Old Cottage and Slyfhurst
Local archive research dates Old Cottage to the sixteenth century, when houses in Loxwood were scattered among small fields, wooded ground and narrow lanes. The name Slyfhurst, also written Slifehurst and Slyffield, was used for cottages and land in this part of the old parish of Wisborough Green.
The 1841 census recorded Daniel Hampshire at Slyfhurst. Ten years later the 1851 census used the name Slyffield Cottages and recorded the Cox family there; Loxwood History Archive research identifies their home with Old Cottage.
The 1842 tithe map also records a cottage farther back from the road on the ground later occupied by Rose Cottage. That building was removed as the roadside group developed during the nineteenth century.
September Cottage and Appletree Cottage
September Cottage and Appletree Cottage were modest two-storey homes built close to the road, with domestic fires providing cooking and heating and garden plots separated by hedges and fences.
The 1861 census records Andrew Puttock, aged twenty-four, as a bricklayer living with his wife Sarah, who was also twenty-four. The next household was headed by David Puttock, a sawyer, whose fourteen-year-old son Daniel was also recorded as a sawyer. Ten years later John Franks, aged twenty-six, was recorded as a bricklayer’s labourer. A bricklayer’s labourer carried bricks, mixed mortar and prepared materials for the bricklayer.
A photograph from about 1909 records the finished cottages. Station Road is a narrow road without pavements. White railings and hedges mark the gardens, mature trees stand above the roofs and a horse-drawn cart is travelling along the road. The driver sits high on the cart, and the white rail follows the ditch along the left verge. Washing hangs beside one of the houses. September Cottage and Appletree Cottage stand among the brick and tile buildings on the left-hand side.
Loxwood received mains water and electricity in 1938, almost thirty years after the photograph was taken. The chimneys visible above the cottages served the fires used for heating and cooking.
Households at Chapel Green
The 1871 census lists households along this part of Loxwood soon after the cottages were built. The enumerator recorded John and Harriett Franks, Moses and Mary Tickner, Stephen and Harriett Durant, George and Catherine Puttock, William and Ann Grantham, and James and Mary Cox as the return passed from Loxwood village into Chapel Green.
John Franks, aged twenty-six, worked as a bricklayer’s labourer and his wife Harriett was twenty-two. Moses and Mary Tickner had a ten-month-old daughter, Emily. Stephen Durant, aged twenty-three, was a labourer; Harriett was twenty-six and their son Henry was six. George and Catherine Puttock were both thirty and lived with daughters Alice and Henrietta Louisa. William and Ann Grantham were both thirty-three. James Cox, aged sixty-one, was a bargeman, working aboard cargo boats on inland waterways; his household also included his eighteen-year-old son William and a fifteen-year-old servant, Edwin Cooper.
John Franks and the chapel properties
John Franks appears again in the records of the Loxwood Chapel trustees later in the nineteenth century. The trustees owned cottages and other property in the village and paid local tradesmen for repairs. Franks was called when ovens and coppers needed work. A copper was a large vessel, usually built into brickwork and heated from below, which supplied hot water for washing and laundry.
One repair followed a much larger accident. A poplar tree fell through the roof of the cottage beside the church, and the trustees called John Franks to repair the damage.
From Pancake Lane to Station Road
During the later nineteenth century the road was increasingly called Station Road instead of Pancake Lane. Railway stations had opened in the surrounding district at Rudgwick, Baynards, Slinfold and Cranleigh. Twentieth-century census, directory and photographic records use Station Road.
By 1939 a photograph shows a smoother road surface, telegraph poles along the route and clipped hedges around the cottages and fields.
Orchard House, South View and the Field family
Farther down Station Road, the house now called Farm Cottage was built between 1875 and 1895 and was first known as Orchard House. Across Station Road, South View was built at about the same time. In the early twentieth century Robert Field moved to Loxwood from Littlehampton with his wife Emma and their children Mary and Herbert. Robert had worked as a coal merchant. He died in 1910, and Emma remained at Orchard House with her family.
Herbert Field married Catherine Hughes at Brighton in 1918. Their son Robert was born in 1921 and Raymond followed three years later. The Field family operated a dairy and poultry farm from Orchard House, with sheds, barns and yards on the land behind the roadside house.
Herbert also farmed at Barnsfold near Tismans. He served on Loxwood Parish Council and Petworth Rural District Council. As teenagers, Robert and Raymond entered Young Farmers events across Sussex and won awards.
The dairy in the 1930s and 1940s
The 1939 Register was taken on 29 September, less than a month after Britain entered the Second World War. It recorded the Field family at Orchard House. Robert Field, then eighteen, gave his occupation as cowman. A photograph from the same period looks down Station Road past the cottages. Hedges define the plots and the road still has no pavement through this section. Two children are partly visible beside the white rail at the lower edge of the photograph, while a man stands beside a cow at the roadside.
A photograph dated 1944 records the same road during the Second World War. Utility poles line Station Road, with the cottages behind established hedges and trees. Two circular road signs stand on opposite verges, and the road still has no continuous pavement. The buildings of the Field farm extend behind the roadside houses on land later used for development around Farm Close and the medical centre.
Herbert Field died in 1954 after farming in Loxwood for about fifty-four years. Later that year the dairy farm closed and its livestock, farm equipment and other effects were sold at auction.
From Orchard House to Farm Cottage
Part of the farmland behind Station Road was later developed for housing. By 1974 the first houses of the Farm Close development had been built on former fields behind and beside Orchard House.
In 1981 Robert Field moved with his family to a new house at the top of Station Road and gave it the name Orchard House. The original Orchard House, where the Field family had kept dairy cattle and poultry, was renamed Farm Cottage.
