrance front: 2 storeys with brick dentil eaves. Front stack to left, further stacks to rear. 2 casement windows on first floor, 2 below, one to left leaded. Half-glazed door under gabled hood to centre. Left hand return front: one storey and attic in older range set back to right of centre, under gabled casement dormer. 3 light leaded casement window under 4 centred brick arch. Planked door to centre under shallow gabled hood. 2 storey barn extension to left with irregular fenestration, 3 leaded casements under cambered heads across the first floor. Stable door to centre of first floor and double doors to ground floor left. 2 framed bay extensions set back to left end.
Interior: some framing visible in older section, mainly on ceilings.
Manor Cottage (previously Manor Lodge)
Manor Cottage is a detached Victorian house on a triangular piece of land fronting the north side of Mill Lane. It was originally called Manor Lodge (or Manor House Lodge), presumably as it was situated near to the entrance drive leading to The Manor House, and thus could have acted as a sort of lodge or gatehouse – although we don’t know whether it ever served this purpose.
The house was c1971 renamed Manor Cottage and is edged in orange on the map below.
In 1896, Henry Halsey 4, the Lord of Pirbright Manor at the time, sold The Manor House (and the associated cottages) to the sitting tenant, Major William Armstrong, late 5th Dragoon Guards and his formidable wife, Charlotte, who had been renting the property since 1887. These properties were sold on a 76-year lease, rather than freehold, for some reason. The reasons why Henry Halsey 4 felt the need to sell these important assets are spelt out in grim detail in the Halsey family section.
The Armstrongs decided to build Manor Lodge as a gardener’s cottage shortly after purchasing the property, as building plans were submitted to Guildford Rural District Council in 1900 (see copy right).
The plans are not the best – the orientation is incorrect (twist 45 degrees anti-clockwise to get it correct), and the scale is way out (compare the sizes of the proposed building and the Manor House!). Anyway Manor Lodge was built, and in 1901 George and Winifred Randall were living there.
George Randall (born in 1874 at Ickenham, Middlesex) was one of the seven children of Robert, an agricultural labourer and Fanny. George married Winifred Kirby (born 1875 in Southall, the daughter of a gasman) in 1898, probably at Southall. Their first child, Winifred Martha, was born there that year. In 1901 George was working as a gardener (presumably for William Armstrong), but the Randalls were only at Manor Lodge for two or three years more, moving in about 1904 to Springfield Farm, at the back of Pirbright Lodge. They had 3 more children there and George lived there for the rest of his life. We have told the story of the Randalls in the Springfield Farm section. This lovely photo (left) was taken there about this time.
The next gardeners and tenants of Manor Lodge were William and Lucy Lawrence. William was born at East Horsley in 1865, the son of an agricultural labourer. In 1891 he was living with his widowed mother, Rachel and working as a gardener at West Hill, Epsom. At this time his future wife Lucy Cate or Cates – it varied – (born 1865, the daughter of a labourer) was employed as a housemaid to a family in Long Ditton. William and Lucy married in 1893 at East Clandon. The couple had two sons.
By 1901, the family had moved to Ham Common, near Richmond, but three years later came to Manor Lodge from Oxted. Here they lived for 16 years, during which time their youngest son, Robert, lost his life at sea on 1 January 1915 when HMS Formidable was sunk. The ship’s captain, Noel Loxley, having overseen the evacuation, in true naval tradition returned to the bridge with his terrier Bruce, calmly lit a cigarette and went down with his ship. This was the first battleship sinking of the First World War. Out of a complement of 711 men, 547 died. A photo of Manor Lodge (as it then was) from around this time is shown below.
The Lawrences left Manor Lodge in 1919, when they moved to Dickins Farm in Frensham. A few years later they moved to Rudgwick, near Cranleigh, where William died in 1935. In 1939 Lucy was living at Merrow Common, Guildford, giving her occupation as a retired cook. She died the following year in Portsmouth.
The next occupants from 1921 were Thomas and Alice Goldsmith with two of their grown-up sons, Harold and Sidney. Thomas had been born in 1872 in a small village in the centre of Suffolk, son of an agricultural labourer. Alice had been born in 1868 in another small central Suffolk village and was the daughter of a gamekeeper. They married in 1896 in Suffolk, but, like many gardeners, Thomas had to move around to find work.
He may have come to Pirbright from Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, where the family was living at the time of the 1911 census. Their daughter Bertha also accompanied them. She married Frank Sherrett in 1928 in St Michael’s Church, and it seems that they lived at Manor Lodge for a while, as a daughter, Eva, was born there the next year - quite a squeeze for a small cottage. The Goldsmith and Sherrett family appear in the records until 1938 and probably lived at Manor Lodge during the war, as the young Eva left Pirbright School for Knaphill Central in 1940, the register giving the address as Manor Lodge. Thomas died in 1941 and it appears that Alice left the area shortly afterwards.
By 1943, John and Ethel Challen were living (probably as tenants) at Manor Lodge. John (born 1889) was a farm labourer (heavy work). Ethel (nee Scott) was born in 1892. They were married in Uxbridge in 1918. Up to WW2 they were living in Brockham.
Just after moving into Manor Lodge, they received the sad news that one of their sons, John Challen jnr, a private in the Queen’s Royal Regiment, had been killed in action in Italy. In 1945 there was happier news, when their daughter, Elsie was married to a Canadian soldier (see press cutting below). 2 years later in 1947, another son, Ronald Challen, married Patricia (Pat) Philpot.
Some of the Challen children stayed in Pirbright, living at Rapley’s Field and at Thompson’s Close. John and Ethel continued living at Manor Lodge until at least 1965, when Ethel died. John died in 1971 at Weybridge, and was buried in St Michael’s, Pirbright.
We mentioned above that one of the Challen children had married a Pat Philpot in 1947. Pat’s sister, Lucy had married a Robert Morgan in 1943, and the same Lucy and Robert George Llewellyn Morgan became the next occupants (probably as tenants) of Manor Lodge. This probably occurred in 1971, when Ronald Challen died. It was around this time that the name of the house was changed from Manor Lodge to Manor Cottage for reasons unknown. This is an excerpt from Pat’s memories, recorded in 2001:
“Well, I was born at Manor Farm, Mill Lane & then moved over to what was the old Council Houses, now known as Thompsons Close, used to be West Heath. I was there till seventeen & a half, in the war years. I met my husband when I was in the WAAF. We lived in London for about five years. Two children, they were born in London. We got married when were up there, then we came back down here again to Manor Cottage & worked for the Godwin-Austens.” [Editor’s note: Robert Godwin-Austen and his wife, Katherine had inherited The Manor House in 1943.]
Although the Morgans carried on at Manor Cottage (previously Manor Lodge), it appears that Robert was working in London. He died in 1990. Lucy continued to live at Manor Cottage for some time afterwards, then moved to one of the Rapleys bungalows. c2001, Lucy moved to No 5 Mill Lane. Lucy died in a Farnham Nursing Home in 2005.
Manor Cottage was sold in 2001 to Philip and Georgina Taylor. The house was then sold to the current owner in 2007. We have shown below an agent’s photo of Manor Cottage (with thanks).
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