There's no place like home

A collaborative project between London Borough of Sutton Cultural Services and The Friends of Honeywood Museum. Kindly sponsored by The Friends of Honeywood Museum. The exhibition below was shown in the Museum 2020-2021

This exhibition of works from the Museum Art Collection explored some of the different houses where local people have lived and worked from the 16th century to the mid twentieth century. The landscape across the Borough has changed radically during that time, from a rural area encompassing farms and livestock, to suburban settlements with much development.
 
People’s homes have also changed. These include a dwelling created from a medieval chapel, lane-side cottages, substantial farmhouses, workers cottages and mill houses. It was an area where wealthy London businessmen had their 'out of town' houses, sometimes set in idyllic Wandle-side landscapes. Victorian development included some quirky and notable ‘stand out’ buildings with unique decorative details.

Included in the exhibition was a group of watercolours by Carshalton resident Sheila Mary Ellis, a needlework teacher and artist, who delighted in recording details of her home and garden in the 1960s.
 
Domestic utensils have long changed, developed and been invented to aid people’s lives. A range of these were also displayed within Honeywood Museum.
 
The exhibition included three short new films of Honeywood, Little Holland House and Whitehall Historic House, which were made in collaboration with Open House London. You can view the videos by tapping/clicking on the image below.

Beddington, Surrey
Thomas Robert Colman Dibdin (1810-1893)

LDSCL: B.011

​Dibdin captures the rural setting of the building which must have been a rather higgledy-piggledy place for several families to live. The building which was called the Old Post Office stood at the corner of Church Lane and Guy Road. It looks like a fairly major medieval house with a hall in the centre and jettied wings at either end. Appearances can be deceptive. A photograph taken after it had suffered bomb damage in the second world war shows that the ‘hall’ roof was of a much later type. It appears to have been built as a row of cottages – probably in a piecemeal way over an extended period.

Old Farm House, at Beddington Park. Mrs Gee's
Gideon Yates (1790-1840)

LDSCL: B.012

​The title suggests that this had once been a farmhouse, but the form of the building suggests that they were and always had been cottages. A later photo suggests that they were built of plastered timber. There appears to have been a ground floor and rooms in the attic lit by dormer windows. The projecting tower would have held a staircase and was probably an addition replacing a ladder. The cottages seem to have been in a poor state when Yates painted them in the early 19th century, but they survived until 1960 when they were demolished. They must have provided very basic accommodation for the families living there.

[Dame Duffin's Cottage and Ann Boleyn's Well before 1836]
Unknown artist

LDSCL: CA.041

This slightly naive painting captures the spirit of the place well. The cottage takes its name from Dame Duffin who sold cakes to the local children and was the last person to live there. The cottage belonged to the parish. It stood in the corner of the churchyard and was probably originally a medieval chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Boulogne. The Bullen Well can be seen in the foreground. This survives but is now known as Anne Boleyn’s well and is capped over. The cottage probably dated from the 16th century. It was demolished in 1836 and replaced by a brick vault which housed the parish fire engine.

Rye Farm, Hoare Esq. 1826
Gideon Yates (1790-1840)

LDSCL: CA.052

This house no longer exists but appears to date from the late 16th or 17th century. It stood in Bishopsford Road a short distance from what is now the Rose Hill roundabout. In the 19th century it was known as Hill Farm and worked a substantial area of land between Wrythe Lane and Green Wrythe Lane. The occupant would have been a substantial tenant farmer who would have employed several other people. The distinctive hood mouldings over the windows were partly decorative and partly to stop rainwater running down the windows. The addition of the dog softens an otherwise wholly topographical painting.

Mill Lane, Carshalton about 1888
Winifred Madder (1883-1972)
after H Romer

LDSCL: CA.114

​This shows the mill house (left) and part of the paper mill looking northwest across the Wandle towards Mill Lane. In the 18th and early 19th century it was very common for business owners to live close to their workplace. Most of the mills along the river Wandle had adjacent mill houses where domestic life continued in parallel to the workshops. With no washing machines washing day was a major task involving heavy and lengthy work.

A Cottage in Green Wrythe Lane 1884
William Tatton Winter (1855-1928)

LDSCL: CA.118

This may be Hay’s Cottage which stood on the east side of the lane well north of the village. The red brick and pan tile roof suggest an 18th or early 19th century date. There were a number of these small fairly isolated lane side cottages scattered around the local area. Little is known about their origins or history. Tatton Winter suggests a pretty garden behind the slightly ramshackle gate.

[Footpath beside Carshalton Church]
William Tatton Winter (1855-1928)

LDSCL: CA.137

​This path ran between All Saints Church and what is now Woodman’s Wine bar. It connected the churchyard and a cottage adjoining it to the High Street. Carshalton has retained some of its backyard yards and alleys but it had more in the past and more people lived in cottages built along them. Tatton Winter has captured an unusual view looking towards the pond.

