It was a bitterly cold expedition, with Connie’s family travelling in an Austin 14 Tourer fitted with removable mica side windows and carrying food and hot water for the day as the route took them through Epsom, Dorking and Ockley. Snow thickened at Rudgwick; after Bucks Green they crossed Loxwood, climbed towards Plaistow Road and turned into The Drive, where a tiny shop bearing the name MEACH stood at the corner. Beyond it the snow was untouched, woodland screened the road and mature oaks stood across the old park. Tom unfolded a large plan marked with plots and acreages, and the two families began walking the estate to decide where they might buy.
Choosing Myosotis and Rosebank
The choice was not immediate, as Tom considered land on one side of the footpath while Connie’s mother kept returning to the ground near the lake, where an old oak stood within an acre of parkland. She eventually chose that acre and called it Myosotis, taking the name from a favourite piece of music that Connie played on the piano. Tom then decided to buy the adjoining land and, turning to Rose, proposed the name Rosebank. The two purchases placed the friends beside one another within the former park.
Brake’s prices varied with the ground: woodland plots measuring about seventy-five feet by two hundred feet were £15, ordinary parkland was about £50 an acre, the former cricket pitch was offered at £40 an acre, and larger holdings beyond Ifold House ranged from about £20 to £30 an acre. Purchasers could begin with a £6 10s deposit and pay thirteen shillings a month; the Bayley deposit was paid on 28 January 1934. Connie’s mother also bought a second right of way beside the first, giving Myosotis forty feet of frontage on The Drive and a two-hundred-foot access strip to the acre behind. The two rights cost £15 each and the acre £50, making £80 before interest, with further payments entered in an account book issued by Brake’s Estate Ltd.
A shed, a range and water for the weekend
The land could be used long before a permanent house was finished, and the Bayleys began spending most weekends at Ifold. Connie’s father bought an eighteen-foot by ten-foot second-hand wooden shed in London for £5 and had it carried down by lorry with building materials. The shed became shelter, store, kitchen and sleeping place while work progressed, and an old cast-iron range brought from London supplied cooking and heat. On the adjoining plot Tom and Rose Edwards were also erecting a shed and fencing their ground, cutting the timber by hand because they had no power tools.
Water proved more awkward, and at first the Bayleys filled a milk churn in London and carried it in the car, floating a piece of wood on the surface in an attempt to stop the water sloshing out, until a neighbour at Oikesis offered them water from her well. Another familiar figure was Ted Sopp, the local agent for Brake’s Estate Ltd, whom Connie remembered marking the boundaries of plots and acreages, answering purchasers’ questions and digging many of the wells sunk at Ifold, sometimes working through rock with sledgehammers and wedges.
1934-35: sheds, workshops and smallholdings
As more plots were occupied, practical businesses began appearing among them. Albert Curtis, whose family came from Enfield, acquired The Cottage near Hogwood Road in 1934 and established Ifold Motors nearby. The garage repaired cars, cycles and machinery, sold paraffin and could supply nails, screws, sand, ballast and cement. Owners arriving with timber, tools and building materials therefore had a workshop and supplier within the developing settlement.
Other newcomers adapted surviving estate buildings rather than starting with a bare plot. Cyril Curtis, Albert’s brother and a builder, acquired the former potting shed and part of the walled garden in 1934 or 1935 and converted the shed into a small cottage for his family. George Dale and his wife came from Fulham in 1935 and lived in a wooden chalet at Dale Farm, where George bought young chicks at Horsham market, reared them and sold them on. Ifold was growing through several kinds of occupation at once: weekend plots, workshops, converted estate buildings, chalets and smallholdings.
1935: plans for a permanent bungalow
Connie’s mother intended Myosotis to become more than a weekend shed and wrote to Petworth Rural District Council to ask whether a bungalow could be built. The council replied that construction was possible under its by-laws and supplied the details of the professional who could prepare the plans. He was Frederick John Whitlock Hodgson, an architect and surveyor based at 201 High Street, Guildford. Hodgson drew the bungalow, the plans went to the council in March 1935 and formal approval followed on 4 April.
A builder known to the family helped with the construction, while the weekends at Ifold became an education in building for Connie. By watching tradesmen and practising on the site she learned to mix concrete, lay bricks, saw timber, glaze windows and carry out general carpentry, returning to London on Sunday evenings after another part of the work had been completed. Similar activity was spreading across the estate; Connie later remembered little brick garages, wooden sheds and chalets appearing while weekends brought the sound of hammers and shovels mixing concrete.
The old estate remained all around them
The new owners were building within a landscape that still looked recognisably like a country estate. Two five-bar gates remained across The Drive, one near the Lodge and another at Oikesis. Beyond the second stood the cricket pitch and pavilion, while Pine Walk – later The Ride – remained a track lined with pine trees. The walled kitchen garden retained its brick walls, potting buildings and old grapevine, and Loxwoodhills Pond still had the remains of its landing stage and boathouse. Trelayne, the old cottage in Chalk Road, stood empty for a time and was offered for about £100 in 1934-35.
Ifold House itself was still standing as plots were marked across the surrounding park and woods, but the mansion was demolished in 1936. Its disappearance supplied materials for some of the properties taking shape around it: doors, bricks, timber, fireplaces and other fittings were sold, and Connie recorded that an interior door from Ifold House became the front door of Rosebank, with further doors from the mansion used elsewhere in the Edwards bungalow.
1936-39: a settlement takes shape
During the later 1930s maps began to record dwellings along the former estate roads. Albert Curtis’s garage was established at Hogwood Road, sheds and chalets stood on land that had recently been woodland or park, and gardens and fences divided the new holdings. Some purchasers developed smallholdings, others concentrated on weekend bungalows, while properties such as Myosotis grew in stages as money, materials and spare time allowed.
At Myosotis the £5 shed remained the family’s base while the approved bungalow slowly rose beside it, helped by a builder known to the family and by the practical skills Connie acquired over successive weekends. Building continued until September 1939, when work stopped with the bungalow still unfinished beside the original wooden shed.
