c1575-1700 – the farmhouse beside Loxwood Bridge
A structural survey of the Onslow Arms dated its timber-framed wings to about 1575-1625. Loxwood History research identifies the original building as a farmhouse. The present external appearance is later, but the timber frame places the core of the house in the period when the track through this part of Loxwood was changing.
Before Loxwood Bridge, travellers crossed the River Lox at a ford farther east of the building and continued north by Nep Lane to meet the Rudgwick road. A baptism entered in the Wisborough Green Church Baptism Register in March 1568 was recorded ‘at loxwood brydge’, and sixteenth-century maps show a bridge in this location. The reason for recording the baptism at the bridge is not stated, but it was an unusual event and 1568 is used as the working date for the first bridge, because other building projects were recorded in the village that year.
The farmhouse was built beside the route leading north from the new bridge towards Loxwood Chapel and Loxwood Place. This location was closer to the chapel than the older route across the ford and via Nep Lane towards Drungewick and Rudgwick. The bridge provided direct access to the farmhouse from the south and placed the building on the road that later became the High Street.
The surnames Mill, Myll and Mills occur in Loxwood records during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, including the Brewhurst watermill and chapel records. The first ownership evidence for the Onslow property names Abraham Mills in 1700. The sequence provides the basis for a possible connection with the local Mill or Mills family at Brewhurst.
1700-1801 – Whitehole, Bridgefoot and Bridge House
In 1700 Abraham Mills, described as a husbandman of Loxwood, and his wife Sarah dealt with property that Abraham had inherited from his brother John Mills. A later lease and release dated April 1730 referred back to Abraham as a former occupier and gave the Queen’s Highway as the western boundary.
By the later eighteenth century the property belonged to the Onslow family, whose local estates included Drungewick Manor and the Manor of Loxwood. The Land Tax records used several names for the house. It was recorded as Whitehole in 1782, 1783 and 1784, as Bridgefoot from 1785 to 1788, and as Bridge Ale House between 1799 and 1819. Middleton Onslow was the owner in the earlier entries and Denzil Onslow in the later records.
John Hemming was the occupier of the property from 1792 into the early nineteenth century. The turnpike road had passed the house since 1757 and the River Lox bridge was rebuilt in brick in 1791, so the house stood beside a road increasingly used by carts, livestock and travellers. The detailed history of the toll gate and bridge is covered within the details of the canal and river bridge
The first firm reference found to the new public-house name is an advertisement in the Sun of 13 November 1801. A freehold estate at Loxwood was to be sold by auction on 24 November ‘at the Onslow Arms, Loxwood’. The same name appears in further sale notices in 1805, 1809 and 1813.
1801-1871 – the Onslow Arms
During the first half of the nineteenth century the Onslow Arms became a regular venue for local auctions, property sales and business meetings. The deposited canal plan of 1812 still records General Onslow as owner and John Hemming as occupier, and the Wey and Arun Junction Canal opened immediately behind the property in 1816.
The Loxwood rate books record Jacob Hoar at the property in 1820. An entry of 6 March reads ‘Hoar for Onslow Arms’ and assessed the property at £1 2s 6d. Jacob remained there for many years. The 1841 poll book names him as occupier of the Onslow Arms Inn, together with Willetts and Farnfold Farm, and the census records his occupation as victualler.
John Sopp followed. The 1842 tithe apportionment names Denzil Onslow as owner of the public house and garden and John Sopp as occupier. The 1851 and 1861 censuses record John Sopp at the Onslow Arms as an innkeeper, butcher and farmer, while Melville’s Directory in 1858 also listed him as a brewer and spirit merchant. During the 1860s the businesses separated. By 1866 William Sopp was named as proprietor of the Onslow Arms, while John Sopp was listed separately as a butcher and farmer. The butchers shop was the brick rectangular building at the end of the current pub. By the 1871 census John Sopp had moved his business and was living at the property now called Mellow, with the butcher shop by the side of the road.
Turnpike meetings was held at the Onslow Arms and local property auctions were advertised from the inn. Newspaper notices in 1856 and 1864 advertised the letting of road tolls, the turnpike trustees met at the Onslow Arms in 1861, and the sale of the Loxwood Turnpike Gate-House and Garden was also held there in 1867.
