1851 – Neale Shotter’s tailor’s shop
The 1851 census records Neale Shotter at Loxwood as a tailor. He and his wife Mary occupied the shop beside Hall House. A village tailor made, altered and repaired clothing at a time when garments were costly possessions and were expected to last. Cloth, thread, buttons and finished work would have occupied the small premises long before the counter became associated with stamps and telegrams.
By 1878 the trade had changed. Mary Foster was listed as a draper in Loxwood and was using the shop. Drapery covered cloth, haberdashery, clothing and household textiles. Mary’s name also appears in the grocery trade at Black Hall, linking the shop beside Hall House with the early Dependant trading activity that later developed into the Combination Stores.
In 1885 Mary Foster married Owen Puttick. The drapery trade around Loxwood was then entering a period of rapid change as the larger Combination Stores developed beside the village pond.
The Post Office moves from Hilltop
During the 1870s Loxwood’s postal business operated from Hilltop Stores farther north on Guildford Road. John Parsons was recorded there in 1871, and later grocer John Elliott continued the shop and Post Office.
Around 1901 the Post Office moved to the shop beside Hall House. John Foster Dennis, who had come to Loxwood from Devon with his wife Mary, ran the premises as a saddler and harness maker and became the village sub-postmaster. Saddlery was still an essential rural trade. Farm horses, delivery carts and private traps depended upon leather collars, bridles, reins and harness that needed regular fitting and repair.
Postal work added another stream of customers to the same counter. Letters and parcels passed through the shop while the saddlery served the horse traffic on Guildford Road.
The burglary of 1901
On 27 July 1901 the Sussex Agricultural Express reported a burglary at the Loxwood Post Office. John Foster Dennis told Petworth magistrates that he had closed the premises at eight o’clock on the evening of 11 July, checked them again at about half past nine and gone to bed at ten.
Between half past four and five the next morning he heard a noise. Builders were expected early, so the sound at first caused little alarm. At about five o’clock Dennis went downstairs and found the shop door open. The bell above the door had been bent forward, the fanlight was down and its cord had been broken. The flap of the counter had been lifted and £16 10s was missing from the desk, together with three penny pieces left on top.
Dennis had seen a man in a dark suit walking down the road towards the bridge. Police Constable Hill then found an unusual footprint in the deep mud near the shop, made by a flat piece of iron across the welt of a boot. He followed the same mark at intervals along the road and arrested soldier Frank Myers at Billingshurst at about 7.15 that morning. Myers was committed for trial after the magistrates heard the evidence from Dennis and the constable.
George Weller and the saddler’s shop
In 1905 George Weller took over the saddler’s shop and Post Office. His daughter Ellen served as sub-postmistress, and the Weller household was recorded at the premises in the 1911 census. The larger house adjoining the shop was added during the first years of their occupation, between about 1905 and 1909.
A photograph taken around 1909 captures the business at its most characteristic. Leather harness hangs in loops across the front of the shop. George Weller stands on the steps, a horse-drawn cart waits beside the building and the road sign points travellers towards Petworth and Billingshurst in one direction and Rudgwick and Horsham in the other. Hall House fills the neighbouring frontage.
The photograph records the point at which the old horse-powered village and the modern communications village met at the same doorway. Harnesses still hung outside while the postal counter inside carried messages and correspondence far beyond Loxwood.
Post, Money Order and Telegraph Office
Kelly’s Directory for 1915 lists George Weller as sub-postmaster and describes the premises as the Loxwood ‘Post, M.O. & T. Office’ – the Post, Money Order and Telegraph Office.
A money order allowed cash to be sent securely through the Post Office. The sender paid money at the counter and the recipient collected the corresponding amount through the postal system. Telegrams carried written messages electrically over the telegraph network and were delivered in paper form at their destination. For urgent news, business orders or family messages, the telegraph was much faster than a letter.
The same small shop therefore handled ordinary mail, registered and financial services and telegrams. George Weller remained associated with the business until around the end of the First World War.
1920 – the Dependant Brethren buy the Post Office
Aylward, Smith & Co bought the Post Office in 1920. The company ran the Combination Stores and managed much of the commercial property associated with Loxwood’s Dependant Brethren, commonly called the Cokelers. The purchase came during a significant expansion in which the Post Office and Hall House next door were acquired separately.
The acquisition placed the Post Office alongside the Stores, farms and houses already held within the Dependant business network. The shop continued to operate under tenant postmasters, while Aylward, Smith & Co retained ownership for more than fifty years.
Hall House, the former Drovers Arms and farm, now stood beside the Post Office within the same wider group of Dependant property.
The telephone exchange comes to the shop
By January 1924 Loxwood had its own telephone service, and the first village exchange operated from the Post Office. The shop itself used the short number Loxwood 1. Calls were connected manually: the operator received the requested number and joined the two lines at a switchboard inside the premises.
A postcard dated 1926 shows the change clearly. A tall telephone pole rises beside the shop, with several overhead wires carried on crossarms. Outside the Post Office stands a K1 public telephone kiosk, the reinforced-concrete design introduced by the General Post Office in the early 1920s. Villagers could now make a telephone call from the same place where they bought stamps, sent telegrams and collected post.
The telephone equipment altered again in 1933 when the manual switchboard closed and an automatic exchange opened farther along Guildford Road. The public call box remained outside the Post Office, keeping the shop as the public point of access to the telephone network.
Fred and Blodwin Muggeridge
In 1938 Fred Muggeridge, known locally as Jack, and his wife Blodwin took over the shop as tenants of Aylward, Smith & Co. Fred became the village postmaster and remained closely associated with the premises for more than twenty years.
A photograph from 1939 shows the Post Office across the pond with its shopfront, attached house, telephone pole and public kiosk. Hall House stands immediately beside it. Later photographs from the 1940s and 1950s record the same compact group as road traffic increased and the telephone wires multiplied above the frontage.
Fred Muggeridge died suddenly in 1961. His years at the counter covered the Second World War and the post-war period, when letters, parcels and telephone calls remained central to everyday village communication.
From village Post Office to Old Post House
Aylward, Smith & Co sold the Post Office property in 1972 to Desmond Smithers of Linden House. Postal and retail use continued under later ownership before the premises eventually became known as the Old Post House.
A later sale brochure still recorded the scale of the former shop: a long ground-floor room measuring about 44 feet 11 inches by 10 feet 6 inches, with stores behind it and the domestic house adjoining. Change of use allowed the old retail space to return to residential accommodation.
The change can be read in two surviving views of the same doorway. In the photograph of about 1909, leather harness hangs across the shopfront and a horse-drawn cart stands beside the steps. By 1926, a telephone pole, overhead wires and a public call box had joined the Post Office frontage. The building is now the Old Post House, with the long former shop room still extending beside Hall House.
