It's always fun finding old photos. This is of the house next door to us Pound Cottage in Old Merrow Street, Merrow. It was used as a laundry for many years and here are the laundry women with a group of children.
The front porch of our house 1 Orange Cottages can be seen to the right of pound Cottage.
This is another photo of Pound Cottage. Note the Pound has a porch built out at the front. You can just see the roof tops of our house next door. How things have changed, these days the field opposite is built up and the land behind the big tree on the right and the land beyond the houses is now woodland.
This is the side view of Pound Cottage. This predates the previous photo it hasn't got the front Porch or the larger rear extension.
In the garden about where the photographer was standing was the local pound, where animals found on the common would be impounded.
This is small scale copy of an old map that used to belong to Lesley Carne of Gateside cottage it was given to him and was one of a pair of maps belonging to the Thrupp Estate.
The Thrupp estate owned most of the houses farms and land along Merrow Street .
The map is dated 1878 and was before the railway was built across the top of where the map stops.
Thirty years ago I borrowed the two maps and made a tracing of one that had names of occupants of some of the houses, it had been a sort of working map of the estate.
The above is a small part of my copy showing the Day family lived in our house 1 Orange Cottages. Next door at Pound Cottage known then as the Laundry was Mrs Clare. This was confirmed by elderly neighbours.
It looks like Sampsons Gardeners lived at 2 Gateside Cottages, Mrs Papitos at 1 Gateside Cottages, and Ernie - who works on the roads at possibly 2 Orange Cottages. This is not verified and the writing was faded on the original as well as my copy.
These two lovely maps were given to Guildford museum where they are held in their archives. The small copy of the maps shown above was purchased from the museum.
From information on Ancestry.
Benjamin Ernest Day born 21 mar 1866 Merrow married Annie Reffold 14 Jan 1888 died 2 Sep 1905 buried St John Merrow 7 Sep 1905 cause of death TB & Nepgritis
Annie born 9 Aug 1867 Hambledon Witley Surrey married 1888 died 23 Mar 1951 Merrow buried St Johns Merrow
They had 11 children
Benjamin Ernest Day
From Left Gladys Edith Day Clarke, Sarah CarneSpong, Cecely Day, Annie Reffold Day.
From 1901 census
From 1911 census
Above is from 1939 when Lesley Carne having married Dorothy Day lived in our house. He then moved to 2 Gateside cottages and had a daughter Sarah.
It was my privileged to have know Lesley over his last few years. His wife Dorothy had died and not long before we moved to 1 Orange Cottages he married again to Christina. They were such lovely neighbours.
How lovely to get to know a little bit more about the history of the family who shared our house before us.
This is an earlier post down the track on the left just beyond this group of houses
