Once Henry Chalcraft had acquired the North No 1 plot in 1923, he wasted little time in building on it, and within 3 years had built Hillbrow.  Being an architect, we can assume that he designed the house himself.  

We will now look at each of these houses in more detail.  (The Corner House and Blossom House are covered in the Bagshot Road section.)

Malthouse Cottages

The 2 semi-detached Malthouse Cottages do not appear on the 1857 Bridley plan or the 1873 OS map, but are shown on the 1888 Bridley plan abutting the Woking-Pirbright boundary on the Woking side.  We can therefore date them to between 1873 and 1888, and they can claim to be the first dwellings on the stub western end of Berry Lane.

They formed part of the Bridley estate, specifically Malthouse Farm until at least 1908, when they were sold to an outside investor, William Behrens, as part of the breakup of the Bridley estate at that time (see above).  

In 1931 they were owned by Col George Dyer, who lived at the Corner House on the Bagshot Road, but we do not know who owned the cottages after 1931 until the 1980’s, when it is believed that they were owned by members of the Rathbone family (who owned Rathbones Bank).  This is supported by the fact that some members of the Rathbone family lived locally on the Bagshot Road and the Rathbone story is told there.

Unfortunately the records before 1900 are unspecific as to peoples’ addresses.  Virtually everyone on the Bridley estate gave their address simply as “Bridley”, so we can’t be sure exactly who occupied which houses.  But in 1902, we have evidence as to who lived in which cottage, and so we will now deal with each cottage separately.

No 1, Malthouse Cottages

The first reference to Malthouse Cottages is in the 1901 census, where they are occupied by an agricultural labourer, Arthur Holdforth, and his family.  This Arthur Holdforth was living on the Bridley estate in 1881 and 1891, but judging by the sequence of the census, probably not at Malthouse Cottages.  But he does appear on the 1893 – 1896 electoral register as living in Rickford, which is a possible indicator that he was living in Malthouse Cottages by then.  

The plan prepared for Mr Richards’s auction of the Bridley estate in 1902 states that Arthur was living at No 1.  Arthur could trace his family’s roots back to c1773, when his great-grandfather, James Holdforth, was born in Woking.  For the next 100-odd years, many of the Holdforths lived as agricultural labourers in the Westfield area of Woking, which at the time was well-farmed.  They also had their fair share of large numbers of children – there were several Holdforths in the wider area.

The Arthur Holdforth who lived in No 1, Malthouse Cottages had been born in 1843 in a house on Blackhorse Road just north of the Heath House Road crossroads.  At the time the farm owning the house had the romantic name of Old Trough, later changed to Oldtrow.  

At the age of 22, he married Ellen Hartfree.  Ellen was the daughter of William Hartfree, who tended the plantation now forming part of Worplesdon Golf Course.  Arthur’s father, also named Arthur, had married twice and fathered 14 children.  One of his half-sisters was Emma Holdforth, who in 1877 married John Stevens who, like Arthur, was working at Bridley as an agricultural labourer for Frank Harnett, the farmer.  From 1918 Emma and John were living at No 2, Malthouse Lane.  All rather complicated, but it demonstrates how closely families often inter-related in small communities, in the days before travel became more available to everyone.

In 1881, by the time he was 28, Arthur and Ellen had moved to somewhere on the Bridley estate, having produced 4 children.  Arthur was working as an agricultural labourer, like his forebears.  As we have noted above, they moved to No 1, Malthouse Cottages c1893, but Ellen died the following year, aged 52.

Arthur remained at No 1, Malthouse Cottages until 1905, when he moved to 2, Heath Road, Kemishford, living with his daughter Ellen and her husband Edward Pullen.  Even though Arthur was 65, he still described himself as a labourer.  Arthur stayed there until he died in 1926, aged 83.  Another of Arthur and Ellen’s sons, William, joined the 14th King’s Hussars Regiment in 1898, but was killed in South Africa during the Boer War in 1902.

William Balchin moved into one of the Malthouse Cottages in 1905.  We think this was probably No 1, based on the 1911 census sequence.  There was a surprisingly large number of Balchins who lived in the Guildford area in the 1800’s, and many of them were given the same Christian names, in particular, William.  So it is difficult to be precise about any particular Balchin history, but it looks as though our William Balchin’s ancestry may have stretched back to the mid-1600’s, to a Henry Balchin who was born in Clandon.  The Balchins then proceeded to move to Shalford, then Wonersh, and then Worplesdon.  

Like so many other families in the area, they lived off the land, typically as farm labourers, and our William was no exception.  He was probably born in Worplesdon c1854, and in 1883 married Harriett Freakes (born Guildford, c1863).  Between 1888 and 1903, the family lived at Stonebridge Cottages in Rickford.  William was a hay binder and thatcher.

