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A Desirable Residence
Houses of the Middle Ages From the Middle Ages, the construction of ordinary houses was a job for the carpenter and not for the architect or stonemason. The best buildings were worked in oak, or elm as a second best. The oak could be felled on Epsom Common or brought from the Weald to the south of Surrey. The wood was squared up with an adze, and used while it was still green. The carpenter would know how a building should be assembled, and the parts were cut out in advance and then put together on site. He would cut marks on the timber to remind the work team how pieces should be connected, as if it were a construction kit. The house frame had vertical posts of timber; when wood was plentiful, these were close together, but when it was scarce the uprights had to be placed further apart. The price of wood was high in Ewell, as there was continual demand from the London market. To make the walls, short staves would be fitted into holes drilled in the main framework. Hazel branches were then woven between these like basketwork, and the panels were covered with clay. Old Farmhouses The earliest houses were laid out as an open hall, like a long barn. Later owners might screen off the far end to provide private space, or put in a floor to create a separate chamber on the first floor. By the sixteenth century, there were grander houses like Epsom Court, built for the tenant of Chertsey Abbey who managed the home farm of the manor. This had cross wings at right angles to the central hall. One of these would have been a solar block on two floors, serving as a parlour and chamber for the farmer, while the other would have contained the kitchen and buttery. A through passage ran between these rooms and the hall itself. By the seventeenth century, the main streets of Epsom and Ewell contained many substantial timber-framed houses of this kind. Each stood in two or three acres of ground with stables and worksheds behind. Cottages for labourers were packed closer together away from the villages: in Ewell they were strung along West Street and in Epsom they were more common towards Woodcote, which was the poorer settlement. A hundred years later, much of Ewell still consisted of the old farm houses, while in Epsom they had almost completely disappeared during the rebuilding of the spa town. Prints and pictures of Ewell in the early nineteenth century show old houses looking much like those that survive in rural Surrey, but most of them were soon to be replaced in brick by local builders. The Story of Fitznells In the 1230s, Gilbert of Ewell purchased from Merton Priory a house and buildings on this site. In the next century the estate passed to Sir Robert Fitz-Neil who gave it its name and acquired land in Ewell which was associated with the house until the 1930s. About 1540 the two storey solar block was constructed, probably by Sir John Iwardeby. This is the oldest surviving part of the present building and faces the river at the back. In the early seventeenth century the present triple gabled range at the front was attached. The large plainer wing nearest to the road was added in the mid-nineteenth century, probably by John Mower who then occupied Fitznells Farm. In 1927 Fitznells Farm was bought for development. During the second world war the house was requisitioned as a clothing store and in the post-War period it served as a music school, latterly the Fitznells School of Music founded by Anthony and Vivienne Carter. Finally, in 1988 Fitznells was purchased by Conifer Property Holdings who refurbished it to its present state and added the adjoining office and related buildings. The main house itself is now a doctors' surgery. A Look Around Fitznells Entering the house, you are in the triple gabled extension which was built onto the older solar block beyond, though the staircase to your left was moved to this position in the late twentieth century. The extension involved the demolition of a medieval hall which formerly adjoined the solar on this side. Although the eaves height of the existing building was maintained, the seventeenth century extension incorporates an extra half storey at roof level by reducing the storey heights previously used. The timbering on the outside wall is divided into roughly square panels with central windows but only the one in the gable nearest the road is identifiable in its original form. Internally, eight new rooms were created at this time. Turning right towards the present patients' waiting room you enter the mid-nineteenth century wing. The two ground floor rooms have good plaster cornices and centres but upstairs is plainer. The waiting room has an excellent fireplace with marble surround and carved consols. The earliest part of the building is the two-bay, two-storey, solar wing of the early sixteenth century house now occupied on the ground floor by the practice manager's office and receptionists' area. Originally, the first floor jettied