Penlands before Linden House
Loxwood History records Penlands in a settlement of about 1665 associated with John Overington, who also held property described as Spye Lands. Penlands was therefore a local land-name long before the surviving Victorian appearance of Linden House. The turnpike road made in 1775 later became Guildford Road, passing below the property on the route between Loxwood and Alfold. The Loxwood map of 1806 shows a building on the site.
A brick house and a working smithy
The clearest description of the property in the first half of the nineteenth century appeared in the Sussex Advertiser on 31 July 1849. The sale notice offered an ‘excellent modern brick-built and tile-headed residence’ beside the turnpike road from Loxwood to Guildford. In 1849 the word modern described a comparatively recent house. Its rooms included a parlour, front and back kitchens, pantry, cellar and four roomy bedchambers, with a large productive garden stocked with fruit trees.
The sale also included another large fruit garden containing a second roomy dwelling and a well of ‘excellent water’. Beside it stood a recently erected smith’s shop, substantially built in brick and already in full trade. The smithy and its adjoining dwelling were let for a further four years from the following Lady Day at £20 a year, while the principal residence was available to its purchaser. Auctioneer Henry Hemming of Loxwood handled enquiries for the proprietor, Thomas Pink of Sompting near Shoreham.
George Trower at Smiths House
The census taken on 30 March 1851 called the main residence Smiths House. George Trower, aged forty-four, lived there with his wife Sarah and their children George, James, Albert, William and Catherine. George worked as a painter, glazier and paperhanger. A paperhanger prepared walls and hung the patterned papers increasingly used in nineteenth-century interiors, while glazing and painting brought the same tradesman into houses, shops and farm buildings throughout the district.
Twenty-year-old George Trower and fifteen-year-old James Trower were both recorded as painters, glaziers and paperhangers employed by their father. Ten-year-old Albert and seven-year-old William were scholars, and Catherine was two. Also staying at Smiths House was twenty-four-year-old James Waddy, a journeyman blacksmith from Pulborough.
The neighbouring census entry was the second tenement of the late Shop House, where fifty-one-year-old blacksmith Cornelius Williams lived with his wife Sarah and their children. Loxwood History identifies George Trower’s household at Penlands again in the 1861 census, when George was still recorded as a painter and glazier and his son William had joined the same trade.
A newspaper report in July 1862 records an incident involving George Trower’s cucumber plants. Thomas Finch pleaded guilty to damaging the plants, valued at ten shillings, after admitting that he had been drinking. The Brighton Gazette recorded a sentence of twenty-one days’ hard labour. In August 1872 auctioneer Henry Hemming announced that George Trower’s household furniture and effects would be sold because he was leaving the neighbourhood. The auction was arranged for 25 September 1872.
George Goodwin comes to Penlands
By the 1881 census George Thomas Goodwin, aged forty-seven, was living at Penlands and was recorded as a retired builder. His wife Emma was forty-six, and nine of their children were at home: Thomas, Herbert, Harry, Horace, Elizabeth, Emma, Kate, Annie and Rose. Their birthplaces included Kensington, Bromley, Shepperton and Chertsey.
George Goodwin had worked in the large Victorian building developments of west London. London Metropolitan Archives records place Messrs Goodwin and White in an agreement for Linden Grove at Notting Hill Gate in December 1873. Further conveyances in 1875 and 1876 name George Goodwin in connection with houses at 4, 34 and 48 Linden Gardens and with stables in Linden Mews.
From Penlands to Linden House
The 1881 census used the name Penlands. On 31 May 1884 the Surrey Advertiser offered a ‘very substantial residence’ at Loxwood and directed enquiries to George Goodwin at Linden House. Goodwin had recently been associated with Linden Grove and Linden Gardens in London; by 1884 the name Linden House was established at his Loxwood home.
The 1884 advertisement also records the scale of the property after its Victorian enlargement. The house was brick and stone built, with three lofty reception rooms, six lofty bedrooms, a dressing room, two water closets and good servants’ offices. Outside were a two-stall stable, a large coach house with two rooms above, a greenhouse, straw yards, cow houses, a fowl house and piggeries. Three cottages and four meadows brought the holding to about twelve acres, and the grounds were planted with choice shrubs. The asking price was £3,000.
By July 1886 the estate had been sold, and John Churchman & Son advertised an auction of the household contents on instructions from George Goodwin, who was leaving the district. The catalogue ranged from bedroom and drawing-room furniture to carpets, china, garden tools, harness and poultry equipment, with the sale beginning on 15 July 1886.
Corrall and Elizabeth Farmer
Corrall Farmer was a landscape artist, born at Kilburn in 1865, and the son of John Stinson Farmer, the railway-signalling manufacturer who had been the business partner of engineer John Saxby. Elizabeth Constable came from the Arundel and Littlehampton brewing family and was the sister of Lionel Leslie Constable, later associated with Ifold House. Corrall Farmer and Elizabeth Constable married in 1887.
The 1891 census records Corrall and Elizabeth at Linden House with their one-year-old son Neil John Constable Farmer. Corrall gave his occupation as artist painting. Three domestic servants also lived in the house: cook Eliza Cheesmore, nurse Annie Crees and housemaid Rosina Baker. By 1901 the household included daughters Elizabeth Maud Olivia, Eileen Clara, Violet Halton Theodosia and Kathleen Corrall, together with a nurse, parlour maid, housemaid and kitchen maid. Fifteen-year-old Anne Dicker, the kitchen maid, had been born in Loxwood.
Corrall Farmer’s name also entered the records of Loxwood Chapel. He served as a trustee and churchwarden, handled property business and became involved in the disputes and building programme that preceded the opening of St John the Baptist at Vicarage Hill. In 1897 he helped arrange the translation of the medieval 1404 grant that had authorised Loxwood’s old place of worship. He remained a churchwarden when the new church opened in August 1901.