Little Holland House, 1955
Frank Dickinson (1874-1961)

LDSCL: CA.191b

​Frank Dickinson came from a modest London background. He worked in the drawing office of an engineering firm and later for Doulton’s the potters. He and his fiancé Florence could not afford to buy the house they dreamt of, so he bought a plot of land on the edge of the countryside in Carshalton. He then designed and built his own house with the help of his brother and a labourer. It was completed in 1904 and he and Florence made almost all of the furniture and fittings in the Arts and Crafts style. This distinctive house and its contents survive and are opened to the public by the Sutton Cultural Service.

Plan and view of a cottage residence near Carshalton Surrey
Artist unknown

LDSCL: CA.192

​This shows Wallington Cottage which stood on the east side of the Wandle at the downstream end of Culvers Island on the site of the present Mullards Close. It had a timber frame covered with weatherboards – an economical method of construction which was popular in the 18th and early 19th century. The house existed in 1808 and may have been connected with a print works which stood a short distance downstream. By 1866 the print works had gone, and the house had been much extended to make a substantial middle class residence in an attractive river side location. The painting was made for an engraver to illustrate an estate agent’s sales particulars.

Orchard Hill Cottages 1880
Harold Goldthwaite (1869-1932)

LDSCL: CA.221

This row of cottages were behind The Greyhound. In the early 19th century there were many houses built on the back-lands behind the buildings fronting onto the Carshalton High Street and West Street. Some of them degenerated into slums and almost all – including Orchard Hill Cottages – have been demolished. They were originally respectable working-class houses often timber framed and covered with weatherboards or cement render. Goldthwaite captures the pride of the residents in their houses and gardens. Notice the flower beds and pots on the window sills are immaculate. The gardens would have been valuable for growing vegetables.

Carshalton Classic 1970
Freda Muriel Wright (d.2013)

LDSCL: CA.225

​This large, detached, double-pile house in West Street, Carshalton is of rather uncertain date. The elaborate cornice, heavily moulded window surrounds and keystones on the corners suggest that it was built in the early 18th century but the details could be later embellishments. The lattice-work porch is probably 19th century. Larger old houses commonly had a front and back blocks with two roofs and a valley gutter between them. This sort of building would have been the home of a prosperous tradesman or minor gentry.

Sheila Mary Ellis (1905-1970)

Sheila Mary Ellis was a needlework teacher at Wallington County Grammar School from 1942 to her retirement. An amateur artist, she delighted in painting details of her home and garden that were intimately familiar to her. These included the tool shed, garden tools and a water butt. She also did water colours and ink drawings of other local buildings and landscapes, the birds on the Ponds and even the factory which was then in Mill Lane. Her choice of subjects – particularly the domestic interiors and gardens – make her paintings very evocative of middle-class life in the local area in the 1960s. She exhibited many times locally and at the Royal Institute for Painters in Watercolours.

Tool Shed at Bradford House, Carshalton

LDSCL: CA.306

​Bradford House was 21 Ashcombe Road, overlooking Carshalton Park.

Bradford House, Carshalton 1966

LDSCL: CA.307

Interior of Bradford House, Carshalton

LDSCL: CA.345

88 Boundary Road, Carshalton

LDSCL: CA.341

88 Boundary Road, Carshalton
​Interior in 1964

​LDSCL: CA.342

House at Carshalton [The Culvers] 1847
George Harley (1791-1871)

LDSCL: CA.426

​The Culvers stood on a large island in the River Wandle below Hackbridge. The house was built in the first half of the 19th century by Samuel Gurney who was a member of a wealthy Quaker banking family. He was involved in the financing of the first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable. This would have been an out of town house to complement his London residence. It was on the site of a textile bleaching ground which he turned into an attractive garden through which the River Wandle flowed in several channels. Gurney was forced to sell the house in 1866 following the collapse of the bank.

Park Lane, Cheam, Surrey 1921
T.W. James

LDSCL: CH.007

​These charming looking cottages have been updated over the years without destroying their character. They were mostly built as small worker’s cottages. They are of mixed date. The one in the foreground may be 16th or early 17th century. The two in the centre are Georgian originally with two rooms on each floor. The black one in the background is probably early 19th century but the back of it is part of a larger and much older building perhaps dating from about 1550 to 1650. Notice that it is wash day for one household.

Cottages in Malden Road, Cheam
Nora Travers (1858-1922)

LDSCL: CH.042

​The tiny cottages in the foreground probably contained only two rooms and are a type of working-class housing that has largely disappeared. In the Tudor period Malden Road had wide grass verges which were enclosed in the early 19th century – or perhaps before. It is likely that these cottages were constructed in a small enclosure on the verge – most likely in the late 18th century when the population was starting to rise. Note the bean canes by the cottage: garden vegetables would have been an important part of the family food supply.

