Memories Of Sutton Lodge, In Sutton Lane—Just South Of The Great West Road, Heston/Hounslow

A Memory of Heston.

Recorded by Nicholas Reid, Canberra, Australia.

I was christened in the Anglican church at Heston in 1959, though for obvious reason I don’t have any memories of it from that time, and few thereafter because we boarded a ship to Australia later in the same year. My parents were also married there, it being the church my mother’s family occasionally attended from the 1930s on. My aunt Gill (technically my mother’s cousin) insists that the family were not church-going people.

The grandparents of my mother and aunt, Arthur and Mabel Hancock, owned Sutton Lodge, just off Sutton Lane and just south of the Great West Road—perhaps more in Hounslow than in Heston. So far as I can tell, it was built in the late eighteenth century or early nineteenth century, and was clearly a substantial building. It was set in one or two acres of lawn, orchard and outbuildings. My aunt says that it had four storeys and five flights of stairs. And it needed to be quite large. As the war proceeded and housing became scarce, three of the daughters of Arthur and Mabel moved in: Bobbie (actually Mabel Mary), Hilda and Connie. Bobby and Connie both had daughters with them: cousins, my aunt Gill and my mother, Ardyne. The fourth daughter, Eva, lived with her husband in Norwood Green.

My great grandfather, Arthur Hancock (1868-1944), died in the house. As my mother remembers it, the household was listening to the whistling of a German bomb descending on their neighbourhood, and my great grandmother said ‘This one is ours’—perhaps provoking the heart attack that killed her husband. Fortunately, the bomb landed nearby, and not on the house.

As my aunt remembers it, he was recovering from major surgery and suffered a stroke—and no bombs were falling. As she said, ‘if there had been, we children would have been in the kitchen inside the Morrison shelter as the cage was named’. The family were in the upstairs sitting room when he died.

During the raids, the family would descend into the cellar for protection, though it was not clear that that was a good idea. Apparently, the local fire wardens worried about how they would extract the family if the house fell on top of the cellar, and prospects would have been dire if the house was on fire.

The house was sold at about the end the war, partly because it needed a new roof, and was later turned into a dental surgery, before being demolished in the 1950s. It was last seen by my aunt and her then husband, who were on their way to visit another great aunt in Norwood Geen. They remembered seeing the remains of the cellar, and a single block of wood (perhaps a floor joist) which had supported the ceiling. My great grandmother, Mabel Mary Buckworth (1878-1956) then moved to White Cottage, 117 Limmer Lane, Felpham, near Bognor Regis—along with my mother’s aunts, Bobby and Hilda, and Bob’s daughter Gill.


The Grounds

My aunt tells me that:

"The house itself was built in the north-west corner of the block, close to Sutton Lane which ran beside it. It was bordered on the west and north sides by a high flint wall. Two gates were in this wall, one leading to the front of the house on the south side, the other being the tradesmen’s entrance on the north side. Directly in front of the house, on the south side, was a gravel path and a very long lawn, and at the end of the lawn was the drive with two tall wooden gates painted green. The drive curved round the lawns and Rhododendron walk and ended by the garage.

Beyond the conservatory was a lawn edged with flower beds and on the high flint wall which bordered part of the garden was a large espaliered fig tree; beyond this lawn were paths and yet another lawn with a circular wooden structure covered in climbing roses. And beyond that was a huge Mulberry tree which at some time had fallen down so it lay on its side. We children used to enjoy climbing it, especially your Mother who would sometimes get stuck and have to be rescued!

Beyond all this was the orchard with many fruit trees and soft fruit. As you may imagine, these grounds were a wonderful place to play in: games, building dens and riding our bikes pretending there were horses! Bordering the orchard to the south was an area where chickens and ducks were kept, the other side of which was a vegetable garden.

The outbuildings were joined in a line and reached from the house by a gravel path and through a gate, starting with a large tool shed which had steps up to the floor above (we were forbidden to climb those steps, most dangerous!) Next to this was the Apple Store, and then the billiard room with a full-sized table. This had two entrance wooden doors, one on the south side and one on the north. Next to this was the Cinema with a full-size screen and proper theatre seats, where we used to watch cartoons and silent films. It was my father’s hobby! The next structure was the garage and finally an open but covered area for storage bins for chicken feed etc. The upper floor where we were not allowed to venture was a long low room which was used by the confectionery factory in days gone by."


