Mid-November brings the true onset of winter to the woods of
Halling and Cuxton and the trees begin shedding their leaves as if they mean
it. Sycamores, maples and chestnuts
usually lead the way, followed by elm, ash, and then finally the oaks and
beeches. Within a couple of short weeks,
most deciduous trees are bare-branched, with just the beeches hanging on to a
few brown leaves.
This opens up the shady woodland and makes things a bit
easier to see, of course. And Stoneyfield House (or at, least, what is left of it) is
something that becomes much more obvious in autumn.
Walking along the
North Downs
way from Church Hill leads through Mays Wood.
At the cross roads with the Warren, the North Downs way takes a sharp
right and heads off down Bush Valley, but a good track continues on through into
Wingate Wood, an older and once heavily-coppiced and managed piece of
woodland.
Most of the larger trees in
this area were lost to the Great Storm of 1987, and many of its victims still
lie on either side of the path, the chalk-encrusted roots having been levered
out of the chalk substrate to present themselves as white, ivy-encrusted
tombstones, monuments to the forest’s loss.
Further on down the path, the woodland seems to be a little more
sheltered, and many of the larger trees remain, giving a feel for what Wingate Woods
must once have been like throughout.
Here, the oak and beech still had some green leaves to contrast with the
gold, and even some of the ash and chestnuts are still holding on to a few
leaves that their less-sheltered brethren elsewhere have long since lost.
At the clearing where the high-voltage cables cross above,
Wingate Wood becomes Thistly Spring Wood.
This wood is similar in nature to the last part of Wingate Wood, with
fewer coppices and more widely-spaced, larger trees. About 500 yards in on the right, the remains
of Stonyfield House can be seen through them, only about 10 yards off the main
track.
Little seems to be recorded about this isolated structure. Stonyfield House is referenced on Ordnance
Survey maps, but in very few other places.
It is sited close to the open field of Stoneyfield Shaw and perhaps once
overlooked Stonyfield Woods away to the west.
The area to the north of the cottage was an open field at the turn of the twentieth century, as the 1908 OS map shows...
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| 1908 OS map showing Stonyfield House (centre)... |
The original structure must have been around 10 yards across on each side, with
single-storey flint walls, although only the eastern side of the flint wall still remains standing. On the west side, there seems to be some newer, crude brickwork
added, and what little remains of a pitched roof on one side clad in corrugated
iron, held up with a timber frame.
On the north side there is a hand pump and well cover, with
a pipe running into the ground. The
presence of a well suggests that this lonely, isolated building might once have
been inhabited. The pump itself is an
Excelsior No.5 reciprocating pump: this brand has been in production
since 1919
right up until today.
The only direct on-line reference to a structure with the
“Stonyfield” name in Halling comes from a
summary of a 1901 census. Back then,
“Stony Field Cottage” appeared to be the home of Mr Alfred Wisbey, his wife
Elizabeth and their seven (!) children. The children, four sons and three
daughters, ranged in age from 3 to 16, with the eldest, Samuel, following his
father’s profession as a gamekeeper.
Certainly the structure in Thistly Spring Wood could well be
the remains of a gamekeeper’s cottage, but it seems difficult to believe that a
family of nine could once have lived there.
Life must have been harsh for the Wisbey family indeed, if this was once
Stony Field Cottage. They must have been
resilient, hard-working people, living a life of hardship that we cosseted and
privileged folk in modern
Britain
cannot begin to imagine.
According to correspondence on the “Old Pictures of Halling”
Facebook page, the cottage was subsequently, for a while, home to Rodney and
Jack Rodgers, both gamekeepers who worked for the cement company who owned the land. The shed at the side was used by Rodney (and, prior
to him, by a Mr. Macmillan) to rear pheasants that were subsequently released
for the shoot in the nearby hills.
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| A Mr. Jack Rogers at Stonyfield House (photo posted by Paul Bullivant on the "Old Pictures of Halling" Facebook page) |
The picture of Jack Rogers above was apparently taken by a
Mr. Ronald Homewood, who at one point had a vegetable garden up there. A sad
story relates the tale of Mr. Homewood’s brother Bill, who apparently committed
suicide at the cottage by taking the lid off the water well and drowning
himself. By all accounts, Bill had gone up the cottage after a pint or two in
the nearby Robin Hood pub, and went to pat one of Jack’s dogs that was
asleep. Startled, the dog attacked Bill and tore off his lip. Bill was offered plastic
surgery but, in a fit of depression, killed himself before he went for treatment. In the aftermath, Rodney
Rogers took the unfortunate dog up to the woods and shot it.
Whilst not lived in, Stonyfield House appears to have been in use right up until the 1970s, with its associated garden still being tended, as this 1973 photograph appears to indicate...
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| "Ruins of Stonyfield House with shed and garden" (picture by Derek Church, 1973)... |
The area is now overgrown and choked with brambles and bushes.
On the way back I noticed that in several places, "fairy rings" of mushrooms were growing up through the leaves on the woodland floor. I think these might be Clouded Agaric...
I understand that Clouded Agaric are edible, but I really don't trust my fungus identification skills to the extent that I would actually try one. Because they might be Brown Roll Rims instead...