William and Harriett then moved to No 1, Malthouse Cottages.  His occupation at this time was a contractor (whatever that meant), and in 1912 he placed an ad in a local newspaper for a young man to drive a horse and cart.  The job included “live-in” accommodation, which presumably meant use of one of the rooms in No 1.
William and Harriett had 6 children.  Their eldest, Harriett, married Charles Lopez in 1911, and they lived for a while in Millstream Cottage.  Harriett (William’s wife) died in 1914.  William stayed at No 1 until 1919.  He died in 1926, living in Heath Mill Lane (probably either Ravensclough or Durlston.  

In 1921 Robert and Mercy Golden moved into No 1, having previously been living at Ryde’s Hill.  They only stayed a couple of years before moving to Godstone.  

The next tenants of No 1, in 1923, were John and Winifred Andrews.  John was a gardener, who had probably started working for the Booths, who were the occupants of Waldens (now Avila) in Malthouse Lane.  In 1926 the Andrews family were offered the rental of Netley Cottage (now Annin’s Cottage) in Malthouse Lane and they moved there (it would have been closer to where John was working).  Their story is told on the Malthouse Lane page.

In 1926, Edward and Nellie Criddle moved into No 1.  Edward was the son of Edward and Elizabeth Criddle who had lived at No 1, Kelvin Cottages, Rickford.  Born in 1897, Edward and Nellie (nee Robinson, at Shottermill, Haslemere in 1899) were married in 1923 and lost little time in setting up house together half a mile from Edward’s parents – a reasonable distance, not too far, but not too close either.  Edward and Nellie stayed at No 1 until WW2, when they moved to Mount Pleasant Bungalow at Whitmoor in Worplesdon.  They then moved away to the Bideford area of Devon.  Nellie died there in 1978 and Edward in 1983.

In 1945 Harriett Snowden moved out of No 5, Pirbright Cottages, where she had been living with her parents, into No 1, Malthouse Cottages with her 2 sons.  Although her name was Harriett, she let it be known that she wanted to be known as Miss Snowden, so we will call her that.  One resident who knew Miss Snowden in her days at Pirbright Cottages described her as “rather strange”.  In later years, she cut a diminutive figure invariably dressed in black, often toddling up Berry Lane to see her friends the Bardens at The Bays (refer below).

Despite being “Miss Snowden”, she had two sons, Pete and John.  Pete lived with his mother and made a living breaking up old cars.  He once used these skills to help the son of a neighbour to remake one Triumph Herald from two wrecks.  Miss Snowden died in 1981.  Pete Snowden continued to live in the cottage and we think that he purchased it, probably at the same time that No 2 was purchased (1989, see below).  Pete died in 1998, aged 56, and his brother John sold the cottage to the current owners.  John died in Eastbourne in 2009, aged 70.

No 2, Malthouse Cottages

The person who lived in No 2 in 1911, William Horton, was born in Pagham (a small village near the beach close to Bognor Regis) in 1842.  Like his father he became an agricultural labourer, and in 1871 he was working on a farm at nearby Nyetimber.  In 1873 he had moved northwards into Surrey and was living at Bramley when he married Margaret Bookham (born near Witley in 1848).  By 1881 they were living at Wood Street, Worplesdon.  However Margaret died in 1888 aged only 40, leaving William with 6 children to look after, 4 of whom were less than 10 years old.

In 1891, William had become a shepherd at Merrist Wood Farm, and in 1901 he described himself merely as an agricultural labourer at Frog Grove Farm, where Thomas Slaughter, who had been the farmer at Bakersgate) was the farmer.  He remained there until c1910, when he and his children moved into No 2, Malthouse Cottages.

The Hortons stayed at No 2 for 8 years before moving briefly to the Testing Station.  In 1921 William was living just around the corner from Malthouse Cottages at Westbrook with his daughter Annie.  He stayed at Westbrook with 3 of his children until his death in 1928.  It seems that, despite the tragedy of losing their mother in 1888, the children remained closely attached to their father throughout the rest of his life.

c1920 Frederick and Emma Jeffrey moved from Aldershot into No 2.  They lived there for 16 years before moving a hundred yards to No 17, Pirbright Cottages in 1936.  Their story is told there.

In 1936 Robert and Marjorie Whibley moved in.  Robert Whibley had been born at Star Hill, Woking (at the end of Hook Heath Road) in 1901.  His parents were Herbert Ellis and Mary Whibley, who in 1907 moved in with James Stevens and his family at No 12, Pirbright Cottages for a couple of years before settling down at nearby Ostend Cottage in 1910.  

Robert had worked at Martinsyde Ltd as an aircraft fitter from 1919 to 1920.  Martinsyde was formed in 1908 by Messrs Martin and Handasyde.  The company manufactured motorcycles, monoplanes and biplanes, and was Britain's third largest aircraft manufacturer during WW1.  Its factory was at Maybury (not to be confused with Mayford), just to the east of Woking.  Unfortunately the factory was destroyed by fire in 1922, and the company went into liquidation.  Below are pictures of a Martinsyde Semiquaver from 1920 and a Model C motorcycle from 1922 (courtesy DJ Rawlings).  The site of the factory is now a small estate whose main street is named – surprise, surprise - Martinsyde.