Immediately inside Sussex stood the estate centred on the house once called Great House or Greathouse, later Loxwood House. The property passed from the Threel family to the Kings around the beginning of the seventeenth century and remained associated with the King family for about three centuries. The house was enlarged and altered as the estate developed, while its land extended through the country east and west of the later main road.
The Loxwood House Estate sale of 1905 provides a much later but valuable view of this cross-border pattern. Its lots included substantial land in Loxwood and Alfold, among them Alfold House Farm, and the sale plan shows holdings connected across the county line. The plan is most useful as evidence of the estate’s later scale and of the long economic relationship between the two parishes; the precise boundaries of the King estate in 1757 remain to be reconstructed from the earlier deeds.
This agricultural setting explains the local importance of any improved road. A dependable route towards Guildford, the River Wey navigation, Newbridge and the Arun valley offered farms and estates a more regular means of moving produce, timber, livestock and supplies. The turnpike was therefore laid through land already organised for farming, linking holdings whose earlier access had depended upon separate lanes and tracks.
The direct turnpike road of 1757
The Guildford and Arundel Road Act of 1757 created a managed route from Dapdune Wharf near Guildford through Alfold and Loxwood to St Mary’s Gate at Arundel. The scheme joined the River Wey navigation with the Sussex road system and the Arun valley, giving this part of the Weald a direct regional corridor. Trustees could raise money against future toll income, improve drainage and bridges, widen or divert highways, acquire land and erect gates and bars.
The new road regularised the older network. North of the boundary it connected the Guildford road with the church-centred settlement of Alfold and continued south along the line that became the village street. It then crossed into Sussex at Alfold Bars, passed through the Loxwood House farming landscape and reached Loxwood Bridge before continuing towards Newbridge, Pulborough, Bury and Arundel. Existing sections could be adopted where their course was useful, while new alignments created a straighter and more continuous route between the main destinations.
Buckwell drew particular attention to the departure from the older Loxwood roads. The Act allowed land forming superseded sections of highway to be sold when it was no longer required, and the surviving western and eastern green lanes preserved routes lying away from the turnpike. His interpretation is consistent with a road scheme that selected a new through-line across a landscape previously served by several local highways.
The importance of the change lay in continuity. A journey that had once passed from one local track to another could follow a managed carriageway with regular repair, measured distances, bridge maintenance and controlled toll points. The road also brought through traffic closer to farms and houses that had previously stood within a more dispersed pattern of access.
Landowners and the chosen line
The promoters named in the turnpike history included Arthur Onslow, John Napper, John Laker, John King senior and John King junior, together with other landowners and public figures from Surrey and Sussex. Their support placed the road within the commercial geography of the estates through which it passed. Improved access reduced the difficulty of carrying agricultural produce across the clay and connected estate farms with wharves, markets and the wider road system.
The presence of the Kings is especially significant at Loxwood. Their Greathouse estate occupied land beside and across the selected route, and the road gave the holding a direct connection northwards through Alfold and southwards towards Newbridge and Arundel. The later estate plans show how closely the road and the King property became associated, although the surviving evidence has yet to identify the meeting or survey at which the precise 1757 alignment was agreed.
Estate advantage formed one practical consideration among several. The trustees also had to choose workable gradients, cross the River Lox, avoid the wettest ground and create a route direct enough to attract traffic and toll income. The resulting line served the larger landowners while also improving access for the smaller farms and cottages distributed around Alfold and Loxwood.
The name Alfold Bars enters the record
The turnpike gave the county boundary a new importance and fixed the name Alfold Bars within written records. The 1757 road was described by reference to Alfold Bars, making the place a defining point on the route. A toll-letting notice published in 1784 described the managed road from the north end of Dapdune Wharf to Alfold Bars and recorded an average of fifteen years’ toll income. By the late eighteenth century, the name was therefore established in the financial and administrative language of the trust.
The earliest map supplied for this research, dated 1805, labels Alfold Bars beside the new road. The map is important because it shows that the name had moved beyond the wording of toll notices and statutes to become a recognised geographical locality. Later legislation continued the usage: Alfold Bars became the terminal of the northern road and the starting point of the shorter road towards Newbridge.
The county boundary supplied a precise position. Surrey ended and Sussex began at a line already embedded in the fields and hedges, allowing road lengths, maintenance duties and statutory powers to be described from a fixed point. The word Bars belongs to the physical language of turnpike control. Bars, chains and gates regulated traffic at main roads and subsidiary approaches, protected toll income and marked the limits of managed sections.
