Ian Everest will describe a year in the life of a Downland farm during the 1950s. He will introduce a coloured cine-film, for which he will provide the narration. The film shows an age when over twenty men were employed on the 1000-acre farm – and forty at harvest-time.
Admission is by ticket — £5.00 for Members; £7.00 for non-members — available from Jasmines Florists, High Street, Henfield or by telephoning (01273) 492294.
A wash drawing of Edburton as it looked in around 1794, by Hendrick de Cort (Farrant 2001). The church is in the middle of the picture, at the back, and September Cottage is at the lower right.
C16 timber-framed building with painted brick infilling and curved braces on first floor. Hipped slate roof. Casement windows. Two storeys. Four windows.
Hudson (Victoria County History) tells us that
September Cottage [is a] small 16th-century timber-framed house formerly with an open hall, some of the smoke-blackened rafters of which survived in 1984. A chimneystack and an upper floor were added later, and the west end was extended or rebuilt in the 17th century.
A beam dated 1638 was noted in the loft a few years ago but could not be located in a recent survey. And Howe notes:
A stone bears the date 1725 and the initials H.I.M. [It has been] reinserted near its original position over the door of the western cottage, whence it was displaced when the door was removed in 1951. The initials may be those of Henry Marchant (b. 1672) .. or his son Henry (b. 1696).
Butler & Butler provide much additional information on the architectural history of the house, including the following observations:
In its original form September Cottage appears to have been a two- or three-bay box frame-construction house of possible 16th century date. Externally two bays of the original house currently survive at the eastern end of the cottage. .. A door has been inserted in the wall of the western bay. The windows are all later, although some, especially those in the upper storey, are probably in their original location.
At some stage in the 17th century either the 3rd (western bay) has been demolished and replaced, or a new bay has been added to the west end. ..
A second extension has been added to the west end of the Cottage, probably in the 18th century. This is built with a wall to first storey height, of regular coursed brick construction, above which there is a timber framing of vertical studs and horizontal midrails. ..
On the east end of the building is a lean-to addition, constructed from rough coursed flint and brick, and has a number of timbers partly exposed within it, however these do not appear to be structural. This extension appears to date to the 17th century or later.
September Cottage — a conjectured chronology of the building: two bay original; three bay original; and after 17th century addition (Butler & Butler 2009)
Thomas, his wife Edith and their daughter Evelyn moved into one of the September cottages. The other one was rented out. While Thomas Nolan cared for the horses, Edith made all the preparations for the many grand dinner parties that Captain Masters held, until a housekeeper was appointed. In 1934, a second daughter, Margaret, was born to the Nolans at the cottage.
The Nolan family grave in the churchyard at Edburton, about 150 yards from September Cottage. As can be seen, Thomas Nolan lived to be 100.
In 1941, the Nolan’s eldest daughter Evelyn, met and married a young man in the RAF called Fred Coombes and during his rare leaves he lived with them in September Cottage. In the following years this union produced three children Ann, Leslie and Victor, all of whom were born in the same bedroom in the cottage. Later, they all had to move into the cottage next door due to flooding. In 1946, Captain Masters and the Nolans had a “falling out” and the Nolan and Coombes families moved to Edburton Sands Cottages. When Captain Masters died in the 1950s, both the September cottages were sold.
September Cottages in the 1950s at the time of their sale following the death of Captain Masters (Howe 1958)
In 1981 Victor and Marion Strachan purchased the house. In 2005 they sold part of the grounds as a separate plot to a builder, with planning permission for an additional bungalow, known today as Spring Court. Ted Andrew’s studio was demolished and the new bungalow was built in 2005/06. This was later sold on in 2006.
Tony Brooks
References
[Copyright © 2013, Anthony R. Brooks. Adapted from Anthony R. Brooks (2008) The Changing Times of Fulking & Edburton. Chichester: RPM Print & Design, pages 206-208, 423-432.]
An aerial photo of Hut Farm by Joe Lancaster, taken around 1980. The farm buildings are bottom left, Pippins and Poynings Road are top right.