The Loxwood Fair and agricultural show
Loxwood Fair was already established by the later eighteenth century, and its development belongs closely to the turnpike road, which brought carts, horses and livestock through the village on a maintained route. The toll schedule itself shows the importance of animal traffic: cattle were charged at 1d each and sheep at 2d for a score of twenty.
The fields around the river crossing, Brewhurst and opposite the Onslow Arms provided space beside the turnpike for animals, dealers and visitors. Loxwood History records agricultural shows in these fields from 1788, while later accounts remembered Loxwood as an important spring livestock fair where farmers could sell young stock that had been kept in yards through the winter rather than drive it to a more distant market. The fair became well known in the surrounding Sussex farming district and was widely reported and advertised, brining livestock and buyers into Loxwood each May.
An advertisement for the 1870 Loxwood Fair and Show of Fat and Lean Cattle and Colts expected a large entry of fat and lean cattle and sheep. Prizes included silver cups, cash awards and an iron plough for the best fat cow. William Sopp of the Onslow Arms provided dinner at half-past one, with tickets costing 2s 6d and available at the bar, while applications for sheep pens were made to John Sopp.
By 1870 the railway had added another way of reaching the fair. A conveyance met visitors at Billingshurst Station after the morning train and returned them in time for the 6.30 evening service. The fair was still centred on the old turnpike and the fields beside the Onslow Arms, but visitors could now complete part of their journey by rail.
1871–1885 – Robert Knowles, the fields and village gatherings
The Wey and Arun Junction Canal formally closed in 1871, ending the canal traffic that had passed immediately behind the Onslow Arms for more than fifty years. In the same year Robert Knowles took a twenty-one-year lease of the inn from Denzil Onslow at £35 a year. The lease included an accommodation meadow of a little over two acres, giving the inn access to the adjoining ground used for livestock, gatherings and other events. Knowles received the licence in September 1872 and remained at the Onslow Arms until 1885. The 1881 census records him there with his second wife, Fanny Knowles.
Denzil Onslow died in February 1879 and the Drungewick Manor estate was offered for sale that July. The sale particulars included the Onslow Arms and repeated the terms of Robert Knowles’s lease. Ernest Braby bought the estate, but the inn itself soon passed to its tenant: on 4 May 1880 the Onslow Arms was conveyed to Robert Knowles.
These years also saw some of the largest gatherings held around the inn. John Arthur Garton’s annual Loxwood festivals began in 1879, the year of his fiftieth birthday, when the first large village feast was held near the Onslow Arms. The celebration developed into an annual summer event.
The Onslow Arms Benefit Society also used the neighbouring fields. In 1883 its anniversary began with a church service preached by the Reverend John Davies Trigge, after which the members walked to a meadow close to the inn where a large tent had been erected. Robert Knowles supplied the dinner, the Alfold Brass Band played under John Tate, and the society then had 121 members.
1887–1889 – the dispute over the old wharf ground
The open ground opposite the Onslow Arms had been used for several purposes before Robert Knowles became involved with it. While the canal was working it served as wharf ground, and local people later remembered timber, hoops and other goods being left there. After canal traffic ceased, the ground remained open and continued to be used during the fair and other village gatherings. Roundabouts, swings, shooting galleries and other attractions were brought onto it when the club and fair were held.
After leaving the Onslow Arms in 1885, Robert Knowles turned his attention to part of this ground. He moved an old railway carriage onto it and lived there, then began enclosing the land and eventually replaced the carriage with a house. Knowles treated the ground as his own and collected payments from people bringing attractions to the annual gatherings, but local residents challenged his claim. Meetings were held in Loxwood at which he was asked to establish his right to the land. Those present were not satisfied with the evidence produced, and a group pulled down his fencing. Knowles put it back; the fence was pulled down again.
The disagreement then became physical. During another attempt to remove the enclosure, Robert Knowles and his wife resisted the men taking down the fence. Knowles was armed with a hoe and Mrs Knowles with what the newspaper reports described as an old sword or cutlass. Injuries were alleged, and by 1889 an argument that had begun over a piece of former wharf ground had reached the County Court.
The hearing brought forward people who remembered the ground before Knowles enclosed it. Henry Frederick Napper of Lakers Lodge told the court that he had never known it to be enclosed and that, while the canal was working, both he and his father had stored hoops there without paying for the privilege. James Overington, a Loxwood wood dealer, and Maurice Botting of Brewhurst also gave evidence about its earlier use. Other witnesses remembered villagers playing stoolball, skittles and ninepins on the ground.
