The chapel land before the house
The first record associated with Willetts comes from 1544, when John Alyn of Drungewick and the other surviving trustees of Loxwood Chapel, acting with the consent of the chaplain John Dymcok, granted John Mill of Loxwood a small piece of land near the chapel for an annual rent of sixpence. John Charles Buckwell published the transaction in 1914 and identified the ground as part of the property later called Willetts.
The grant formed part of the chapel endowment. The trustee records also name Stevinsfield, Cokkes, Baldwins and Callettshaw among the holdings from which rents were received for the chapel and its ministry.
The frame from Baldwins Knob
In 1568 a timber-framed building was moved from Baldwins Knob to the ground beside the chapel for the chaplain. The relocated frame is believed to form the oldest part of Willetts. H. F. Napper, whose family had long served as chapel trustees, provided the details of the building relocation to John Charles Buckwell.
Abraham Willins was the chaplain in 1575. When chapel property was conveyed to new trustees in 1615, it included a messuage and garden near Loxwood Chapel occupied by Abraham Willins. A further feoffment in 1652 again recorded a house and garden near the chapel, formerly occupied by Abraham Wilkins and then occupied by Thomas Wall.
Across the road from Loxwood Place
Willetts was opposite Loxwood Place, the old, moated house at the centre of the village. When John Charles Buckwell investigated Loxwood in the early twentieth century, Waller Stevens the owner of Loxwood Place told him that he had traced a continuation of the moat to the south and east of Willetts.
Nineteenth-century maps also show paths between Willetts and the chapel site, later occupied by Church Cottage.
The ancient elm and the Holm Oak
Large trees stood for centuries along the boundary between Willetts and the chapel. Local records state that when some were felled in the eighteenth century their trunks were left in the ground and used as supports for fence rails.
An ancient elm stood beside the road between Willetts and Church Cottage and appears in photographs from about 1870. Mark Steer, the village road mender, kept a pile of granite beside the tree for filling potholes. The elm was hollow, and in about 1887 Mark and seventeen other villagers stood inside its trunk.
A photograph of High Street taken in 1909 shows Willetts and the old elm. A barn belonging to Loxwood Place Farm stands on the opposite side of the road and a cart of logs is beside the frontage.
The Holm Oak now standing to the left of Willetts, between Willetts and Church Cottage, was planted by Miss Cordelia Molineux Smallpeice of Merry Hills on 6 May 1935 for the Silver Jubilee of George V and Queen Mary. Brigadier Betham Wilkins Shuttleworth was living at Willetts at the time.
The Hampshire family
The 1871 census records the house as Willetts Cottage. James Hampshire, a labourer born at Cranleigh, lived there with his wife Mary and five children at home: George, William, James, Ruth and John.
By 1881 James was a widower and worked as a woodman. His sons James and John were agricultural labourers, Ruth was recorded as a domestic servant out of employment, and the household also included Mary J. Puttock and housekeeper Sarah Hay.
Roger Nash’s history of the Dependant Brethren identifies James Hampshire as one of the Loxwood Dependants, the community founded by John Sirgood and widely known as the Cokelers. James died at Willetts in 1888.
A miller, shopkeeper and Dependant smallholding
In 1891 William Foster, aged thirty-eight, lived at Willetts with his wife Ruth and their children Mary Emily, Louisa and William. William described himself as a miller and shopkeeper.
Around the turn of the twentieth century the land around Willetts was worked as a Dependant smallholding, with produce sold through the Combination Stores.
By 1911 the address had become Willetts Farm House. Charles Peacock, a seventy-three-year-old retired farmer from Petworth, lived there with his wife Elizabeth Ann, aged sixty-three. They had been married for twenty-four years and were the only people recorded in the household on census night. Charles entered eleven rooms on the schedule, excluding the scullery, landing, lobby, closet and bathroom under the census instructions.
Crofton-Atkins and the country house
Newspapers record a series of changes at Willetts during the 1920s and 1930s. On 25 February 1926 A. R. Rackham conducted a sale of antique and modern household furniture at the house.
In September 1928 Captain John Norman Crofton-Atkins of Willetts became engaged to Mary Dorothea Kyffin-Thomas of Adelaide, Australia. Crofton-Atkins had travelled to Australia with his parents in 1918. In 1934 he married Margaret G. Brantom in Westminster, and by the beginning of the Second World War he was living in Somerset and working as a newspaper representative.