out on the side nearest the road but this was lost with the nineteenth century extension. There would have been large central windows in this wall. A two-storey bay at the opposite end was added probably in the mid-sixteenth century and survives today. Internally, there is a fine 'open truss' on the first floor with hollow mouldings. An original window survives intact on the wall adjoining the seventeenth century extension almost directly above one at ground floor level. A door frame of the mid-sixteenth century was moved adjacent to the window in the early seventeenth century. Cottage Homes Until about 1850, most homes for working people in Epsom and Ewell were built from a timber frame clad in wooden weather-boarding. These cottages replaced the earlier kinds of cheap housing in the eighteenth century. Builders used cheap imported pine, rather than oak or other native hardwoods. Because softwoods are more vulnerable to the weather, they needed to be clad in something which would keep off the rain, and this was what the weather-boarding was for, although it also provided some insulation. Some mediaeval buildings, like Whitehall in Cheam, were covered with boards at this time. Important buildings were kept trim with a coat of white paint. This happened at the Watch House in Ewell, the other Watch House which stood on the site of Epsom Clock Tower, and Ewell's Upper Mill. But most cottages were covered with a coat of black tar, as this was a cheaper way of keeping off the weather. It tended to melt in summer and drip downwards off the boards. By the twentieth century almost all boarding had been painted white instead, although there are some traditionally black houses at Ernest Cottages off Kingston Road. Old barns were covered with tar in the same way, but this is now creosoted: early examples can be seen at Rectory Barn in Ewell's Church Street, and the Old Moat Garden Centre at Horton. Cottages for Rich and Poor On Epsom Common, where houses could often be built without asking permission from landowners, there are some basic single-storied cottages with weather-boarding. As you go closer in to Epsom, the quality of the buildings improves, and many of them were really middle class houses built in a village style. The properties around West Hill have fancy barge boards framing their gables, some have ornamental windows, and several are dated by their proud owners. One of the cottages around Woodcote Green was even occupied for a few years in the 1790s by an aristocrat, the Duchesse de Gontaut, who was fleeing the French Revolution. Weather-boarded cottages were easy to build. There are several streets where a handful of these houses, developed on the corner of a field, formed the nucleus for later settlement. They were easy to enlarge, too. The Spring Hotel consists of two separate properties, one of them originally a farmhouse, which were joined up in the 1820s to attract the coaching trade. They could be built in terraces, like Isabella Cottages on the Common, designed as housing for the workers at Lewins Laundry. However, if they were poorly maintained and allowed to get damp, they could be very unhygienic. In 1848 a report on conditions in Epsom was commissioned by the town, prior to setting up the Local Board of Health. It identified the prevalence of boarded timber cottages as one of the main problems of the town. After this no further houses were allowed in this style, and most of those which existed have been lost. But their basic plan, consisting of a square house divided into two semi-detached properties with a central chimney, was imitated by the builders in brick who constructed much of the 1880s and 1890s working class housing to the north of the town. The Story of Hope Cottage The area at the foot of East Street, between the corner with Hook Road and the Plough & Harrow pub, has a long history of industrial use. From the mid seventeenth century onwards, it was occupied by farriers, blacksmiths, coachbuilders and timber merchants. Hope Cottage was built in the early nineteenth century as one property and later divided into two - now numbered as 23 and 25. The house is first recorded in 1841, when Alice Vint put it up for sale, together with a garden and some outbuildings. She was the daughter of a blacksmith, who had once owned the whole district at the foot of East Street. Hope Cottage was sold for £175 to a yeoman called William Cooke, although he did not live there but rented it out. There was a bakehouse next door, and this association of the area with fast food lasted into the twentieth century when it hosted a fish and chip shop. By 1867 the house was in the hands of another William Cooke, who was landlord of the Red Lion at Egham. This cannot have been a success as he went bankrupt, owing large sums of money to his wine merchant. The cottage was put up for sale to pay off this debt; a wheelwright called Charles Smart bought it, and then sold it on to his son Alfred, who was a farmer. It is first mentioned by the