Hugh had an interest in clocks especially old clocks. He could mend neighbours’ clocks and he restored beautiful old clocks and sold many of them in the village shop. People were often very surprised having come in for an ice cream to then see these working antique clocks at very modest prices alongside collectible old books, local pottery and paintings, local bread, baked beans, butter and a post office.
Before the war Hugh’s cow field had been the village field, I was told. And our current village field (North Town Field)? That was probably a cow field. And Barn Cottage, in the north west corner of old Hut Farm? Exactly what it says: a bungalow built ‘inside’ a barn when planners said ‘no’ to proposed demolition.
Gill Milner, Old Post Office
Fulking residents see it every day as they look up at the Downs. But what is it? When was it built? Why is it in that location? Is it a relic of the Napoleonic wars? Was it once a semaphore station? A camera obscura? Did it play a role in James Hubbard’s Victorian recreation complex on the Dyke? Why is it called “the bomb house”? Did it ever have a roof? Why is it half full of earth? Why are several walls damaged? Is Canada to blame?
You’ll find out the answers to these questions, and many others, if you attend Martin Snow’s talk The Devil’s Dyke — Pleasure Ground to Bombing Ground at the Beeding & Bramber Local History Society meeting at 7:45pm on Wednesday 2nd October in the Village Hall, Upper Beeding.
The listing details read as follows:
L-shaped house. C18 altered and enlarged in C19. Two storeys. Three windows facing east, four windows facing south. Faced with flints with red brick dressings and quoins. Tiled roof. Casement windows. C19 castellated additions with pointed windows to east and north fronts.
The reference to the “castellated additions with pointed windows” is incorrectly dated. The photo shown above is a postcard, almost certainly produced in the early twentieth century, and it shows the house before the changes were made.
The house is believed to incorporate flint and rubble salvaged from the original manor. In the early 1800s the interior was refurbished. In the 1920s, extensions were added on the east and north sides and finished with a crenellated roof detail. The “castellated additions with pointed windows” thus date from this 1920s renovation. A large flint-faced dovecote was also built at this time.
The Kelly’s Directories for the period 1859-1887, and the next three censuses, 1861, 1871 and 1881, show Charles Hill, a farmer originally from Dorset, and his wife Frances, from Ashurst, in residence. In 1861 they are aged 26 and 20, respectively, and living with their infant son, his Scottish nanny, and two female servants. By 1871 there are five children, a nanny, a house maid, and a couple from Norfolk working as groom and cook. In 1881 the household includes seven children and a single female servant.
The 1891 Kelly’s Directory shows that Charles Robinson had taken over the farm but the 1891 census return is mysterious. Just three residents are listed, all in the age range 19-22: a cook, a maidservant and a boarder employed as a ‘farmer’s assistant’. Charles Robinson may simply have been located outside the parish during the census period. By the time of the 1899 Kelly’s Directory, Alfred Turner, the ‘farmer’s assistant’ from eight years earlier, has been promoted to ‘farm steward’ to Charles Robinson.
The 1905 and 1911 editions of Kelly’s Directory show that Truleigh Farm was then the hands of Harry Strivens of Paythorne Farm and a member of a family whose recorded residence in the parish dates back to the eighteenth century. The 1915 edition has Henry Uridge listed as the farmer. He is still listed as a farmer in the 1922 edition but may have been living in Fulking then rather than at the farm itself.
Charles Wyndham, Lord Leconfield, inherited the freehold of the farm and he sold both the land (in 1920) and the house (in 1925) to John C. Buckwell. He, in turn, resold it to a Captain L.N. Masters in 1927. And the latter sold it to Vivian Windus in 1933. When Vivian Windus died in 1950, the farm passed into the hands of his son Robin and his family who live there to this day.
There are two cottages in the farmyard area: Keeper’s Cottage, located near the farmhouse, once housed two families and provided accommodation for the keeper who managed the game raised in the nearby woodland; and Pond Cottage, just to the north. The farm buildings mostly date back to the 1800s and at that time the entire holding totalled some 840 acres. Today, the farm extends over 420 acres, mainly arable, which has resulted in most of the farm buildings becoming redundant. They are now used for other purposes and the farmyard has become, in effect, a small industrial estate.
