Thursday 18 June 2020

OLD PHOTOS OF OLD MERROW STREET



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.




An earlier post of houses in Merrow Street and Old Merrow street can be found
https://joanne-orangecottages.blogspot.com/2009/10/merrow.html

This is an earlier post down the track on the left just beyond this group of houses 


And a further post showing the same houses in the snow as well as a walk down the track through the woods.
https://joanne-orangecottages.blogspot.com/2009/02/snow.html 

3 comments:

  1. Hello, thank you for sharing these posts of Merrow in the past, fascinating stuff. My daughter and I were intrigued by a large open space on the Sunset Homes site (Merrow House), so we cheekily walked in to look at it, to be surprised to see a massive (what we assume) sunken garden that has long been abandoned. Do you have any information about this place? Was it a garden or lake? During the time of Miss Thrupp? - Gorm, Merrow

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    1. Hi sorry for the late reply. The sunken area was a sunken garden, I can't be sure but I think that stone was quarried there for building maybe Merrow House the local history group would be able to help you further. There was a lake but that was to the right as you face Merrow house next to where the school boundary is today and I think Pond House in the complex roughly relates to the original pond site.

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