A Former Inhabitant’s Memories

I am grateful to Roger Woolfe who provided the following notes after talking to Fred Benham in February 2001

Fred Benham lived at Fowlers Wells with his parents between 1924 and 1930, when he was a lad and his parents rented the place.

Originally, Fowlers Wells was a farmhouse, but when Fred and his parents lived there the house was a residence, but its roots were still in farming.

Rather than at the side of the house, the door into the kitchen was at the back, close to where the sink is now. The room was fitted with a Valor Perfection paraffin cooking stove just inside the back door. It seemed to be the latest in gadgetry. Fred remembers a glass paraffin reservoir with a capacity of some three gallons feeding four burner rings in a row. Paraffin lamps and candles were used to light the house – there was no electricity, and they didn’t graduate to an Aladdin lamp, an oil lamp that lit a mantle with gas under pressure, until around 1927.

Close to the back door was a sink and a pump, and just outside was a well from which the household drew its water (the pump brought the water straight into the kitchen sink). On top of the well stood a large circular millstone that came from Fred’s grandfather’s mill in the village. Eventually, Fred’s father took it to the corn shop in Chertsey when the family moved there in 1930, and he set it in the rockery.

There was a bread oven where the passageway connects the sitting and dining rooms today, and a bacon smoking room where now the inglenook stands. The bacon room was discovered after Fred and his parents had moved from the house. The new owners invited Fred back to the house to crawl through a hole where a fireplace had been, behind the radiator now in the dining room.

On the opposite side of the bacon room was a wall; it’s been removed to form the entrance to the inglenook. In the wall were two niches high up and close to where the beam rests today, one niche to hold a salt container and the other to hold candles. Hooks were set in the ceiling from which the bacon could be hung.

In the winter, the sitting room was used pretty much to the exclusion of the other downstairs rooms. It was warmer: although there was no inglenook, it had a fire set in the wall that’s now removed to form the front of the inglenook.

There was no lobby. Instead there was just a short passageway behind the front door, connecting the dining and sitting rooms.

The study had no window at the side. It was used as creamery, probably rather before Fred’s time. All round the walls were brick shelves with surfaces of slate where the pans of cream were placed. In 1924, Fred’s dad turned it into a billiard room. The room became a favoured meeting place for the local police sergeant and his understudy. They’d meet there on Saturdays for a drink before going off on their rounds.

There were two spiral staircases, one in much the same place as the current staircase and the other at the point where the sitting room and study adjoin. At the top of the staircase at the dining room end was a door through into the bedroom on the right – there was no corridor then. The small door by the bedroom window led to a short passageway through into the middle bedroom where Fred’s parents’ bed had its headboard up against what’s now the corridor wall (the bedrooms were bigger then of course). In the corner of that room, at the point where the corridor is now, was a door through to the second spiral staircase, with a small landing so that the end bedroom on the right could be reached.

Opposite that bedroom was a door through into bedroom number four. In those days there was no bathroom upstairs, and the fourth bedroom and bathroom were one single room. Fred had his model train set up in the room, with tracks running round the room. It ran on methylated spirit, and had a tendency to tip over and catch fire when it took a bend too fast.

The area around Fowlers Wells at the end of the 19th century Fowlers Well farm lies to the west of field367, Fowlers Wells house (unmarked) between fields 361 and 359.

Until the bypass was built in 1920, Windsor Road ran past the front of Fowlers Wells. The same grass verge was there, as now. But rather than a hedge there was a wall to the front with a gate in it opposite the front door. A pathway led to the front door from the gate in the middle of the wall at the front of the garden. On each side of the pathway were cobblestones that Fred’s dad had brought from London, when the roads there were upgraded from cobbles to tarmac.

To the left of the gate was a wide gate with a drive that led to the barn behind the house. To the left of the drive was a second barn, now long since gone, together with a cider press and apple crusher. Behind that barn was a fence marking the boundary of the property, with a field beyond, now Fowlers Mead.

To the left of the barn that still exists today stood three pigsties. To the right, a fence marked the boundary of the property, probably where the laurel hedge stands today. Against that fence and behind the house was a granary on staddle stones, a pigeon house and a chicken house. Beyond the chicken house, at the end of the garden on the right, was a lavatory with a wooden seat over a metal bucket. It was reached by a path from the back door of the house passing close to the right of the barn.

Beyond the lavatory was a hedge that ran across the property. It was probably at the far side of what is now Lavender Cottage. The hedge was full of sloe bushes, from which sloe gin could be made. On the far side of the hedge, and accessed via a gap in it, was a long garden with a path running down the centre. Fred’s father dug the garden with help from others. Fred’s dad kept his beehives at the far end of the garden. Bee-keeping was one of his hobbies, and he was occasionally assisted by a local bee expert, Wilicon Stephens of Burrow Hill. When the bees swarmed, Wilicon would take them away in boxes that had been used for importing butter from New Zealand, 56 pounds at a time.

In those days the barn was still used as a farm barn by a local farmer. Two large doors formed the entrance, just the same as now. On the inside were low walls a couple of feet high. The spaces on the far side of the two walls were used for storing corn, stacked in sheaves to the ceiling. The space between the walls was sufficiently large to take a threshing machine. It had four wheels, and featured a large cylinder that rotated to separate the grain by centrifugal action. Back in 1924, the machine was driven via a long flat belt by a steam engine standing in the drive. It wasn’t until later that the farmer who used the barn acquired a trussing machine for binding the straw, and replaced the steam engine by a tractor.

Thrashing took place in the winter. After thrashing, the straw was stacked where the corn had been stored, and the grain was sold off. The part of the barn at the front right was used as a workshop, and for storing garden tools and horses harnesses.

In terms of total area, the whole of Fowlers Wells’ property then was probably only a couple of times larger than it is today. Much of the land around the property belonged to Fowlers Wells Farm, the thatched cottage down the road from Fowlers Wells. In Fred’s day, Miss McMahon lived in the cottage (previously the Redmans lived there). Miss McMahon kept eight or nine Jerseys on the land now leased by the Chobham Rugby Club. One of Fred’s jobs was to fetch milk from that farm in the morning.

Born in 1916, Fred lived in Fowlers Wells for six years between the ages of nine and 15. His parents rented it from Miss Fladgate, one of a wealthy family of landowners.

As a youngster, one of Fred’s jobs was to fetch milk from the farm nearby (see above). Another was to keep the outside lavatory replenished with torn newspaper threaded on a string – there was no toilet paper to be bought in those days. Fred remembers that a general contractor named Mr Coombs who lived in Chertsey road would come with his horse and cart in the night to empty the bin under the lavatory and remove its contents.

Fred recalled once entering the sitting room and accidentally knocking into a mattress that his mum had left leaning up against a chair. The mattress was in front of the fire, presumably drying. Fred knocked it into the fire, and set it ablaze. His dad had to extinguish the flames by dousing them with water – ‘a near go’.