Truleigh Manor Farm as it appears in the 1842 Edburton tithe map. The farmhouse is marked in red, the pond in blue, and the two cottages are to the immediate west of the track that leads north. The pond has gone but very little else has changed topographically in the ensuing 170 years.
Around 1967, two carpenters set up at the farm and they are there to this day, working from converted cowsheds. Until 1974, some of the farm buildings were used as a centre for crafts and small artisan industries and, in 1983, beer brewed there by the former Sussex Breweries was distributed to more than twenty local free houses. From 1980 to 1992 Sky Systems made microlight aircraft, and later powered hang gliders, in some of the outlying farm buildings. Today these buildings are used as a riding stables and by a company that makes stainless steel kitchenware for the commercial market. A fireworks supplier, Windus R & S, also currently operates from the farm. Since the 1960s there has been a small, private grass airstrip on the farm and this is still in use. Paragliding enthusiasts are trained in a field on a lower slope on the north side of the Downs, opposite the farm.
Tony Brooks
References
[Copyright © 2013, Anthony R. Brooks. Adapted from Anthony R. Brooks (2008) The Changing Times of Fulking & Edburton. Chichester: RPM Print & Design, pages 211-213.]
Currently popular local history posts:
Tony Brooks writes:
I would like to update all those who sponsored or purchased my book [Anthony R. Brooks (2008) The Changing Times of Fulking & Edburton. Chichester: RPM Print & Design] how the proceeds of £3,800 have been spent by the Church.
Originally it was earmarked for a new door to be added to the church entrance. After much thought the PCC decided that as the Church is used during the winter months twice a month for a maximum of two hours, money spent on a new door would not be cost effective. So a compromise was agreed:
- A warm air unit would be fitted over the church door inside.
- The entrance path to the church has been reshaped to include a patio to give more standing area.
I am pleased to say both projects are now complete.
[from Pigeon Post, August 2013]
Country Life does the history:
Set in 149 acres of lakeside gardens and grounds, pasture, deer park and woodland, the house, first mentioned in records of 1339 and 1434, has evolved over time around the core of a late-medieval stone building, of which only one storey survives, with an early-17th-century, timber-framed first floor above it.
According to its listing, the south parlour was rebuilt in the early 1700s as part of a new five-bay range running eastwards, and the entire house was refaced in about 1920, and extended to the east, west and north, in the revived Sussex Vernacular style, par timber-framed and part tile-hung. The park, restocked with deer by the current owners, who bought Woodmancote Place in 2002, was established in the late 19th century; the gardens around the house were laid out by Cheals of Crawley in 1923. As the chief manor house of the village, Woodmancote Place has had its share of famous-and infamous-owners.
In 1530, Woodmancote passed to Catherine, wife of Sir Edward Seymour, later Earl of Hertford and 1st Duke of Somerset, who was executed for treason in 1552. In 1531, Seymour sold the manor to Richard Bellingham, whose widow married George Goring, described as lord of the manor in 1560. For 200 years from 1693, the estate was owned by the industrious Dennett family, who extended the house and increased the farmland to 402 acres by 1840.
Septima Cottages is a Grade II listed building on the corner of The Street in Fulking as it turns south down to the Shepherd and Dog. During its long history it has, at times, comprised one dwelling or two (as it is now). The listing details are terse, as usual:
C17 or earlier timber-framed building refaced with red brick on ground floor and tile-hung above. Tiled roof. Horizontally-sliding sash windows. Two storeys. Three windows.
Howe (1958, page 32) refers to “an outshut wall built in masonry which may be mediaeval” and provides a much more informative description written by Albert Paulin who was living in Septima during the 1950s:
Date uncertain but said to have been in existence in 1643: first recorded date 1812 (Conveyance: purchase from H.M. Commissioners of Woods and Forests at price of about £60): Original brick floors on ground floor, apparently laid on some such base as puddled clay. They are very dry. Upper floors, original wide board, approximately 18 inches wide: appear to be mixture of oak and chesnut. Roofing tiles mainly original, pegged to oak battens with oak pegs. Two windows have original leaded lights with flint glass. Bread baking ovens well preserved. One original staircase still in use. Much of the brickwork up to first floor level appears to be original. Inside partitions plaster and lath between original oak vertical puncheons. Roof carried by heavy oak tie-beams, curved to give headroom over door openings, but even so, a bare five feet headroom. [Howe 1958, pages 36-37.]
