Rosebery Cottage 14 The Parade, Epsom
[formerly known as The Cottage/Parade Cottage, & Ferncot]
Listed Grade II as 11 The Parade:-
“Pitched tile roof. Rendered stacks. 2 storeys. 3 ranges of casements, those on ground floor with shutters. Doorcase with pediment on consoles, and virtuoso joinery in tympenum. ‘Chinese Chippendale’ staircase inside.”
Particulars of the history of this property are provided in the late Dr Hans Lehmann’s Residential Copyholds of Epsom: –
In 1755, Mary Potter of the parish of St Edmund the King, London, held ½ acre in Dulls shott (being now enclosed) abutting on the land of George Eastland on the south-east part and on Land of Robert Wrench on the north-east part. The death of Mary Potter, spinster, was recorded on 3 June 1776
6C10. Mary Potter of Lombard Street, London, in an exchange of some lands, surrendered her inclosed ½ acre on 12 May 1760 to Robert Wrench. On 22 May 1763 Robert Wrench sold this piece of land to Thomas Mitchell of Epsom, bricklayer, who on 20 Feb. 1764 sold a piece of this land, 77 feet 6 inches from north to south, 35 feet from east to west, abutting on the footway leading to the church on the north, and on land of Thomas Mitchell on the south part, to Mary Langton of Epsom, spinster. On 27 Oct. 1766 Mary Langton surrendered to John Greenwood of Epsom, joiner, the expectancy upon her death in the remainder of the piece of land, and also in that messuage then lately erected and built upon the said piece of ground. On 30 May 1768 the annual quitrent for this part of the ½ acre was assessed at 2d. John Greenwood sold on 23 Jun. 1783 this expectancy in the property in the occupation of Mary Langton to William Woollard of Epsom, joiner (sic!). With William Woollard’s other properties (see 6C9) the piece of land and the messuage erected upon it, in the occupation of Mary Langton came on 11 Jul. 1814 to James Brown, and at his death to his younger son William Brown on 23 Apl. 1840, when the property was in the occupation of William Coombs. At the demise of William Brown of Epsom gen, which was reported on 5 May 1870, George Smithers Backshall of Epsom, gardener, was on 3 Nov. 1870 under William Brown’s will admitted to the property, which he sold on 9 May 1889 for £500 to George Marten Coppard of the Parade, Epsom gen, who then occupied the property. The death of George Marten Coppard was recorded on 27 Oct. 1892, and on 18 Jul. 1893 Charles Christmas Fuller of Montana House, North Walsham, Norfolk, farmer, reported that George Marten Coppard’s widow Georgiana Toolonbief Coppard had since also died, and that George Marten Coppard had appointed him, his wife’s cousin, executor, and sold the messuage, now unoccupied, to Ida Lavinia Brewer of Suffield House, Richmond, Surrey, the wife of Frank John Brewer of the same place Esq. At the death of Ida Lavinia Brewer, late of Mount Road in the County of London, widow, reported on 16 Nov. 1922, her daughter Marjory Ida Mary Brewer of 36 Monmouth Road, London, spinster, was admitted / 166 / on 8 May 1923, and had the messuage heretofore in the occupation of Mary Langton, afterwards of William Coomes, afterwards of George Marten Coppard, now or late of F. Carter, enfranchised on 4 Oct. 1923.
It might be construed that the joiner John Greenwood actually built the messuage for Mary Langton in consideration that the entire real estate would devolve on him following her death. Possibly his own health was in decline by 1783 when he sold off the reversion because he appears to have been interred in St Martin;s churchyard on 21 September 1785 followed by his presumed wife Mary, 7 September 1794.
A gravestone at St Martin’s was erected ‘In memory of WILLIAM WOOLLARD (carpenter) who departed this Life January 8th 1814 Aged 63 Years’ following his burial on 15 January.
Evidently Mary Langton remained alive at the date of his demise.
Inscriptons on other headstones in the parish churchyard include:-
Also in Memory of JAMES BROWN who departed this Life March 15th 1839 Aged 74 Years
&
CATHARINE Wife of JAMES BROWN Died 12th Jany. 1771 In the 34th Year of Her Age.
Also In Affectionate Remembrance of JAMES BROWN Grandson of the Above Died 9th Jany. 1870 Aged 70 Years.
WILLIAM BROWN Brother of the last Named JAMES BROWN Died 26th March 1870 Aged 65 Years.
For the 1843 Tithe award what became known as Roseberry Cottage appears as Plot 887, owned by the [late] James Brown and occupied by Richard Miles and another. Richard was an Epsom Market Gardener who died 9 October 1868 and was buried at St Martin’s four days later.
Extract from the 1843 Tithe Map
George Smither Backshall had been born on 10 July1843, son of James Backshall and Jane, nee Smither.