Red Lion Street, corner High Street
Nora Travers (1858-1922)

LDSCL: CH.043

​Red Lion Street is now Park Road. Cheam High Street contained a number of cottages and small houses. The large brick chimney suggests that the lean-to held a wash house for laundry or perhaps a bakehouse. The young girl softens the foreground of the painting and possibly lived in the house.

Whitehall

Whitehall was built around 1500 but probably not as a house – its original function is unclear. It was probably converted into a house in the mid-16th century. There was then a hall or general living room on the ground floor with a kitchen on one side of it and a small service room on the other. The upstairs was presumably bedrooms but the arrangement is no longer clear.
Two attic rooms were inserted about 1600.

A large extension was added to the back in the middle to late 17th century. This probably contained a drawing room with a bedroom above.

Another extension was built on the back of the house around 1800. The kitchen was moved into this and the vacated space became a dining room. The hall was divided to create a parlour at the front of the house and various other improvements were made.

These changes are most evident on the back of the house where the extensions can be seen.
​
The original lath and daub timber work on the front has been covered with weatherboards and the windows were altered in the early 19th century so that they could be covered by internal rising shutters. This would have kept out the drafts and made the house a lot warmer. So a small house was turned into a much larger, warmer and more comfortable one by piecemeal changes over several centuries.

[Whitehall about 1823]
John Hassell (1767-1825)

LDSCL: CH.030

​Hassell is not noted for his accuracy and this picture is problematic as it shows a symmetrical building with a hipped roof at both ends. An older drawing shows the house in its present form with a gable at one end.

The Whitehall Cheam Village (rear) 1946
C.R. Williams

LDSCL: CH.093

At this time Whitehall was still a private house. The figure shown is the artist’s wife.

Back of Whitehall about 1910
Unknown artist

LDSCL: CH.150

​Note the sun awning over the first-floor window and the canopy over what is now the tearoom door.

Whitehall, Cheam -The Garden c.1895
Anne F. Compton (1872-1932)

LDSCL: CH.156

​A stamp on the back shows that this painting was in Whitehall when it was a private house. It may show the garden at Whitehall which was originally much longer, but the relation of the wall to the cottage in the background is difficult to reconcile with the site.

Whitehall, Cheam - the east front about 1820
Unknown artist

LDSCL: CH.158

​A stamp on the back shows that this was in Whitehall when it was still a private house.

The Painted House
Frank Dickinson (1874-1961)

LDSCL: M.097

From the outside this looks like a large suburban house with some distinctive decorative detail such as the wood work around the bay windows. The ‘gothic’ arch on the porch and the high pitched roof give a hint of medieval. The plan of the inside shows a very unusual pseudo-medieval layout with the rooms arranged around a very large hall which seems to have been the principal living room. There is no evidence that the design was built.

The Rectory House Sutton
Gideon Yates (1790-1840)

LDSCL: S.027

​The rector of the parish church was entitled to a tenth of the produce of the land in the parish and he also had ground of his own which he generally rented out rather than working it himself. In a large parish like Sutton this gave him a substantial income and the rectory was usually quite a large building. The rather eccentric looking rectory shown here probably dates from the early 19th century when there was a fashion for porches consisting of a bay window supported by iron columns. It stood near St Nicholas Church and was demolished in the 19th century.

Bottle House Sutton Reconstruction
Freda Muriel Wright (d.2013)

LDSCL: S.055

This remarkable house stands on the corner of Vernon Road and William Road in Sutton New Town. It was created by a local builder called George Wilks and is dated 1905. It is decorated with glass and other materials set in cement render. Note the heavily decorated window bays and barge boards.

Waterloo Road, Sutton; part reconstruction.
Freda Muriel Wright (d.2013)

LDSCL: S.063

This is part of Sutton Newtown which was developed on the east side of Sutton High Street from the 1850s. Victorian property developers usually set out the road and divided the ground into house plots which were then sold for others to build on. In some cases there were strict limitations on the types of houses that could be built, but this did not apply in Newtown. This resulted in piecemeal development over several decades and unintentionally produced an attractive mixture of houses of varying sizes and styles.

View from the back of 10 Alfred Road Sutton 28 December 1908.
Horace Mann Livens (1862-1936)

LDSCL: S.094

​Livens was a professional artist and friend of Vincent van Gogh who lived in Alfred Road from 1902-12. This is the view out of the artist’s window – the world he would have looked out onto every day and been intimately familiar with. It was an area of modest brick houses erected in the second half of the 19th century. Here he captures the fall of snow.

Backs of houses 16 May 1912
Horace Mann Livens (1862-1936)

LDSCL: S.098

​This is the back of a large Victorian house which is quite likely to have been in Sutton although the site has not been identified. The perspective suggests that the drawing is made from an upper window.

Acknowledgements:
The images of all artworks and historic scenes are courtesy of London Borough of Sutton Cultural Services (Archives and Heritage). For any queries regarding reproduction permissions, please enquire here.
This exhibition is the result of a collaborative project between London Borough of Sutton Cultural Services and The Friends of Honeywood Museum.

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