The building was sold as two tenanted cottages in 1914. The auction particulars showed Number 1 as having two bedrooms, a living room with an oak timbered ceiling and chimney corner fireplace, a washroom with a copper and a pantry. Number 2 was described as a creeper-clad cottage with one bedroom, a living room with an oak timbered ceiling and open fireplace, a small sitting room, a washhouse and a privy shared by the two cottages (the creeper was still thriving in 1999). Primrose Cottage, which is next door, was sold at the same auction and there was a covenant to ensure that the occupants of Septima would have continued access to its well. The Septima cottages were let at the time of the auction for between two and three shillings a week each, around 10% of the then current wage for an agricultural worker.
The building owes its name to Ann Septima Cuttress who was born around 1839 and who lived in the cottage for most of a long life. The name probably originated as the simple description “Septima’s cottage”. Ann’s father James had been born in Fulking in 1797. In 1841 he was working as a market gardener and living with his wife Mary and eight daughters in what the census calls ‘Lower Paythorn’. Mary died in 1846. After his wife died, James moved to Septima. In 1851, he was living there with his two youngest daughters, Ann and Barbara. He was still working as a market gardener. In 1858, Ann married Benjamin Baldey, a farm worker originally from Falmer, and he moved into the cottage. Ann was a minor (under 21) at the time of her wedding and thus required her father’s permission to marry. Benjamin was ten years her senior. The 1861 census shows them with two daughters and with James, now in his sixties and working as a shepherd, living with them as a lodger. He was still there in 1871, retired from shepherding but surrounded by half a dozen grandchildren. He died a couple of years later at the age of 76. Ann was to have a total of fifteen children, at least three of whom died in infancy. One of her sons, Charles, became the publican at the Shepherd and Dog and one of her grandsons, also called Charles, is commemorated on the 1914-1918 war memorial in Edburton churchyard.
In 1914, Ann and Benjamin were living in Number 2 and their son Percy was living in Number 1 with Nanny, his wife, and their children. Although they were tenants, the building had remained in the ownership of the Cuttress family until the auction in that year. Benjamin Baldey died in 1915 at the age of 87. Ann remained in residence and, when the war ended, she converted the small dining room of Number 2 into the village sweet shop. The entrance was via a stable door situated where the oriel (bay) window is now located. Ann also served teas in the garden and took in lodgers, some of whom were artists. She died in 1925 at the age of 86 — she had lived in Septima for nearly eighty years.
In the 1920s, a Mr and Mrs Purdew were photographed outside their new home, Number 1, on their wedding day. Mr Purdew was probably a descendant of the Purden/Purdew family that lived adjacent to the Baldey family in the 1870s. However, the Purdews had moved to Perching Sands by the 1880s.
In the 1940s, two sisters, Charlotte (‘Lottie’) and Marjorie Clark, lived in Number 1 and they went on to purchase Number 2. In her youth, Lottie had been a milliner and sometimes modelled fur coats complete with one of her hats for a London fashion house. During this time she was required to live in a staff dormitory, supervised by a matron who carried out daily inspections to ensure that all the girls looked their best and that no unauthorised changes were made to their appearance. Marjorie was musical and played the organ for the church and the piano for village concerts. She went on to marry Albert Paulin, a magistrate and an important figure in 1950s village life. They lived in Number 1 and Lottie moved into Number 2 where she lived until her death in 1976, aged 96. In due course, Albert and Marjorie Paulin moved to Thatchly, a distinctive 1930s house that is at the other end of The Street from Septima. Marjorie died in 1972, aged 76.
A photograph of Septima Cottages taken by Albert Paulin in the 1950s and printed on page 96 of F.A. Howe’s 1958 book on Fulking.
Tony Brooks
Reference
[Copyright © 2013, Anthony R. Brooks. Adapted from Anthony R. Brooks (2008) The Changing Times of Fulking & Edburton. Chichester: RPM Print & Design, pages 172-175.]
