Two winters in a borrowed cottage
The reason for building the Reading Room is set out in an appeal dated 6 October 1896. During the previous two winters, villagers had been meeting in a cottage. The available cottage was then lost because of a change of tenant.
However, those two winters had produced more than an occasional social gathering. The appeal stated that a small library, an Improvement Class and a Sick Club had been established in connection with the temporary institute at the cottage. Attendance at the meetings had also been good. The organisers said that the meetings encouraged the ‘social and intellectual improvement of the village’.
The appeal was headed ‘New Village Institute and Reading Room for Loxwood’. The estimated cost was £100. A subscription list accompanied it, with donations from people across the village and surrounding farms. Corrall Farmer subscribed ten guineas, C. Roberts five guineas, Maurice and John Botting two guineas each, and Harry Sopp one guinea. Many smaller subscriptions followed in pounds, shillings and half-crowns.
John Elliott supplies the site
John Elliott of Hill Top Stores provided the site for the new Reading Room from the High Street property he had acquired in 1891. On 14 December 1896 he conveyed the plot for a nominal £2 to five trustees: Corrall Farmer, Lionel Leslie Constable of Ifold, Robinson Smallpiece of Merry Hills, Maurice Botting of Brewhurst and John Elliott.
The deed describes a narrow plot about forty feet long, measuring approximately twenty-five feet wide at the south and eighteen feet at the north. A footway only three feet wide connected it with High Street. John Elliott retained land on the west and north, while Harry Sopp’s land formed the eastern boundary and the Sopp slaughterhouse, land and other premises lay along the south.
The trustees were required to build the Reading Room and Institute within six months and hold it for the use, benefit, occupation and enjoyment of the inhabitants of Loxwood. The deed also allowed money to be borrowed against the property for construction, repairs and improvements.
The Reading Room opened in 1897. It contained two rooms, each with a fireplace, reached through a small central porch. Early photographs show the brick building set well back from High Street behind railings and a small garden, with the narrow access running between the adjoining properties.
Its position is significant. Finches and John Elliott’s other properties lay immediately to the north, while Mellow, the butcher’s shop and slaughterhouse were beside it and the other village shops continued along High Street. The site was therefore at the lower end of the developing line of shops and working premises owned or influenced by John Elliott. Its location appears to have been a deliberate choice, bringing village meetings and activities to the end of the same High Street frontage used for everyday shopping and business
Village meetings, whist and the upkeep of the Reading Room
The Reading Room was used for village business as well as reading, classes and recreation. The Loxwood Chapel trustees were among the organisations that met there after the new Church of St John the Baptist opened on Vicarage Hill in 1901.
On 29 April 1903 the trustees met at the Reading Room to decide what should happen to the old chapel in High Street. They agreed that the building and its boundary-wall material should be offered for sale by tender. The purchaser was required to demolish the chapel, remove the materials and level the site by 1 October.
The trustees also met there on 22 June 1903. Maurice Botting chaired the meeting, with the Reverend C. H. Hildebrand and Corrall Farmer also present. William Thayre’s tender of £32 10s for the old church material was accepted. The chapel was demolished that September, and local property records associate bricks, roof tiles and windows from it with the new Wharf Building erected beside High Street.
Recreation was also part of the programme. In 1910 Loxwood Reading Room played a return whist match against the Institute at Winterton Hall in Plaistow. Loxwood travelled to Plaistow for the match, which the home side won by twenty-one games to nineteen.
By 1915 the Reading Room itself required attention. The trustees’ meeting of 19 March ordered the roof to be examined and repaired, recorded damp above the fireplaces in both rooms, and called for the windows, doors and exterior woodwork to be painted. The front door also required repair. The same papers refer to the two rooms and a fireplace in each.
The 1915 papers also dealt with management. A committee was to organise the social affairs of the Reading Room, a general meeting of subscribers was to be held each year, and charges could be made for some uses of the rooms while charitable purposes could be admitted without charge. A copy of the rules was to be printed, framed and displayed in the building.
The Reading Room continued to accommodate village organisations. In December 1925 Loxwood Women’s Institute held its annual general meeting there. Baroness Zouche was elected president for the following year, with Mrs Nelson and Mrs Boag as vice-presidents, Mrs Heygate as treasurer and Mrs Barnard as honorary secretary. A representative expected from headquarters was unable to attend because of the poor state of the roads.
The 1928 rules
Draft rules prepared in October 1928 began with the purpose established in 1896. They stated that the Reading Room had been instituted in 1897 for the free use and benefit, occupation and enjoyment of all inhabitants of Loxwood, subject to reasonable restrictions.
