Swallow Cottage

My father, James 'Jim' Jeffery was born at Swallow Cottage on July 2nd 1918. Florence Jeffery (nee Stonard) was his mother who married Charles Jeffery. Florence, with her elder daughter Lilian (Lily) and Jim lived at Swallow Pond until 1920 when Charles Jeffery became a carpenter with Inkerman Barracks in Knaphill and moved there. In 1928 Lily and Jim went back to Swallow Cottage to care for William and Alice, William having lost a leg to gangrene. After serving in the army in World War Two, Jim married Margaret Tull, sister of the landlord of the Anchor pub in Knaphill. They lived in Willow Cottage, Chapel Lane in Pirbright. Jim and Margaret had three children, David, Katie and Anton (me). Margaret was killed in a motoring accident in 1968. Jim remarried in 1971 to Patricia Smith, who had nursed the elder children who were injured in the car accident that claimed Margaret. The family lived in Pirbright, moving to 4 Sand Pit Cottages, School Lane in 1993 where they lived happily until Pat died in May 2011 and Jim on 15th May 2018, just six weeks short of his 100th birthday.