Hare Lane

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O X S H O T T

2024 Planning Applications

№ 67

ADDRESS: 67 Hare Lane APPLICATION NUMBER: 2024/2031 PROPOSAL: Single-storey side extension following demolition of conservatory. CPC VERDICT: No Objections. With Comments: The windows on the side extension should be opaque. EBC VERDICT: Grant Planning Permission. 3 x standard conditions. [NB: NO condition re opaque glazing]

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№ 100

ADDRESS: 100 Hare Lane APPLICATION NUMBER: 2024/1759 PROPOSAL: Single-storey rear extension. CPC VERDICT: No Objections. No Comments. EBC VERDICT: Grant Planning Permission 3 x Standard conditions

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Historical Notes

Hare Lane c.1909

Junction of The Parade with Hare Lane

The Red Cross Depot (now Torrington Lodge) opposite The Parade

Hare Lane

Claygate House, believed to have stood on the north side of Hare Lane opposite The Firs

The Parade on the left

Before 1900 there were only three houses between Hare Lane Green and where The Foley now stands. These were Loseberry, Peartree and Knightley:

• Peartree took its name from (or gave its name to) that stretch of Hare Lane between the Foley Arms and the railway bridge which was known in the nineteenth century as Peartree Hill. This could have been derived from a nearby orchard of pear trees if such existed, or more romantically perhaps from a much older form pyrihagh (Feet of Fines 1235). Peartree (House) disappeared with the coming of the railway, or more specifically when the station and The Parade were built. The site chosen for the station was the obvious and natural spot for it, .being the only relatively level area between the embankment to the north and the cutting to the south.
• Knightley, more or less opposite Peartree on the other side of Hare Lane, was renamed Torrington Lodge about a hundred years ago. During the 1914- 1918 war it served as a Red Cross Centre. After some tasteful alterations to the original house and the building of a harmonious extension (Greenstar House) to the rear of it during the 1970s, it now has a renewed life as an office building. Some of Torrington Lodge's original features such as the covered way from the front door to the roadside have, of course, disappeared, as have its farm buildings and seven acres of grounds, although part of the latter are still 'open' in the sense that they are the present home of Claygate Tennis Club. All these changes were, I suggest, better than the alternative of demolition and the replacement of Torrington Lodge (now called Torrington House) by some less pleasing, modern-style development.

Loseberry

Princess Helen, Duchess of Albany

Loseberry was built in the mid-19th century by John Peter Robinson, the owner of the Oxford Street department store and a large landowner in Claygate. He built Loseberry Farm soon afterwards, although the land had been farmed by several other people before that. The England cricketer, Bunny Lucas, lived here and founded Claygate cricket club in 1885. Both house and farm were bought by the Crown Commissioners in 1907. After the Great War, the Duchess of Albany lived at Loseberry.

As Princess Helen of Waldeck-Pyrmont (a small principality in Western Germany) she had married Leopold, the youngest son of Queen Victoria, in 1882. The couple originally lived at Claremont. He was a delicate man and less than two years later, he hurt his foot while on holiday in Cannes. This brought on an attack of epilepsy and he died a few days later. Nearly four months after Leopold died the widowed Duchess gave birth to their second child, a son, at Claremont. She continued to live at Claremont with her two children, Princess Alice, and Prince Leopold, who was better known after his second name of Charles. The Duchess became much involved in local affairs opening many fetes, concerts, and garden parties and attended every annual prize-giving at Esher National School until 1921.

But with the death of Queen Victoria's second son, the Queen decided that Charles should succeed to the Dukedom of Saxe-Coburg, and assume German nationality. For three years the Duchess closed Claremont while she made a home for her son in Germany. Charles studied at Bonn University in 1903, under the watchful eye of his cousin Kaiser Wilhelm.

