The trading begins at Blackwool
The first Dependant shop in this story stood farther north on Guildford Road at Blackwool. Felix Foster, one of John Sirgood’s early Loxwood converts, occupied shop premises there during the nineteenth century. An auction notice in 1876 described Longhouse or Vine Cottage as a draper’s shop beside the larger Black Hall property and the roadside smithy. Felix was recorded as a shopkeeper before his death in 1880.
His daughters continued the family’s trading work. Sarah and Caroline Foster sold groceries. Their sister Mary developed experience in drapery after a period in domestic service, and directories in 1878 and 1882 list her as a Loxwood draper. By the early 1880s the Dependant grocery business appeared under the name Puttock & Co and the drapery under Foster & Co.
These businesses provided goods, wages and training within the community. They also gave several Dependant women a route from domestic service into shop work, accounts and management. The commercial centre then shifted south towards the village pond, where the Stores could expand beside the main road.
Why the Dependants created shops
John Sirgood arrived in Loxwood in 1850 as a shoemaker and lay preacher. His followers called themselves the Dependant Brethren because their religious teaching emphasised dependence upon God. The name Cokelers became the familiar local nickname for the community.
The Brethren met frequently for worship, prayer and Bible reading. Benjamin Piper, who later became an elder at Warnham, recalled the value of employment that allowed members to organise their working lives around those meetings. Dependant businesses gave women paid work as managers, shop assistants and domestic staff. Men found work as bakers, carmen, craftsmen, labourers and farm workers.
Sirgood used the word ‘combination’ for the spiritual and social unity of his followers. The same idea shaped the businesses. Members combined money and labour, bought shares and left dividends invested in the enterprises. Farms joined the network during the 1880s, supplying produce and employment. The shops became the visible centre of a system in which worship, work and practical support operated together.
Local recollection adds another part of the early trading story. A woman in the Dependant community, with only a few pennies to spare, spent some of them on ingredients for six lardy cakes. The cakes sold immediately. She baked another batch for local farm workers, and the baking venture grew from those first sales. In later years the Steam Bakery beside the pond produced bread and cakes on a very different scale, but the six lardy cakes remained part of the remembered origin of Dependant trade in Loxwood.
The Stores beside the pond
By October 1885 newspapers were using the name Combination Stores at Loxwood. The business had two main departments. Ann Powell managed the grocery as Powell & Co. Catherine Enticknap managed the linen drapery as Enticknap & Co. John Sirgood died at the Stores on 19 October 1885, placing the property firmly within the last chapter of his life.
The 1891 census records the two departments in detail. Catherine Enticknap, aged thirty-one, was a draper’s manageress and employer. Esther Cumber worked as her general servant and Jesse Puttock as a carman. Ann Powell, aged forty-three, was the grocery manageress and employer. Her household included housekeeper Jane Knight, grocery assistant Mary Denyer, general servant Jane Whetton, baker’s assistant Caroline Pullen, carman Albert Maple and baker Henry Aylward.
The staff list shows the Stores already working as a substantial country business. Assistants served customers and managed stock. Bakers produced food on the premises. Carmen drove horse-drawn carts and vans, collected supplies and delivered orders to farms and houses around Loxwood and neighbouring villages.
Henry Aylward and Ethel Smith
Henry Aylward came from a Dependant family in Kent. By 1891, aged twenty-five, he was working as a baker at the Loxwood Stores. Ethel Smith was born in Suffolk and entered domestic service in Southwark before joining the Dependant grocery business at Warnham. She transferred to Loxwood in 1894 when Catherine Enticknap left the drapery management to marry Ernest Standen.
Around 1896 Henry Aylward and Ethel Smith established Aylward, Smith & Co. A company calendar dated 1897 advertised ‘Aylward, Smith & Co., Grocers, Drapers, etc., Combination Stores, Loxwood, Sussex’. Henry became managing director and later a senior elder of the Loxwood congregation. Ethel became a leading figure in the Stores household and company.