The exact arrangement at the boundary remains an important subject for further research. The plural name may record more than one barrier, or it may have become a collective place-name for the controlled boundary point. An 1862 toll notice later referred to ‘Alfold Gate and Bar’, demonstrating that a staffed gate and an associated bar formed part of the local turnpike system. Alfold Gate stood at Crossways to the north, while Alfold Bars identified the county-boundary settlement; the wording supports the local use of both forms without fixing the precise position of every barrier.
A hamlet takes shape beside the turnpike
The early maps show the road first as a line through farms and open land. By 1805 Alfold Bars was named, yet the surrounding settlement remained limited. During the nineteenth century, cottages, workshops and small yards gradually occupied the frontage, forming a linear hamlet between the older holdings. The turnpike offered visibility and access, while the farms around it supplied work and customers.
The 1871 Ordnance Survey gives the first detailed picture. Alfold Bars is printed prominently beside the county line; a smithy stands close to the road, a well serves the roadside buildings, and lanes lead towards Shaves, Tokens, Pigbush and the Loxwood House grounds. The map records a compact cluster at the boundary with larger farms and estate land immediately beyond it.
The maps of 1895 and 1913 show further consolidation. New cottages and outbuildings filled gaps, the licensed premises at Hipps became a recognised landmark, and workshop plots continued to combine homes, sheds, stables, gardens and orchards. The settlement retained the form created by the road: a sequence of working properties arranged along the carriageway rather than around a separate green or market place.
The county line divided official records, but the road joined daily activity. Residents worked on farms in both parishes, attended churches and chapels according to family and distance, used schools on either side of the boundary and traded with Alfold and Loxwood. The familiar name Alfold Bars described the community more effectively than the administrative division shown on the map.
Wheelwrights, smiths and leather workers
Road transport and farming met most clearly in the workshops of Alfold Bars. A wagon arriving with a loose iron tyre, a split felloe or a damaged shaft could be repaired near the farms that depended upon it. Horses required shoeing, harness needed stitching, and agricultural tools passed repeatedly between field, yard and forge. The roadside location allowed the same trades to serve local holdings and traffic travelling between Surrey and Sussex.
A property sale in 1857 described a brick-and-tiled dwelling with four bedrooms together with a fellmonger’s yard, a harness-maker’s shop, store, stable, cart-house, piggery, garden and orchard. The combination reveals the character of the hamlet: family rooms, animals, craft work and food production shared one compact holding. An adjoining cottage and the Common Plot fronted the Guildford-Pulborough turnpike and Oakhurst Lane, placing these trades directly within the road economy.
The 1861 auction of Ebenezer Pannett’s wheelwright stock provides an exceptionally detailed view of one workshop. Seasoned oak and ash had been prepared for spokes, naves, felloes, cart shafts, plough beams and ladders, while saws, augers, chisels and a turning lathe equipped the yard for construction as well as repair. Oak supplied strength for hubs and frames; ash provided the resilience needed in spokes and shafts. The inventory represents years of selection, seasoning and skilled preparation rather than a small collection of casual tools.
The workshop can therefore be understood as a substantial rural business. Timber arrived from local woods, ironwork came from the smithy, and finished wheels, carts and implements returned to farms across the district. The sound of sawing, turning and hammering belonged to the working life of Alfold Bars as clearly as the movement of wagons along the road.
Alfold Bars in the census
By 1851 the turnpike had become part of Alfold’s official geography. The census enumerator used the Guildford-Loxwood road as the boundary between two districts, placing fifty-one inhabited houses and 261 residents on one side and forty-six houses with 238 residents on the other. A road created less than a century earlier had become a convenient line for recording the parish population.
The wider schedules record the labour supporting the boundary community: agricultural workers, carters, blacksmiths, wheelwrights, carpenters, sawyers, woodmen, shoemakers, shepherds and carriers. These occupations formed an interdependent economy in which farm production, woodland materials and road transport relied upon one another.
The 1871 census names Alfold Bars directly and gives the hamlet a particularly clear set of residents. Charles Covey was a widowed carpenter, and his son Michael worked as a hoop shaver. Henry Brewer was recorded as a carpenter and builder, Benjamin Luff as a blacksmith and William Pannett as a bricklayer. Their households and neighbours created a concentration of skilled work at the county boundary.
Other parish entries widen the picture. Meshach Ede made bricks and tiles, Henry Botting and Edward Goodchild were sawyers, Milton Cotton Smith worked as a wheelwright, Moses Matthews carried goods, and Richard Reen and Mary Boxall made and sold brooms. Clay and timber passed through several stages before becoming buildings, wheels, hoops, tools and household goods, many of which travelled along the turnpike that had encouraged the workshops to gather there.