Management remained local. The committee included the trustees and five other bona fide inhabitants of Loxwood. It appointed its own chairman, honorary treasurer and honorary secretary, and minutes were to be entered in a book and read at the next meeting.
The rules required an annual public meeting in January. If thirty inhabitants signed a written request, an extraordinary public meeting could be called. The property remained available for general village use rather than one private club.
The Reading Room remained in use into the twentieth century. By the early 1960s its facilities were limited and use had become occasional. A decision to sell was taken in 1963. In 1965 Mrs Reynolds, the owner of Mellow, bought the former Reading Room for £200. After sixty-eight years as a separate village property, it became part of the adjoining house and grounds.
Mellow, the older neighbour
Mellow dates from about 1820, the same period as Finches and the rebuilding of Loxwood Chapel in brick around 1820-22. The Wey and Arun Junction Canal had opened through the lower part of the village in 1816. The small roadside shop building may be earlier than Mellow, perhaps dating from around 1800 at a similar time to the old shop and Post Office opposite the village pond.
The house is two storeys high, with a red-brick front, tiled roof, three front windows with glazing bars and a gabled porch. These features were recorded when Mellow was listed Grade II in 1985.
The 1875 map shows Mellow as a substantial house with the small shop alongside the road. The house and shop were separate properties and behind them were gardens, orchard and agricultural ground, while the turnpike road ran along the frontage.
Fair Magotts in 1851
The 1851 census records the house as Fair Magotts. It appears immediately after the neighbouring property to the south recorded as ‘Loxwood Street or Magots’ in the census sequence. The Fair Magotts household was then associated with agricultural labour, while the 1861 census records a cordwainer at the property.
The name Fair Magotts meant whimsical fancy or a tempting array of goods.
The village butcher at Mellow
The Sopp family’s butchery developed from the business formerly operated in the brick building at the Onslow Arms. In 1851 and 1861 the inn combined innkeeping, butchery and farming. During the 1860s the inn and butchery separated, and by 1871 the census records a separate property simply as the ‘Butchers Shop’ beside Mellow.
On 29 April 1891 Henry Hemming, the local land agent, offered the Loxwood freeholds at the King’s Head Hotel in Horsham under the will of the late John Sopp. Maurice Botting of Brewhurst bought Lot 2 for £500. The lot was described as a well-built residence with an established butcher’s shop, slaughterhouse, stabling and adjoining premises, with about an acre and a quarter of orchard and arable land. The Sussex Agricultural Express reported the sale on 2 May.
Five years later the Reading Room deed records Harry Sopp’s land immediately beside the Reading Room. Harry Sopp’s land formed its eastern boundary, while the slaughterhouse, land and other butcher’s premises lay along the southern boundary. The fields opposite the shop were used for cattle.
Harry Sopp and the camera
The Sopp family were associated with the butchery into the twentieth century. Harry Sopp’s son, also Harry, returned from the First World War badly wounded. He took up photography and became known for his pictures of people and events around Loxwood and neighbouring villages.
The Petworth Society’s account of Harry Sopp records that he worked from a small wooden hut opposite his father’s butcher’s shop. His work took him to weddings in Loxwood, Kirdford, Plaistow and Wisborough Green, and he also photographed local people at work. Farm labourers, craftsmen, showmen and members of the Dependant community appear among his subjects.
The butchery remained part of village life until the 1960s, when the business was sold and moved to the parade of shops in the village centre. The old butcher’s premises and the Reading Room were then joined to Mellow, changing a group of separate working and public buildings into one residential property.
Mellow after the Reading Room
A photograph taken in 1962 records Mellow and the Reading Room shortly before the sale. Mellow faces the road and the smaller brick Reading Room is beside it behind its boundary. The photograph also records the changed High Street: a surfaced road with a white centre line, pavement, utility poles and motor traffic.
Mellow was listed Grade II on 22 May 1985. By then the Reading Room had been part of the property for twenty years. The statutory description records the red-brick front, tiled roof, three windows, glazing bars and gabled porch of the older house.
Knight Frank’s 2014 sale particulars describe the later extent of the property. The main house included an entrance hall, study, dining room, drawing room, kitchen, cellar, two double bedrooms and a family bathroom. The adjoining annexe provided two further bedrooms, a family room and kitchen. Outside were a garage and workshop, three stables, tack room, store, garden and a paddock of about one acre, within a total holding of about one and a half acres.