If you wander around the churchyard at St. Andrew’s peering at graves, you will soon get the impression that certain families persisted in the parish over several generations. But many of the older graves are hard to read and some are missing altogether. To get a more accurate sense of how many residents had parents who also lived in the parish, we need to turn to the nineteenth century census returns. The first ‘modern’ census, in 1841, only asked respondents if they had been born in the county in which they were then living. But the 1851 and subsequent censuses asked for both the county and the parish of birth. These later censuses thus permit a rather fine-grained analysis of the relation between where people were living and where they were born.
| Year | EdFulk | AdjPar | ElsSus | OutSus | Total |
| 1851 | 57% | 14% | 26% | 3% | 288 |
| 1861 | 41% | 18% | 34% | 6% | 299 |
| 1871 | 41% | 11% | 38% | 10% | 300 |
| 1881 | 41% | 11% | 39% | 8% | 340 |
| 1891 | 39% | 9% | 38% | 14% | 358 |
Where were the residents of the parish born?
The first row is perhaps the most striking. In 1851, over 70% of the residents of the parish were living within easy walking distance of where they were born (i.e., in Edburton or Fulking or one of the immediately adjacent parishes) and only 3% had been born outside Sussex. By the last decade of the century, the corresponding figures were 48% and 14%, respectively, and the size of the local population had increased by nearly 25%.
The remaining four rows are notable more for their similarity each with the next than for any radical changes. As the total population increases, the proportion of residents born in the parish remains more or less constant, as does the proportion born in Sussex but outside the immediate area (ElsSus). The proportion born in the immediately adjacent parishes halves over the 1861-1891 period whilst the proportion born outside Sussex more than doubles.
The first table provides a good sense of where the population had come from in any given census year but it does not give us a sense of the family structure of the parish. To get that, we need to look at the way the main resident families[2] persisted over time:
| Family | 1841 | 1851 | 1861 | 1871 | 1881 | 1891 |
| Barber | 22 | 13 | 13 | 14 | 3 | 0 |
| Baird/Beard | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 12 | 15 |
| Burtenshaw | 15 | 5 | 11 | 10 | 10 | 6 |
| Cousins/Cozens | 4 | 2 | 10 | 11 | 3 | 1 |
| Jackson | 5 | 7 | 5 | 2 | 7 | 0 |
| Lelliot/Lelliott | 10 | 12 | 20 | 4 | 10 | 0 |
| Madgwick | 0 | 3 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Marchant | 10 | 11 | 1 | 4 | 2 | 3 |
| Morley | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 16 | 9 |
| Page | 1 | 1 | 7 | 18 | 10 | 9 |
| Paine/Payne | 40 | 40 | 27 | 10 | 6 | 10 |
| Pollard | 5 | 6 | 2 | 6 | 8 | 5 |
| Sayers | 3 | 4 | 5 | 3 | 7 | 15 |
| Steel/Steele | 16 | 29 | 14 | 13 | 14 | 13 |
| Stevens | 7 | 11 | 10 | 11 | 13 | 7 |
| Stoveld/Stovell | 5 | 9 | 9 | 4 | 3 | 7 |
| Strevens/Strivens | 12 | 14 | 13 | 8 | 11 | 14 |
| Willet/Willett | 10 | 7 | 8 | 13 | 5 | 5 |
Families resident in the parish for five contiguous censuses
Footnotes
[1] A couple of rows sum to 99% rather than 100% as a consequence of rounding.
[2] Family members are defined here by surname, not genetics. If Jane Paine marries Bert Burtenshaw and remains in the parish then she will be counted as a Burtenshaw, not as a Paine, in the following census. Where the census takers used alternant spellings for a surname, both are listed in the table.
References
UPDATE, 21st July: all three volumes are now available — my copies arrived a couple of days ago, GJMG.
There’s a new book series on the South Downs with volumes on the archaeology (John Manley), geology (David Robinson) and natural history (Robin Crane and Rendel Williams). The geology volume appears to be available now but note that there’s a slightly discounted price if you order all three volumes at the same time.