name of Hope Cottage about this time, in 1872. Eight years later it was being used as a beer shop and yard: it was still one building in 1910, when it was owned by Mary Ann Smart, Alfred's daughter. She died in that year and during the next decade the house was split into two. A Look Around Hope Cottage The original main entrance hall and staircase were made part of no. 25, together with two rooms up and downstairs. The other house, no.23, consisted of two rooms up and downstairs with a new doorway made at one side. Visitors to no. 25 could still see many signs that it had been better than the common run of cottages. The porch to the main entrance had fine carpenter's work in its canopy. The entrance hall and staircase were both a little grander than those in other properties nearby, and the ceilings were higher than those of local cottages. The house still retains some of its sash windows as well as window shutters in the downstairs front room. When it was renovated recently, the doors were found that had linked number 23 to number 25. The cottages to the left are very similar in appearance. So were a set of other cottages which stood further up East Street, near Kiln Lane. They all appear to have been built at the same time, perhaps by the same local builder. Houses of Epsom Spa By 1714, the old village of Epsom had been rebuilt as a spa. This was the year in which John Toland, the controversial writer of religion and politics, published a description of the town. From a point on the Downs he could look over the whole of Epsom, a semi-circle with St. Martins at one end and the Durdans at the other. There were groves everywhere around the houses, and open cornfields stretched away to the open Downs. Fields and meadows were dotted with orchards, groves, hedgerows and plantations. In Epsom, most people lived in houses on either side of the High Street. During the summer, many of them were let out as lodgings to visitors. The larger properties stood further back from the centre, in Church Street to one side or in South Street, Woodcote and West Hill on the other. Most of these were occupied as country retreats by merchants from London. They were linked together by plantations, groves, and orchards. In the well-tended gardens, a variety of exotic fruits and flowers could be seen under the leafy arbours, with box hedges dividing the space into formal patterns. It reminded Toland of the days when he lived at Leiden in Holland. Like many English people, Toland had admired Holland. Towns there seemed to be cleaner and more prosperous than English ones, and he remembered people being polite and good-humoured. With the accession of William III, a Dutch king, there was every reason to imitate their civilisation. The rebuilding of Epsom in brick followed a pattern in architecture which had begun in the Netherlands, and which was much neater - Toland's favourite term of praise - than the rambling old wooden farmhouses that it replaced. Epsom is Rebuilt A brickmakers' pit had already been opened on Epsom Common in 1662, but developments were stalled by the Great Fire of London four years later. For a while, all the talent in the building trade was needed to reconstruct the capital, but when this was over, it showed how mediaeval buildings could be swept away and replaced by something more elegant. The reconstruction of Epsom started with grand public buildings like the Assembly Rooms, but by the turn of the eighteenth century whole terraces of housing were being constructed in the High Street, many of them intended to be let out as lodgings to appeal to those visiting the spa. Brick was used throughout, sometimes with stone dressings for the corners, and the roofs were tiled. Most of the houses had sash windows, which first arrived in the town in 1680, and soon replaced the smaller and draughtier casement windows. Inside, the houses of the spa period had modest but elegant details in their banisters, doorframes and fireplaces. The bedroom and living room space on the first floor was often decorated with wallpaper, which had begun as a paper substitute for tapestry but afterwards became an interior decoration in its own right. Later this might be replaced by panelling made from simple framed pine boards, set above and below a dado rail. The effect was much brighter and more open than anything people had seen before. The Story of the Cedars A house on the site of what is now The Cedars is first mentioned in 1656 and was probably one of the largest in Epsom at the time. By the 1720s it was occupied as a country house by Francis Shepheard of London. From the style of the façade it seems likely that the house received its present form, if it was not rebuilt, during Shepheard's occupation. By 1750 the property had been equipped with the usual appurtenances of a gentleman's house including stables and a coach house. The latter is now Cedars Cottage, next door. In the nineteenth century The Cedars had scholastic uses. In the 1820s three sets of proprietors ran