In August 1930 Willetts advertised for an experienced gardener for a gentleman’s small country house. Applicants were expected to understand flowers and the laying of a tennis lawn.
By the middle of the decade Willetts was the home of Brigadier Betham Wilkins Shuttleworth, C.B., a retired Indian Army officer who had served with the 45th Rattray’s Sikhs. He died suddenly on 27 February 1937, aged fifty-six.
The following year Willetts came onto the market. Advertisements in April 1938 described it as a sixteenth-century residence that had been restored and modernised. The accommodation included a lounge hall, two reception rooms, five bedrooms and two bathrooms, with modern domestic offices, electric light, central heating and modern drainage. Electric light was being advertised at Willetts in the year that mains electricity reached Loxwood.
Outside were lawns, flagged paths, rockeries, flower borders, a sunken garden, paddocks and a productive kitchen garden. A large barn served as a garage for three cars, with further outbuildings around the property.
The Sherwins and the Second World War
Henry Edward Sherwin and his wife Margaret were living at Willetts by the beginning of 1939. Their second son Dennis Ralph Sherwin, an aeroplane designer, married Kathleen Sanderson Robins at the Brompton Oratory in January that year. In October 1940 their daughter Margaret, known as Peggie, married Squadron Leader Brian Roberts of the RAF at St James’s Church, Spanish Place, London.
Margaret Sherwin became President of Loxwood Women’s Institute and led the village War Savings Campaign. She also took charge of salvage collection. Henry and Margaret lent Willetts for the Red Cross Casualty and Home Guard Dressing Station and were largely responsible for equipping it. Rooms in the house were prepared for emergency medical work and Home Guard needs.
Willetts was also used for Women’s Institute garden meetings, lectures, charity whist drives and other fundraising events. Margaret died suddenly on 27 July 1942. Newspaper tributes recorded her work for War Savings, salvage and the dressing station, and I. Mountford of Pound Cottage referred to the time she had spent working in the garden at Willetts.
Henry remained active in village life after Margaret’s death and served as president of both Loxwood Football Club and Loxwood Cricket Club. He died in January 1947, aged sixty-eight.
From market garden to Willetts Nurseries
Willetts returned to the property market in October 1950. The sale advertisement described a lounge, hall, two sitting rooms, seven bedrooms and two bathrooms, with an Aga, central heating, mains electricity and company water. The old barn and other buildings remained, together with the garden, orchard and paddock.
The holding extended to four and a half acres and was described as a profitable market garden. The asking price was £11,000 or near offer. Willetts Nurseries followed during the 1950s.
Major Harold Ernest Mudford and his family developed Willetts Nurseries. Mudford had served with the 2nd Battalion, Bedfordshire Regiment during the First World War and was wounded at the Battle of Loos on 25 September 1915. He later returned to military service and was granted the honorary rank of major in 1945.
Willetts Nurseries opened in 1954. An advertisement on 31 December that year offered two-year-old Seabrook blackcurrants at eight shillings a dozen. In October 1956 the nursery advertised wallflowers in separate colours at five shillings per hundred and cabbage plants at three shillings per hundred. In January 1957 it sought an experienced gardener and offered accommodation with the post. The telephone number was Loxwood 201.
In 1957 Major Mudford was treasurer of the Church Parochial Council and vice-president of the Alfold, Loxwood and District Horticultural Show, while Major Neil Farmer of Penlands was chairman. The nursery supplied fruit bushes, bedding plants and vegetable plants to customers in the district.
A wedding for more than three hundred guests
In April 1956 Major and Mrs Mudford’s daughter Mary Elizabeth married Gert van der Gaag, son of Mr and Mrs M. A. van der Gaag of The Hague, at Horsham Parish Church. After the ceremony the reception was held at Willetts and more than 300 guests attended.
The couple left for a honeymoon in Italy before making their home in Barcelona. The reception took place in the house and nursery grounds while Willetts Nurseries was in operation.
The house, barn and grounds
A Chichester District Council site visit in April 2000 recorded Willetts on the main road frontage with a three-bay timber barn behind it. The barn had a mezzanine at its south end and was then used as a garage and store; a single-storey building stood against its western side.
Behind the house were a small garden and tennis court, with mature trees and hedges marking the boundaries. The tennis court corresponded with the gardening work advertised in 1930, while the barn continued the garage and storage use recorded in the sale particulars of 1938 and 1950.
