Table of Contents
Introduction
Author Colin Needham
Chapel Street is a continuation to the east of the High Street towards Mundesley, on what was the B1435. The Street is named after the Methodist Chapel (Wesleyan) which was built in the village in 1845. Prior to that, the Methodist Chapel was located outside the village at The Chapel Yard, a non-conformist meeting place since Elizabethan times. The site of the former Chapel including the graveyard is owned by The Southrepps Society.
It is likely that most of the older brick and flint cottages in Chapel Street shown on the Tithe map were built prior to 1800 but precise dating is very difficult as many of the buildings have been re-purposed over time and some have been demolished. Parts of the former Crown Inn may be remnants of the oldest building in the street.
A tour of each side of the street around the time of the 1839 Tithe Map using the reference numbers on the Tithe map above, starting on the north side.
North Side
Ref: 27
Today’s Vernon Arms was a Public House then owned by Lord Suffield. The tenant was Robert Mower. Robert Mower also owned cottages in Upper and Lower Street occupied by Hannah Cross, Robert Harvey, John Woods and others. John Woods and his brother Samuel were Cordwainers (shoe makers) as was his neighbour Joseph Springall.
Ref: 34
Today’s Barn Row was then a large farm barn, part of Church Farm. The farm and barn was owned by James Gay. The 107 acre Church Farm tenant was William Seago.
The census suggests James Gay was a well established non resident landowner, Magistrate and Deputy Lieutenant of the County. Born in 1784 and had lived in Alborough and Thurning. He died in 1874 aged 90.
Ref:35
The fields and pond to the east of today’s Barn Row were all part of Church Farm. In more recent times farmed by the Bartram family.
South Side
Ref: 26
Opposite the Vernon Arms, the Crown Public House and Bowling Green in 1839 was an old establishment, probably the oldest pub in Southrepps. In earlier times it was owned by the Gunton estate but by 1839 the owner of the Crown is recorded as William Hardy. He purchased it in 1794 and the Publican in 1839 was Spurrell Plumbly. Perhaps an unusual career choice for a “Gentleman of Southrepps”, variously listed as Clerk to the Magistrates Court and Commissioner of Taxes, Clerk to the Guardians of the Erpingham Union workhouse, Clerk to The Board of Governors of Antingham and Southrepps School, Clerk to the Rural Sanitary Authority and a Farmer.
Ref: 25
The village Bakery, the land and premises owned by Elizabeth Press. The census data suggests she did not live in Southrepps but came from North Walsham. Her father was a butcher. In 1839 the Baker was James Carter. The bungalow on the site now is the lower part of the former two storey bakehouse and the baker’s home. James Carter died in 1871 and the business was taken over by Chapman Drury. Successive generations of the Drury family ran the bakery in Southrepps. In 1950s the bakery moved to modern premises in Thorpe Road which is now the home of Mig Anglia.
Ref: 24
No information at present
Ref: 23
In 1839 the land and dwellings on this plot were owned by Jonas Walpole. In 1839 Jonas was a farmer and farrier living in Antingham. Later in life he was a tenant farmer of some substance at Lodge Farm in Southrepps
There were five dwellings on the plot. Present day Nos.12, 14-16, and 22 and 24 Chapel Street. There was a communal well outside No 16. Sometime after 1839 a pair of small cottages were built (today Nos.18-20), which were also served by the well. These two cottages were subsequently remodelled into a single dwelling known as Springfields. In later years it reverted to two dwellings and is now once again a single house.
Records show that by 1863 the land and dwellings were owned by Benjamin Golden. Benjamin Golden lived in No.12.
Ref: 20
In 1839 the property was owned by James Carter. This James Carter we believe was not the baker but a tenant farmer at Manor Farm (formerly Repps Heath Farm). The roadside dwellings, Palmer’s Cottages, were a terrace of five one up one down flint cottages. The cottages were built alongside a yard (Palmers Yard) with a block of privies to the south of the yard. The roadside terrace, but not the privies, was demolished as part of a slum clearance programme in 1950s. The road outside was re aligned and a detached house was built. Also on the plot in 1839 was a larger cottage which remains to the present day. Alf and Vi Hewitt and their family lived there for many years. He used the former privies as his garage. They were finally demolished in 2014 to make way for a new house.
Ref: 22,21 and 35
All the farmed land around this part of the village on both sides of the road was part of Church Farm owned in 1839 by James Gay. Ownership of Church Farm passed from James Gay to John Henry Gurney sometime before 1863 which is when he sold this and other farms in Southrepps, Northrepps, Gimingham and Sidestrand to the Buxtons.
The Bartram family went on from tenants to owners of Church Farm. This included the land on which was built : the Methodist Chapel in 1845; the newer houses Nos 19 to 29 built in 1970s; the former police house built in 1950s; the telephone exchange and to the south the recreation ground and the allotments.
Cobble Cottage
Cobble Cottage 14/16 Chapel Street.
Our house is an old roadside semi-detached cottage of indeterminate age built from cobbles from the beach and locally made red bricks. In the distant past it may have had a thatched roof. It adjoins a taller wider cobble and brick cottage and it is difficult to discern which dwelling came first.
Like many old dwellings in the village, over the years there have been numerous alterations and additions to our house. There are very few internal original features remaining as the pair of cottages were modernised and made into one, we think in the 1970s. This included new ground and first floors with changes to the internal walls and roof.
A significant survivor is the inglenook and bread oven on the west wall of No 14. Most recently we have added a substantial timber framed garage with a utility room and accommodation above.
The early history of the house is integral to the history of three houses, known since the late 20th century as numbers 12, 14 and 16 Chapel Street. The Methodist Chapel after which the street was named was opened in the village in 1845. It closed in 1979 and is now a private house.