Hipps becomes the Sir Roger Tichborne
Charles Covey connected the older centre of Alfold with the growing settlement at the boundary. Born in 1812, he married Mary Hampshire in 1834 and later kept the Crown Inn beside Alfold green. The 1861 census described him there as a licensed victualler and grocer, combining hospitality with retail trade in the village centre.
After Mary’s death in 1870, Covey moved to Alfold Bars and returned to the carpentry trade. In September 1873 he obtained a licence to sell beer and cider at Hipps, an old timber-framed house within the roadside community. His earlier experience at the Crown and his place among the local craftsmen made the premises a natural social centre for farm workers, builders, carriers and travellers.
The beer house became known as the Sir Roger Tichborne during the national controversy surrounding the Tichborne Claimant. Denzil Osborne of nearby Drungewick Manor supported the claimant, giving the case a direct local connection. The name attached a widely discussed Victorian cause to a newly licensed house at Alfold Bars, while the older fabric of Hipps preserved the agricultural settlement that had preceded it.
The inn’s later prominence changed the way the hamlet was recognised. A community formed by the turnpike and its workshops now possessed a public meeting place that served residents from both counties and became the most familiar landmark on the road.
The school bell in the Oakhurst orchard
Oakhurst preserved one of the most distinctive stories connecting Alfold Bars with the church village. The old almshouse school below St Nicholas’ Church was damaged by fire and demolished in 1880. George Muggeridge later recalled that his father obtained the school bell and carried it to Oakhurst Farm, where it was hung high in a cherry tree.
A long cord allowed the bell to be rung from near the house, and its sound was used to drive birds from the orchard fruit. The same object had once marked the school day and summoned children to lessons; at Oakhurst it entered the seasonal routine of a working farm. The account gains its value from this change of setting, preserving a physical link between the old school, the church-centred settlement and the farms around Alfold Bars.
Henry Spooner builds across the boundary
The building trades of Alfold Bars reached well beyond cart sheds and farm repairs. Henry Spooner, associated with the boundary community, undertook work that became part of the public architecture of both villages. In 1883 he constructed Alfold Baptist Chapel to the design of Thomas Rowland Hooper, translating the architect’s plan into brickwork, carpentry and roofing supplied through local labour and materials.
Spooner also built Loxwood Schoolhouse and later worked on the Church of St John the Baptist at Loxwood, completed in 1901. These projects followed the Victorian expansion of education and organised worship, and they demonstrate the scale of work that could be managed from a settlement often described only as a roadside hamlet.
His career expresses the cross-border character of Alfold Bars. The builder’s home community lay between Alfold and Loxwood, while the surviving chapel, school and church placed his work in both. Skills first supported by farms and road traffic became part of the wider civic and religious development of the district.
From toll road to motor road
The Alfold Bars-Newbridge trust ended in 1876, and the Guildford-Alfold trust followed in 1877. The removal of toll control changed the administration of the road while leaving its local importance intact. Farm wagons, carriers, livestock and passenger vehicles continued to pass through the hamlet, sustaining the smithy, workshops and licensed house during the later nineteenth century.
New forms of transport gradually entered the census. Railway employment, a fly proprietor, coachmen and carriers appeared alongside the older agricultural occupations, and by 1921 chauffeurs and motor-mechanical work had joined them. Horse transport remained important on farms even as bicycles, buses and motor vehicles altered the speed and range of travel.
The buildings adapted with these changes. Some workshops became houses, yards became gardens, and new dwellings filled spaces between the older farmsteads. The linear pattern survived because the road continued to connect Alfold and Loxwood, following the direct course established by the eighteenth-century turnpike.
Alfold Bars in the landscape
Alfold Bars records a major change in the geography of the district. The older drove roads, green lanes and farm tracks brought movement through Brewhurst, Hall House, Chapel Green, Oakhurst, Rosemary Lane, Dunsfold and the scattered holdings around Alfold. The turnpike gathered that dispersed access into a regularised route running directly through Alfold, across the county boundary and south through Loxwood.
The ancient boundary gave the new road a precise administrative point, and the barriers placed within the turnpike system gave the settlement its enduring name. Farms and estate land supplied the agricultural economy; the road encouraged cottages and workshops to gather beside it; wheelwrights, smiths, leather workers and builders created a skilled working community; and the Sir Roger Tichborne provided a social centre.
The surviving landscape still holds these layers together. Oakhurst, Froggots and Hipps preserve older buildings, the road fixes the line chosen in the eighteenth century, the county boundary passes through the settlement, and former workshop plots continue the narrow roadside pattern visible on nineteenth-century maps. Alfold Bars remains the clearest place where the old farm routes, the turnpike and the shared history of Alfold and Loxwood meet.