The house

I have put together a description of the house, based on the memories of my mother Ardyne and Aunt Gill.

The house had two-storey bow windows at the front, facing south, and was entered via a small flight of steps that took you into a wide hall. On the left was the dining room, large enough to sit a table for twelve, and on the right was the lounge room. There had been a morning room or bedroom behind it, facing east, but the two rooms were knocked into one for the marriage celebrations when my aunt’s mother married in June of 1928. The enlarged lounge was 36 feet long! On the right of what had been the morning room there was a small flight of stairs down into a conservatory that was built for my great grandmother sometime after my great aunt’s marriage in 1928. It faced east.

At the end of the hall, there was a door on the right, into what had been the morning room, and a landing, with a flight of stairs going up on the left and another going down about five steps on the right. If you went down the stairs, you would face a door ahead that went into the staff toilet.

If you turned left at the bottom of these stairs, you would go under the upper stairs, and reach the kitchen, which was lower than the dining room but which had a hatch through which food could be passed into the dining room. The kitchen was. an integral part of the house, and came with a scullery where the cooking and laundry was done.

If you turned left in the same way, but then immediately turned left again, you would descend a flight of stairs into the cellar. The cellar consisted of a sloping wooden staircase bordered on one side by wooden racks which served to store apples or as a bed during the war for my great grandfather’s daughters, my great aunts! There were four separate rooms, one with a hatch facing west which was the coal store.

From the main hall (on the ground floor) you could ascend the stairs on the left, to the first floor. At the top, there was another toilet straight ahead, and to the left was a door into the sitting room, which was above the dining room below, and possibly above the kitchen.

From the top of these stairs you could also go up another five steps (on the right), ending in a small square vestibule. On the left (above the morning room?) was a nursery, while above the lounge (?) was the master bedroom, which faced south. Above the hall (?) was a bathroom, and another bedroom which also faced south.

According to my aunt, there was then another flight of stairs leading to another large bedroom facing west, used by the housekeeper and later by great Aunt Hilda. Yet a further flight of stairs led to another large bedroom where my aunt and her mother slept.

Memories

Like Carol Baldry, my mother remembers the man with the horse and cart, delivering the milk, though not his name. (My aunt suspects that my mother is remembering a man called Charlie, who delivered their milk in Felpham, as the war ended.) My mother thinks that she also remembers meeting Carol at church services, and that Margot Sampson’s dancing classes involved tap. Since she is currently in the dementia unit at a local nursing home, in Canberra, I cannot vouch for the accuracy of these memories. She does more reliably remember being sent by her grandfather down to the orchard, to tell the local boys stealing apples to go away. One said to her, ‘Why should I listen to you’, or words to that effect—and her answer was ‘Because grandfather is coming’.

My mother, then Ardyne Gould, was born at Sutton Lodge in 1934 and lived there until about the end of the war. She claims to remember being woken by her step-father to look from the attic window over towards central London, which was on fire after yet another German raid—though my aunt says that central London was too far away to have been seen. And she remembers waving, perhaps aged six, to the King and Queen as they drove into London from Windsor. A friendly local policeman was on duty, to wave the royal motorcade through—and he called her over to stand in front him while waving. Princess Elizabeth waved back. Princess Margaret did not!

My mother (and possibly my aunt, who was two or three years older) attended the Ashton House independent school, at 52 Eversley Crescent, Isleworth, where they may have been taught by the owner of the school, Miss A.M. Lake. Getting there involved a bus and then a walk.

Though it sounds strange today, many middle-class people had servants in those days. I recently found a postcard online, sent to one of the servants from Southend-on-Sea. Her name was Doris Allmann, and she lived in the maid’s room in the attic from the late 1930s. Her husband later asked my mother's family to look after Doris, until he could return from the war. My mother remembered Doris taking her to the park and buying her an ice cream. My aunt remembers that ‘the daily help’ had a Grandson called Jimmy who was a wonderful ballet dancer.