it as a school, including Charles Mayo (1822-7). He was an early follower of Pestalozzi, with whom he had studied in Switzerland, and went on to build up a reputation as the headmaster of Cheam School. From1851 until 1871 Rebecca and Susanna Eisdell also ran a school for young ladies here. One of the Eisdells was a friend of Dr Robert Moffat, the father-in-law of David Livingstone. While Livingstone was making his African expeditions, his wife Mary brought up their children in Epsom. After returning to private occupation the house was finally bought from its last individual owner, Mr W. J. Payne, by Epsom and Ewell Council for £2,000. This was during World War II, and it was initially used as a first aid post. Celebrating its salvation from 'being cut up into flats' or demolished for ' a large building in the modern style', the contemporary Editor of the Epsom Herald forecast that, though its eventual purpose must await more peaceful times, 'there is no reason why 'The Cedars' should not be an ornament …. to Epsom for many years.' He was surely right. A Look Around the Cedars The coat of arms above the front door is that of John Myster, Lord Mayor of London, who occupied the property from 1736 until his death in 1763. Curiously, the crest is not the one to which he was entitled, and the arms do not fit the space - the unicorn's head has been cut down. The reasons for this are not known. The façade is early eighteenth century, the brickwork being done with headers only, in order - in one expert's view - to get consistency of colour. The earlier part of the building at the back is four compartments wide: the front part is offset from this because the builders had to line up a 2-bay front with a 3-bay back. The roof was replaced in the nineteenth century. The interior contains some fine details, particularly in the spacious hall, the staircase with its half landing over the garden door, and the handsome south front ground floor room. In the latter, the overmantel is arranged to take a picture and the arms over the doorway are again those of Myster. The joinery throughout is good and pleasant work. The kitchen probably formed part of the late seventeenth century house. The beautiful large cedars in front of the building which many local people will remember and which no doubt gave the house its name were lost in the Great Storm of 1987. But they live on in today's smaller trees, growing from seeds of the originals. Mansions of the Gentry Social life in the Victorian village took place on two levels. There were a few wealthy families, each one supported by numerous servants, and there was a much larger body of labourers who worked on the land or in small-scale industries. This was true in Ewell, where there was no real middle class. In Epsom, where the fortunes of the town had revived at the beginning of the nineteenth century, things were different. Even so, the tradesmen depended on the patronage of a few respected customers who occupied large properties to the south of the town and at Woodcote. Privacy was one of the most important things that money could buy. The mansion of a wealthy and respected family was expected to stand in its own grounds, with a high wall and a gate separating it from the crowd outside. The most extensive grounds were to be found at Horton and Woodcote Park, which had been manor houses in the Middle Ages. Other grounds, like those of Bourne Hall, had originally surrounded a mediaeval house, but now they were landscaped to suit contemporary taste. Often this involved an element of deception. The carriageway from the gate at Bourne Hall was taken over an artificial bridge and round a little mount of trees in order to make it seem further from the house than it really was. New Styles in Architecture The first house at Ewell Court was built in the spa period, and so were Woodcote Grove and Hookfield: they acquired their grounds by enclosure from the surrounding fields. The Dutch influence gave way to the classical rules of Georgian architecture, as observed at Ashley House in 1765. The old Bourne Hall was built in a classical style some ten years later, but after that the influences on gentry houses became much more eclectic. The Farmer family chose James Wyatt as their architect for Nonsuch Mansion House, and he remodelled the eighteenth-century building to look like a miniature castle, with its brick walls covered in stucco to resemble stone, and fake towers and battlements. The same style was followed by Henry Kitchen at Ewell Castle in 1813. In the nineteenth-century, most of the houses of the gentry copied the features of earlier styles. Glyn House was built like a Scottish baronial tower, while at Ewell Court the timber-framed front of an Elizabethan farmhouse served as the inspiration for the gables of the new building that overlooked the lake. Their facades might be old, or might pretend to be old, but the big houses of the nineteenth century were laid out in a very different way from those that had gone