The jury found against Knowles, who then appealed to the Divisional Court. He maintained that he was entitled to exclude others from the ground and that the villagers had no right to remove his enclosure. The judges upheld the verdict, finding that there had been sufficient evidence for the jury to accept an established local right to use the ground and that those who removed the fencing had been entitled to do so.
Knowles’s appeal was dismissed with costs. What had begun with an old railway carriage, a fence and a piece of open ground opposite the Onslow Arms had developed into a court case involving the former canal wharf, the village fair and local memories extending back over many years.
1889–1914 – cyclists, travellers and the commercial inn
While the dispute over the ground opposite was passing through the courts, the Onslow Arms itself was entering another period. In 1889 Kelly’s Directory named John Hampshire at the ‘Onslow Arms Commercial Inn’ and advertised good accommodation for cyclists and travellers, with loose boxes and stabling. Hampshire combined innkeeping with other work: he was also a wood bailiff and proprietor of a threshing machine.
An early twentieth-century photograph shows the same commercial-inn wording across the front of the building and advertises accommodation for cyclists and enclosed carriages for hire. The licence passed through several hands around the turn of the century, including Jacob Richard Smith, James Seal and John Hampshire, but the inn continued to serve the road traffic and gatherings that had long centred on this part of Loxwood.
The fields opposite also remained in use for the annual show. In May 1900 the Sussex Express reported the Loxwood Annual Show, with classes for cattle, horses, pigs, corn, butter, bread and cottagers’ produce. The annual dinner was held in a large marquee opposite the Onslow Arms, continuing the association between the inn and the showground that had already lasted for many years.
By 1908 the Onslow Arms formed part of the tied estate of Friary, Holroyd and Healy of Guildford. The 1911 census records George Philip Edwards and his wife Alice Edwards at the inn. George Philip Edwards had previously kept the Great George in Godalming and remained at the Onslow Arms into the 1920s.
The Onslow Arms in 1914
An Inland Revenue valuation dated 1 July 1914 records the building in more detail than any earlier source. It described an old brick-and-tile public house in good condition. On the ground floor were a bar and clubroom, a parlour or taproom, a sitting room, kitchen and bakery, with cellars below. There were four bedrooms above.
The old brewhouse had become a store. Outside stood a coach house, cart shed, stabling for three horses and two loose boxes with a loft over. The holding also included a garden and two grass fields. Part of the old canal lay within the property, and the adjoining Bridge Meadow had been purchased in 1906 for £100.
1914-1965 – licensees and a winning darts team
George Philip Edwards and Alice Edwards remained at the Onslow Arms during the First World War and into the 1920s. The licence passed to Deighton Howard in May 1926. Albert Stevens and Mary Violet Stevens were recorded there in 1929 and 1932, and Charley Hammond and Mabel Hammond were at the inn by 1935.
By 1939 the Onslow Arms belonged to King & Barnes. Charles James Smith became licensee in December 1942 and remained until November 1955. In January 1947 the Onslow Arms darts team reached the final of the Victory Darts Cup.
Harold Baker followed as licensee in 1955 and John Warren Phillips in 1957. By 1965 the electoral register records Marjorie and Edward George Kennell at the Onslow Arms.
The River Lox bridge and its approaches were widened in 1963. Toll Gate Cottage was demolished, the road beside the pub was regraded, and the Onslow Arms remained beside the rebuilt crossing.
The historic building
The Onslow Arms was listed Grade II on 22 May 1985. The statutory description records a two-storey building of three windows, with painted brick, a string course, hipped tiled roof, casement windows and a later porch. The listing describes the building as eighteenth century, while the structural survey records the earlier timber-framed wings dating from about 1575-1625.
Loxwood History records place an alehouse here by the end of the eighteenth century, with the Onslow Arms name established by 1801. The inn has served travellers and villagers beside the same river crossing for around 225 years and during that time it has seen the turnpike road, the opening and closure of the canal, livestock fairs and agricultural shows, village festivals, cyclists and motor traffic, the widening of Loxwood Bridge and, in 2009, the return of boats to the canal behind the building.
After more than two centuries as an inn, the Onslow Arms has become more than part of Loxwood’s history: it is one of the village’s enduring traditions.