The buildings expanded at the same time. The 1896 Ordnance Survey shows a large shop facing Guildford Road and a separate building behind it associated with the bakery. The bakery increased in size before the 1912 survey. A large garage later appeared on the frontage as motor transport joined the older horse-drawn delivery service.
A country store for almost every need
Trade directories chart the widening range. In 1899 Aylward, Smith & Co were grocers, provision merchants, drapers, ironmongers, cycle makers and agents. Advertising from the following decade added baking, house furnishing, coal and a motor-car depot. Customers could hire horses and traps, motor cycles and trailers.
By 1918 the business advertised groceries, bread, drapery, ironmongery, house furnishings, boots, china and glass, farming supplies, cycles, trailers, petrol and motor oils. The Stores also acted as a local insurance agent. A family could buy food, clothing, fuel and household goods from the same business. Farmers and tradesmen could obtain hardware and equipment. Travellers and local residents could use the cycle and motor departments.
The business reached well beyond the shop counter. Delivery rounds carried goods to Loxwood, Ifold, Foxbridge, Headsfoldwood and surrounding villages. Horse-drawn carts gradually gave way to motor vans. The Stores became an early telephone subscriber with the short local number ‘Loxwood 3’, linking the business directly to customers and suppliers.
Living and working at the Stores
The census returns describe a large resident household around the business. In 1901 Henry Aylward headed the Combination Stores household as a grocer and draper employing staff. Ethel Smith was the housekeeper. Other residents included grocery and drapery assistants, a baker, a pastrycook, a needlewoman, domestic servants and three carmen.
By 1911 Ethel Smith headed the household and described the business as grocery, drapery and cycle dealing. William John Powell worked as a grocery assistant, Sarah Woods in groceries and Kate Rugman in drapery. Sarah Ketchell, Elizabeth Cogger, Annie Williams and Deborah Minall carried out domestic work. Walter Nash was recorded as a farmer. Henry Aylward spent census night visiting the Dependant community at South Norwood, one of several congregations linked through the Brethren’s wider network.
A manageress interviewed in 1917 described communal meals, a small cash wage and clothing bought from the Stores. Food and many everyday needs came through the household. Chapel meetings occupied Tuesday and Thursday evenings, and Sunday included three long periods of worship. Work and religious life followed the same weekly rhythm.
The Steam Bakery and the yard
The Steam Bakery became one of the best-known parts of the site. Flour was stored upstairs and could be sent down a chute to the dough mixer below. Local memories describe cottage cobs, farmhouse loaves, sandwich bread and lardy cakes coming from the ovens, with the smell of baking spreading through the yard and shops.
The laundry stood across the yard. Washing was soaked ready for the Monday wash, dried on long lines around the vegetable ground and passed through a large mangle. Six bedrooms were remembered over the shops and three more above the laundry. Major Dependant gatherings brought visitors from other congregations, and the upper rooms around the Stores accommodated members who stayed in Loxwood.
The garage added another layer of activity. Delivery vans, hire vehicles and customers’ cars brought mechanics and fuel to the frontage. Photographs from the twentieth century show petrol pumps and an increasingly busy roadside business beside the pond.
From Aylward and Smith to the village shops
Henry Aylward remained the senior manager until his death in March 1939. Ethel Smith died later that year. Younger members of the Brethren continued Aylward, Smith & Co through the Second World War and into the post-war period.
Later village memories still identify the Stores by individual departments. Gwen Bradshaw, a member of the Brethren, managed the grocery section. Customers remembered bacon, ham and cheese at the counter and fresh bread from the bakery. The hardware department at the pond end supplied tools, fittings and farming goods. By the 1960s part of the old garage frontage had become a butcher’s shop.
The Dependant population gradually reduced during the twentieth century and the community sold farms, houses and stores over a number of years. Loxwood became the last Dependant store in community ownership. Aylward, Smith & Co sold the Combination Stores in the mid-1970s.
The present village shops continue the trading history from Felix Foster’s shop at Blackwool, through the grocery and drapery departments, the Steam Bakery and the motor garage, to the shops serving Loxwood today.