before. Families expected to do a great deal of entertaining for others of their status, and to travel and be entertained in their turn. It built up networks, and helped to find marriage partners for their children. So space was found for libraries, a drawing room for the ladies, and a billiard rooms or gun room, according to taste, for the gentlemen. Rosebery had the Durdans fitted up with a major library of works on history and racing, as well as his own set of stables and a riding school. The leisurely life of a big house had to be supported by a retinue of servants. Their numbers did not increase in the Victorian period, but they were better organised. Kitchens, sculleries, laundries, bakehouses, pantries and game larders all had to be provided. At Nonsuch Mansion House, a careful arrangement of the service quarter kept the men and women apart: the two halves of the business were headed by the butler and housekeeper respectively, and only met under the supervision of these leaders in the servants' hall. The Story of Ashley House In 1825, Henry Pownall (masquerading with modest anonymity as 'an inhabitant') wrote his history of Epsom. He gave several pleasing and charming walks from the town which allowed him to describe its fine buildings and respectable residents. One such walk passes Ashley House. Noting a street pattern we can recognise today, he writes that 'on the west side of the road leading from the town to the downs, and opposite the parade, is a handsome building, enclosed with iron palisades, the residence of Mrs. Ashley, who has for many years lived at Epsom to the great benefit of the poor, who have largely partaken of her bounty'. It was this Mary Ashley who gave her name to the house. Mary succeeded her uncle, John Brathwaite, as occupier in 1800. He lived there from about 1795 until his death. John had been born in the then colony of Barbados in 1722 and had become Manager of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel's estates there. In 1788 he gave detailed evidence to the Privy Council in London on the condition of slaves in Barbados, revealing an enlightened paternalism which thought that the slaves should be treated well but would not benefit from being freed! Ashley House was later owned by George White, who was Clerk to many local public bodies. It was the offices of Epsom Rural District Council, and subsequently passed to Surrey County Council, who used it for a variety of purposes including a Registry Office: George Harrison was married here. A Look Around Ashley House It is believed by a local historian that the house was built in the late 1740s by one John Riley the younger on the site of a property formerly owned by Lord Baltimore. Others think that it was constructed in the 1760s because of a lead rainwater head with the date 1765; but the first writer considers that apart from the front elevation and porch there is little about the house to suggest the fashionable Adam style of that time, and that generally the house is in the taste of 20 years earlier. An Epsom visitor in 1800 described it as: 'a large brick house … cased with grey stock bricks; it is an elegant house, and commands an agreeable prospect to the south east'. Though both this view and the large rear garden stretching behind the High Street with an avenue of lime trees have disappeared the building itself remains elegant and imposing. The south east room on the ground floor is particularly fine, being elaborately decorated in the eighteenth century taste. The rich drops of flowers and fruit between the wall panels are of excellent workmanship. The floor is packed underneath with rubble for sound-proofing. The north east room is similar but more plainly treated. In the south west room the bay and decorations are modern. The principal rooms have mahogany doors with six raised panels and mortice locks. The passage-way through to the garden entrance originally had a black and white stone pavement. The crossing of this passage with another is especially skilfully treated with a vaulted canopy carried on four columns and pilasters. The staircase is entirely supported from the walls between the floors. Wicked Lord Lyttleton It is a frosty night in December, 1779. The wind whistles through the streets of London as Lord Westcote sits chatting with his friend Dr. Johnson over a dish of tea and a pipe at their club in St. James. "Quite a stir that nephew of yours has caused, Westcote, even after his death". "Thomas! What a let-down for the family he's been. He could have been anything he wanted, even Prime Minister, if he hadn't led such an outrageous life. 