We have identified the three cottages on Henry Biedermann’s Gunton Estate map made in 1784.
One of the maps is of the dwellings and enclosures owned by the estate in Southrepps and it does not highlight these cottages in red as being part of the estate. The land and farms to the North of the road was owned by Robert Greg Esq and to the South by James Gay Esq. These landed gentry were not farmers and did not live locally.
Moving on to 1839, and Neville Lee’s hand drawn version of the Tithe Map. Our plot is number 23 on the map and a shape corresponding to 12,14 and 16 is clearly shown, as is James Carter’s house and bakery on plot 25.
There are more dwellings shown on the Tithe Map than on the 1784 map. This does not necessarily mean that these houses were built in the intervening period as the motives of the surveyors were different in each survey.
In 1839 the owner of plot 23 including the cottages was Jonas Walpole. His tenants included Martha Boulter and John Foulger, a carpenter. Jonas was a farrier in Antingham. He also owned other properties and land in the village, in Church Street and Lower Street. Jonas Walpole had a son, also named Jonas who as a young man worked with his father as a farrier in Antingham. In later life he was also a successful farmer and vet and in the 1880s was a tenant farmer who lived with his family at Southrepps Lodge Farm. The census of 1881 records he farmed 1100 acres and that he employed 33 men,14 boys and 2 women.
When Jonas Walpole died his properties in Southrepps were sold in an auction held at the Crown Inn in 1857. Possibly at this time Benjamin Golden purchased 12,14,and 16.
We know that by 1880 he owned the properties and lived in No 12 with his wife Sara Elizabeth. Benjamin is variously described in the census as a gardener, shopkeeper and retired grocer. He owned other properties in the village and in Cromer. For gardener we think this probably means he was a smallholder, growing produce for sale locally.
In 1880, shortly before his death in 1882, Benjamin made a Will leaving all his properties to his daughter Susanna Tandan.
Susanna’s husband William was a lay preacher, a grocer and tailor. The couple lived in Dilham, where they had a grocers shop. The Will lists three cottages in Chapel Street with a description of the boundaries which suggest it included all of the 1839 Plot 23. On Benjamin’s death, his wife Sara still lived at No 12 and a condition of the Will stipulated a lifetime occupation and endowment for her of £20 per year from the income from the cottage rents.
The other tenants at that time were John Empson and John Harvey, both agricultural labourers.
In 1888 Susanna and William Tanden conveyed the cottages and land to Isaac Green and James Bloomfield Wright in redemption of mortgages. Isaac Green died in 1898 and Sara Golden died in 1906. In that year James Bloomfield Wright sold 12, 14 and 16 for £100 to Arthur Hewitt, a farmer with land off Sandy Lane. At that time the tenants were Arthur Lubbock, Dix and Bane.
James B Wright in the same year sold to William Harrison, a rent collector and later a Poor Law administrator from Southrepps, the land and property to the east of No 16. This was probably a pair of rental cottages built by Green and Bloomfield during their ownership of the site, sometime between 1888 and 1906. The cottages were probably informally converted by Harrison to single dwelling during his lifetime, as the 1930 conveyance by his widow Mary Harrison to R.J. Clarke refers to a single dwelling named Springfields.
Subsequent sales suggest the property reverted to two cottages, Springfields 1 and Springfields 2. Today it is again a single dwelling. The old Deeds of the Springfields and 14 and 16 did refer to the Rights of the occupiers to draw water from a well located on the east side of No 16 with an obligation on them to share in the cost of maintaining the well.
Mains water came to Southrepps in the 1950s, and by 2003 when we purchased the house the well had long been filled in and the upper part was buried in the garden. There was still a legal charge on the Deeds and we engaged a Solicitor to go through the legal process of removing the charge and registering the property for the first time. The approximate location of the well is shown on early OS maps and prior to constructing the extension we located the well and it was capped with reinforced concrete to the satisfaction of the Building Inspector.
Moving on.
Arthur Hewitt had no children. His first wife Barbara died in 1939 aged 68. In 1944 he married Edith Drury, the widow of John Drury owner of the Bakery in Chapel Street. Arthur died in 1954 and the beneficiaries of his will were his wife second Edith and his nephew and niece, William Bartram, a farmer, and Nancy Bartram. They were the children of Arthur’ sister Laura who had married James Bartram of Church Farm.
In 1957 Edith Hewitt died and the remaining beneficiaries of Arthur Hewitt’s Will sold 12, 14 and 16 to Reuben Thomas Dix. He was a Baker and lived at No 16. The other tenants were Amelia Pardon and the Banes. Reuben Dix died in 1965 in Cromer Hospital. His Executor sold No 14 and No 16 to Alice Dora Tuck from Cromer. The ownership of the three cottages was now separated for the first time. It is likely that No 12 was also sold at this time to the sitting tenant.
Dora Tuck gifted 14 and 16 to her husband Victor Tuck who was a builder. It is speculated that he undertook the renovation and possibly the part conversion of the two cottages into a single dwelling. The work included new floors and internal walls, windows and alterations to the roof.
In 1971 Victor Tuck sold the two freehold cottages to Nicholas William John Glaister, who lived at Chestnuts in Long Lane for £1500. Nicholas Glaister was the son of Hazel Glaister, a well known Southrepps resident who owned several properties in the village in her lifetime.
In 1996 Nicholas Glaister sold 14 and 16, now named Cobble Cottage, to Shirley Anne Murdock from Willesden in London for £62,500. She and her partner lived mostly in Portugal and Cobble Cottage was their holiday home.
Alf Hewitt, who lived in a cottage further up the road was their gardener and caretaker until we moved in.
We purchased Cobble Cottage in 2003. Whilst living in the house we have fitted new windows, refurbished the kitchen and bathroom, installed underfloor heating and built the extension.
Colin Needham November 2024