The outbreak of the 1914-1918 war was a great shock to the Albanys. Charles, now a German citizen, was stripped by King George V of all his British titles and property rights, while his sister's husband was made Earl of Athlone. The Duchess, although German by birth, was sympathetic to the British cause and supported several charities. Nevertheless she was subject to much abuse and had to live with the almost impossible situation of having one child on either side of the conflict. During the first two years of the war, the Duchess ran an officers' convalescent home at Claremont, largely at her own expense. When the cost became too great she let the house to Almeric Paget who used it as a hospital for the rehabilitation of wounded soldiers.

The Duchesss died suddenly in 1922 while visiting her son in Austria.

Loseberry returned to private ownership in 1981.

Loseberry Farm

Claygate had several farms in centuries past. There was Beazley Farm by Littleworth Common which ceased milk production in the 1950s in favour of horses; Slough Farm had a dairy herd of Red Poll Cattle and later pigs but later had horses; Manor Farm had a dairy herd of prize-winning jersey cows but later had horses; Elm Farm had dairy cows and chickens and sold delicious cream, but later had a plant nursery business and horse-feed shop; Barwell Court had a big herd of Friesian milking cows and grew cereals, but later kept horses; Horringdon Farm had one of the last big dairy herds of Red Poll cattle and grew cereals and potatoes, but but later horses and grazes young cattle for Loseberry Farm; Loseberry Farm no longer keeps a dairy herd; it later kept a house cow and young stock for the dairy herd at Stoke D'Abernon.

One of Claygate's largest landowners of the 19th century was John Peter Robinson, Gentleman of Oxford Street, and one of the founders of the department store of that name. His main holdings were located either side of Hare Lane, on the west side of the railway. One of the two residences he owned in the locality, Loseberry, still stands, but the other, Brookleigh, just outside Claygate on the west side of Arbrook Lane, has been demolished. Robinson died at Brookleigh on 31 October 1895. For some years thereafter there was considerable litigation over the terms of his will and the disposal of his properties.

Titts Farm was sold off for housing development, while Loseberry Farm, part of the Robinson estate, was purchased by the Commissioners of His Majesty's Woods, Forests and Land Revenues in 1907 as a long-term investment, and to enhance and maintain the Crown Estate. At just over 90 acres, Loseberry Farm has been with the present tenant, Jim Miller, since 1955. Prior to that, from the mid-1920s, John Gardner was the tenant.

Since 1970, Loseberry Farm, under Jim Miller's tenancy, concentrated on dairy cattle and could claim to be one of the nearest dairy farms to London. Some 80 Friesian cows were kept at Loseberry, with a further couple of hundred or so at another farm at Stoke D'Abernon which as managed with Loseberry Farm as a combined unit by the Miller family. The application of modern farming techniques, some of which were pioneered by Jim Miller, enabled the farm to carry around twice the national average density of dairy cows per acre, with an average yield per cow of some 1,000 gallons of high quality milk per year. Since 1971, all the herd were reared on the farm itself.

While Loseberry, as we know it today, is one of Claygate's newer farms, probably dating from around the mid-1800s when it was founded by JP Robinson, it may well have a longer history under a different name and land configuration. There is reason to suppose that a previous farmhouse existed on or close to the site where Claygate railway station and yard were built, and that this farm may have been called 'Polecats Farm' (or perhaps 'Pinners Farm') in those days. Such a farm certainly existed in this general locality in the early part of the 19th century, owned by the Debinham family and farmed by Thomas Sykes.

The Orchard

The Orchard was originally a farmhouse and dates from around the middle of the 18th century as indicated by the date 1723 inscribed on a beam of the barn in its grounds. It also bore Fire Mark J74J issued in 1825 by the Protectors' Insurance Company, now the Phoenix Assurance Company. This 15th century piece of Claygate history is now preserved, not in Claygate, but in Wallis Wood, near Ockley, after being dismantled and transferred. Under the supervision of its new owner, Stuart Aldridge, each piece of the barn was numbered with a plant label, so that it could be reassembled on its new site.