My mother’s other cousins, lived next door in the house of her uncle Leonard Hancock (1888-1943)—Orchard House, which may still be standing. The land on which it stood had originally been part of the Sutton Lodge estate, and my great grandfather Arthur Hancock had sold it to his youngest brother, Leonard. It was to the south of Sutton Lodge. According to my aunt, Orchard House was still there in the early 1980s, completely surrounded by a new housing estate. The maps from 1928 also show a Willow Lodge to the north of Sutton Lodge, though my mother has no memory of it in her time.

My great grandfather was a self-made man, whose father Daniel Hancock (1838-1922) had begun life working in the clay pits of west London, in turn the son of an illiterate worker who had come down to London from Woburn. Workers in the clay pits were at the bottom of the pile, living in utter poverty. (I once read a mid-nineteenth century report on the brick pits, where the scandalised authors discovered that the workers were not only not Christians: they had never even heard of Christ.)*

Daniel Hancock became a Methodist and was a teetotaller, which perhaps allowed him to set aside enough to escape the pits. In 1871 Daniel moved to Canada and set up a pig farm, before returning to England. His son Arthur in turn became a butcher and later owned a small chain of butcher shops, making him wealthy enough to buy Sutton Lodge, I think in the later 1920s.

My great grandmother Mabel Mary Hancock, nee Buckworth, came from more elevated stock, her great grandfather having been the great grandson of a baronet. It is a fairly remote connection at this point! Alas, her part of the family had fallen on hard times, her feckless father having started at Eton and ended in penury—and she was working as a barmaid when she met my great grandfather. My great grandparents’ story is one of social mobility in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. My mother, now in her dotage, can talk of little else than Sutton Lodge, and I wish I had been born in time to see it.

Appendix

Sutton Lodge had the following occupants:

In 1861, the freehold in Sutton Lodge was owned by Thomas Charles Matts. The electoral registers show him still in residence in 1864.

In 1881, Sutton Lodge may have been occupied by Charles Cook, an Engraver Artist, aged 48, along with his wife Lucy Cook, daughters Florence and Rose, sons Laurence, Claude and Wilfred, and servants Julia Wakefield, Mary Gladman and William Tench.

In 1891 and 1901 Sutton Lodge appears to have been occupied by Edward Lawrence and his family. He is described in the 1891 census as a Ball Furnisher and in 1901 as a Director of Public Company. In 1891, his servants were Ellen Robinson and Frances R May, both aged 22. In 1901, his servants were Alice Biggs (aged 25) and Mary Eliza Coleman (later Davis, born 1882) who died in Orange, NSW, in 1972. By 1911, the Lawrences seem to have been living at The Hut Stoneby, Stone Hill Common, Headley, Hants.

In 1911, the occupant was Amelia Louisa King, a widow whose occupation was given as ‘independent means’. The other people living there were her sons, George Williams King 25, and Frank Thomas King 16, and daughters Ethel May King and Rose Rebecca King. Her brother, a market gardener, was also in residence.

The 1921 census lists Alexander Hamilton and his family as residents of Sutton Lodge. He was a wholesale confectioner, aged 56, and his wife Margaret Norman Hamilton was 44. Their daughters were Edith H. (16), Eileen Wood H. (9), and their sons were Edward Alexander H. (14) and Robert Francis Wood H. (7). The children were born in Malawi!

The same 1921 census lists the occupants as Alfred W Harding, aged 30, his wife Louisa (30), sons Alfred R (6), David G (4), daughters Ruth E (2) and Margaret E (eight months), along with Herbert Gicken (16), nephew. Alfred’s occupation is listed as ‘confectionary traveller’, employed by the above Alexander Hamilton, Wholesale Confectioner. Also in residence was William Walter Pentelow.

By 1928, when his daughter married, Sutton Lodge was owned by my great grandfather, Arthur Hancock.

*Footnote: I can’t now find the report into the Brickfields, but see: https://hansard.parliament.uk/lords/1871-07-11/debates/c47fbed6-6289-459a-93bb-b78bbd34090a/ChildrenSEmploymentCommission—Brickfields—TheFactoryActs). See also George Smith’s account at https://books.google.com.au/books?id=a9IlkDtJisoC&pg=PA2&source=gbs_toc_r&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

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