Corrall Farmer the landscape painter
On 12 August 1902 auctioneers King & Chasemore sold part of Corrall Farmer’s household furniture and a large collection of oil paintings at Linden House. The catalogue included pictures by George Chester and Adolphe Mare together with works titled A Farmer’s Daughter, The Last Shoe and The Hour of Tribulation.
Corrall continued exhibiting after the family began spending more time at Headsfoldwood. In February 1905 the St James’s Gazette reviewed a small collection of his oil paintings at the Ryder Gallery in London. The reviewer described the exhibition as almost entirely Sussex woodland scenery and singled out Weald of Sussex in Early Autumn and Fair Sussex. The paper noted that Corrall had exhibited several times at the Paris Salon but that this was his first serious venture in England.
A boarding school at Linden House
Arthur Hogarth Oak-Rhind, a Church of England clergyman, tutor and university coach, married Florence Marguerite Say in London in 1907. The couple came to Loxwood and used Linden House for a small boarding school for older boys. Loxwood History records accommodation for up to eight boarders, with lessons, meals and domestic arrangements organised within the house and its grounds.
The school prospectus described a house with large rooms and about four acres of ground. The boys had a carpentry workshop, a photographic dark room, two tennis lawns, kitchen gardens, a paddock, stables and a small farm. The daily routine began at 7.30 in the morning, with breakfast at 8.15; lessons occupied the morning and parts of the late afternoon and evening, leaving time for outdoor exercise and local sport. Pupils were encouraged to bring bicycles.
On 24 June 1908 Florence Oak-Rhind gave birth to a daughter, Rosaleen, at Linden House; the birth was announced the following month in the Englishman’s Overland Mail. Their son Ralph Lancelot was born in Loxwood in 1909.
By census night in 1911 Arthur and Florence Oak-Rhind were living at Collington Brow in Bexhill. Arthur again described himself as a Church of England tutor and university coach. Four teenage boys were boarding with the family there, including pupils born in Assam and South Africa, and Rosaleen and Ralph were both recorded as having been born at Loxwood.
The Farmer family and the return of Penlands
The 1911 census places Corrall and Elizabeth Farmer at Little Headsfoldwood with their four daughters and a domestic servant. By March 1928 Corrall Farmer was again listed at Linden House when the local telephone service expanded. A newspaper list of new subscribers gave Linden House the number Loxwood 23.
At the second exhibition of the Association of Sussex Artists in Horsham in June 1930, Corrall Farmer showed a painting titled In Downland. The same report recorded several watercolours by Corrall and by his daughter Kathleen Farmer. In July 1934 Corrall, described as a founder member of the Association, exhibited The North Country, with shadows across a cornfield and a group of barns at Amberley.
In 1934 the June meeting of the Loxwood Women’s Institute was held as a garden party at Penlands, where members enjoyed the hospitality of Elizabeth Farmer. Tea was served under the trees and the afternoon ended with a treasure hunt. Four years later the Loxwood and Alfold Women’s Institute held another June meeting in the garden by Elizabeth Farmer’s permission, with stalls, sideshows, competitions and tea.
The national Register of 29 September 1939 used the address Penlands, Alfold Road. Corrall Farmer, aged seventy-three, was still recorded as a landscape artist. Elizabeth Farmer was at home with their son Neil John Constable Farmer, a civil engineer, and daughters Elizabeth Maud Olivia Farmer and Eileen Clara Farmer.
Penlands at war
During the Second World War the house took on a practical village role. By August 1942 Penlands was the Loxwood and Alfold preservation centre, established to turn local fruit and other produce into food that could be stored. The West Sussex Gazette described the centre as an ‘absolute hive of industry’. A Ministry of Agriculture representative, Mrs Graham, inspected its work and passed the jams and jellies as Grade A1.
The centre also had a canning machine sent by country women in America for country women in England. Miss Gilchrist, the county instructor, spent two days teaching the correct method of sealing cans, after which the centre could undertake both private and commercial canning. Kathleen Farmer acted as secretary at Penlands, and the Ministry of Food encouraged local households to use the service so that surplus fruit would be preserved rather than wasted.
Corrall Farmer’s final years and Kathleen
Corrall Farmer died in May 1943 at the age of seventy-seven. The burial register of St John the Baptist records his residence as Penlands and his burial in Loxwood churchyard on 17 May 1943.
Kathleen Corrall Farmer remained associated with the family home and with local organisations. On 28 February 1950 she married Reverend Benjamin Kenyon, Rector of Alfold, at Chichester. The marriage announcement described her as the daughter of the late Corrall and Elizabeth Farmer of Loxwood.
Deanery Antiques at Linden House
In September 1966 Deanery Antiques announced that Desmond and Joan Smithers were now at Linden House and were seeking oak, walnut and mahogany furniture, silver, china and glass. The business used the telephone number Loxwood 223.
In June 1968 Desmond and Joan Smithers’ daughter Ann married Malcolm Wakeling at St Peter and St Paul Church in Godalming. The Surrey Advertiser reported that a reception for 220 guests was held afterwards at the home of the bride’s parents, Linden House.
Deanery Antiques was still trading from Linden House in April 1971. Desmond and Joan Smithers advertised seventeenth- and eighteenth-century oak, walnut and mahogany furniture together with decorative pieces and porcelain, and continued to give the business telephone number as Loxwood 223.
Linden House today
The large Victorian house was later divided into four apartments. Modern sale particulars record high ceilings, decorative cornicing, deep skirting boards, picture rails and large windows within the converted building. The original solid-wood entrance doors open into a tiled lobby and then into the shared entrance hall, where the upper floors are reached by a sweeping staircase with decorative spindles.