Mr Aldridge, a director of Deeks and Steere, the Godalming builders, said that he was achieving an ambition by acquiring the barn: "It will be erected in the garden of my cottage, which dates back to 1480. I have always wanted to get hold of an old barn that will be as much in keeping with the cottage as possible." Mr. Aldridge said he thought the whole project, from dismantling to the finished buildings on its new site. would cost around £10,000, including purchase of the barn. Ken Huddart, chairman of Claygate Village Residents' Association, said the question of the barn had been very carefully considered locally: "We had hoped it would be sold to a local owner," be said. "But unfortunately nobody came forward in response to advertising. As it is, it will be better where it can be properly looked after."

The barn had become very neglected, and there had been fears that without proper care it would eventually fall down.

Titts Farm

References to Titts Farm date back to 1743, but it was likely much older than this. The farm was broken up and the land auctioned off in lots for development purposes between 1908 and 1910. It comprised some 35 to 40 acres covering the area that now contains Station Road, Loseberry Road, Raleigh Drive and Rythe Road, with the railway line, Hare Lane, Hare Lane Green and the River Rythe as its approximate boundaries. In earlier years the farm probably extended further eastwards to embrace most, if not all, of Lambs Hill, and thus one of the Oaken Lane brickfields: there are references in old deeds to the payment of an annuity of £20 during the lifetime of one owner in lieu of forgoing a one-third royalty on 'unexhausted brick earth'. It also seems likely that one or two fields lying on the other side of Hare Lane may have formed part of this farm.

Titts Farmhouse and its main barn coincided very closely with the location of what became the Orchard, Hare Lane, and the old barn in its grounds bordering Raleigh Drive. The four cottages that went with the farm no longer exist. The barn off Raleigh Drive which stood until the formation of Chadworth Way lay in a field called Barn Close in the 19th century; other fields of Titts Farm were called 'Home Close', 'Carrot Field', 'Claygate Lane Field' — on which the old Swedenborgian church was subsequently built by Charles Higby — and 'Lambs Hill'.

For many years a substantial part of the farmland was owned by John Peter Robinson of Oxford Street, London, and after he died in 1895, by the trustees of his Loseberry Estate. Tenant farmers included James Freelove (1843), William Scott (1884) and William Aspin (1900).

Part of the farmland having been purchased by Bertram White of Raleigh House, Nelson Road, New Malden, was sold by him in 1910 to Ebenezer Thorogood, a builder of Surbiton. It was from the name of White's house that Raleigh Drive got its name; Rythe Road was also part of Raleigh Drive and so named originally.

Site plans of the farm and adjoining land show that a smithy was located on the corner of Station Road and Hare Lane next to the railway bridge until about 1910.

The Beaufort Arms

On Hare Lane coming from the High Street, there was a narrow lane on the right hand side almost opposite 'The Foley'. In this lane there was a small building which was once a public house called 'The Beaufort Arms', and then became a private garage. It is not clear whether this garage was the whole pub or just part of it. 'The Beaufort Arms' probably went out of business around 1900 after the nearby Foley Arms was built. And being located in an alleyway off the main thoroughfare would not have helped its chances of success against its much grander neighbour.

Fieldview School

Fieldview School at 41 Hare Lane, a pre-preparatory school for boys and girls from 2 to 9 years of age, of which Mrs. E.M. Gibbs was the founder and principal.

Sources

• Claygate Heritage Trail, (leaflet produced by Claygate Parish Council)
• Peebles, Malcolm (1983). The Claygate Book. (Millennium edition). Stockbridge: by BAS Printers Ltd. ISBN 0-9508978-0-9.

  

• Many thanks also for the photos, many supplied by Terry Gale, from the Claygate Local History Facebook group.
• Esher News and Mail
• Claygate Life — 2004 issue 4

See also

• Hare Lane slip road
• Torrington Lodge Car Park

Further Information

• Hare Lane in previous years