'Wicked Lord Lyttelton', they used to call him in the streets. He wasn't always like that - I blame those damned foreigners. You know he used to paint a bit when he was young, and the family sent him off for two years to tour France and Italy. Well, he started getting caught up in all those fashionable vices they have out there. A lad's got to sow his wild oats, but this was a bit much. His engagement was called off, even his father disowned him. When he came back, he patched things up with his father, married a nice girl from a good family - and then got involved with a barmaid, ran off with her to Paris, and started gambling. Always used to win; by the time he died, he was £30,000 better off. You know that big house down in Epsom, the one they call Pit Place? He won that on a bet". "I went down to Pit Place once. It really is built in an old chalk pit. Apparently it used to be an ordinary farmhouse, and then came into the hands of a man of fashion, who improved it with no end of knickknacks from the old palace of Nonsuch. It was still a funny old place, with low ceilings and immensely thick walls. But the garden was astounding. I saw the hot house, the orangery, the vinery , the pinery - there was everything you could think of. Shrubberies, terraces, and a fish pond with the largest goldfish I ever saw. And a cock pit as well, because he never stopped gambling". "Until he died, at any rate". "Exactly! And there's the mysterious bit. Now don't tell everyone, but here's the story as I heard it from Lord Fortescue, and he was there when it happened. Captain Wolsley and Lady Flood were there as well, and the two Miss Amphletts, but we don't mention them. It all began when he came back from Ireland, and stopped off at his house in Town. He had been getting suffocating fits on the journey, and now he said that he was getting no sleep. Every night he would be woken up, always by the same thing - a bird fluttering in the curtains that hung around the bed. And then - this is what he said - the bird flew up and changed into a woman, dressed in white, and standing just at the end of the bed. She pointed at him, and said that he had only three days left to live. "Now he knew who this woman was all right, she was Mrs. Amphlett. You know that he seduced one of her girls, then made a bet that he would have his way with the other, and won, just as he always won his bets. The shame was too much for their poor mother, she went into a decline and could only talk of revenge on the man who had ruined her family. Well, there she was, at the foot of his bed. Lyttelton was no weakling, but it left him a bit shaken for all that, and after the second day he called the servants and said he would get out of Town and go to his place in Epsom, to see if he would balk the ghost there. "Do you know Miles Peter Andrews? He was a friend of Lyttelton's, and went down with him in the coach. Apparently the poor man was a wreck, though he tried not to let it show. They stopped off by a graveyard, and he was looking at the tombstones, and saying how odd it was that so many healthy men should die at the age of 35, which was just his age. But then his spirits rallied and he shouted that they were just an ordinary mob, and that a gentleman could live as long as he pleased. "Well, they got to Pitt Place, and Miles left for his own house. As he walked in through the door, Lyttelton had another of his fits, but they got him back on his feet again, and he didn't go to bed till 11.00. He sent his servant off to get him a spot of medicine - I think it was rhubarb water - and the fellow came back in stirring it with the toothpick. "Slovenly dog!" roars Lyttehon, "get a spoon and do it properly": and of course the servant ran down the corridor to do as he was told. He'd have done better to have stayed because by the time he got back, his master had had another fit. The pillows were too high, and that meant his head was pressed down on his chest, so he couldn't breathe. Before help could arrive, he was dead. "So the ghost's prediction came true. But, you know, that wasn't the only rum thing that happened. As I said, Miles had gone on to his house, but he felt uneasy all evening and went to bed early. After an hour or so he woke up, because the curtains at the foot of his bed were being drawn. Someone was standing there. It was Lyttelton, dressed in his nightgown and cap, and he said, "It's all over, Andrews". Well, Miles imagined that his friend had sneaked into the house and was playing a joke on him - he was always one for the practical jokes - and he threw his slipper at the figure, which just walked off. Miles thought this was a bit much, and called the servants, telling them to get the man out of the house. But when he woke up the next day he heard the news, that his friend had died at the exact moment when he saw his figure at the foot of the bed. "And there's more to come. Next day the Amphlett sisters got a letter from the family in Ireland with dreadful news -their mother had died. What's more, she had died at the very moment that the woman in white had appeared to poor Lyttelton. Now isn't that strange! What do you think of it, Doctor?". "I hardly know what to think. All reason is against it, but all belief is for it. We must accept that there is another and a higher world". "I think we can say Amen to that!".
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