References to Reuben and Harriet Jeal living in a Rosebery Cottage during 1891 [LINK to West Street – 05 ,Ewell] need to be qualified by the fact that those premises were in Victoria Place, Epsom, and not on The Parade.
George [Marten] and Georgiana Coppard were enumerated on The Parade in censuses for 1881 & 1891.
Linda Jackson tells us:-
“In 1861 the manager of Mangles Brothers, the West Surrey Bank, Epsom High Street, was Mr Coppard, born c.1818 Blackfriars; married 1844 Georgiana Tooloubief Barcham (c.1816 Great Yarmouth-1893 Epsom). Son of a grocer, previously an officer of the Inland Revenue, living in Ewell, and then a maltster and wine merchant at Clay Hill . Lest you fear that his financial career was ruined when the bank went down the pan, you will be reassured to know that he became an agent for several insurance companies, Rate Collector for the local Board of Health and Secretary to the Epsom Gas Company. Died 8 August 1892 Epsom, then living at The Parade.”
George Coppard, gentleman, was interred in Plot A80A at Epsom Cemetery on 11 August 1892. His widow follows him to the grave on 1 Febuary 1893. Reportedly, Georgiana was the daughter of James Barcham, mariner, and Emmeline Mowbray Libbis whose sister Georgiana in 1798 married a Russian naval officer, Victor Tulubiev, who was recommended to study in England by the Empress of Russia. The names ‘Georgiana’ and Tulubiev (or Touloubieff or Tolubioff…) continued to be used by several succeeding generations of her family.
By 1897 the property then called Parade Cottage was occupied by Robert Wiltshire [possibly a son of John Wiltshire and his wife Louisa, nee Smith, enumerated in 1891 as a Carman in Heathcote Road. During 1901 Robert was a boarder in Highgate, employed as a carpenter ]. He was succeeded as occupier in 1900 by James Jeffery.
The Parade Schools
From about 1836 to 1847 the Rev. Thomas Burgess Barker had conducted an educational establishment in Epsom which became known as the Parade Grammar School. It was established in premises on Plot 893 of the 1843 Tithe map in the vicinity of the present 12 The Parade.
In 1868 Epsom Medical Benevolent College reported ‘that boys were sent to the college utterly unprepared for the course of studies appointed for the students. The council had therefore made arrangements for these lads to be prepared at a school at Epsom,under the tuition of Mr. Davy, a late master of the college’. A History of Epsom College adds to that report:-
“A master, Mr William Davey, proposed that he should start a prep school in 1866, but it was not until 1868 that the College began to consider whether they might send pupils, whose progress was below that required for the College, to Mr Davey’s school. By 1868 parents were withdrawing their sons in complaint at their lack of progress. Finally the College authorities began to take notice. Mr Davey’s prep school was recommended to parents, an entrance examination for the College was instituted, and it was agreed that ignorant boys should be superannuated at the age of 17. By the following year there were ten College pupils at Mr Davey’s school and several who had failed the entrance exam. In another departure, Mr Jeffery decided, in 1868, to start a separate boarding house in town for pupils under 5 years of age, taking them out of the atmosphere of the school”.
A tombstone in St Martin’s churchyard reveals that Mr Davey had become a widower:-
‘I know that my Redeemer Liveth.
In Memory of JANE the beloved wife of WILLIAM THOMAS DAVEY
Died on East Eve 18(69) Aged (33) Years.
THOMAS GOODRIDGE DAVEY Died 4th June 18(69) Aged 4 Years.
SOPHIA, AGNUS and ALICE DAVEY, other children of the above, died in their infancy. ‘
The Davey headstone in St Martin’s churchyard
William’s marriage to Jane Goodridge had been registered at St. Geo. Hanover Square 6/1860, followed by the birth of their daughter, Jane Goodridge Davey, in Exeter 12/1861. Jane senior had been interred at Epsom on 1 April 1869, presumably having died following childbirth.
William Thomas Davy had attended Exeter Training College before teaching at Epsom College between 1856 and 1866. His preparatory school was located on East Street in Clayton House. There he had taken over William Finch’s commercial academy and had fourteen pupils in 1871. Mr Davey left by 1878 about which time Miss Dorette Charlotte Mittendorff opened her ‘kindergarten’ in the premises . White & Sons of Dorking auctioned off his household furnture and effects including ‘a 7-octave cottage pianoforte by Harris from Broadwoods’ [Surrey History Centre reference K99].
Davey subsequently re-trained as a medical doctor before dying on 17 April 1887 at 2 Vicarage Terrace, Leyton, Essex.
James Jeffery became the proprietor of ‘Epsom College Preparatory School, Parade, Epsom’, leaving Epsom College during 1879. He is enumerated there with his family and boarders in Censuses for 1881 & 1891. His establishment appears in Andrews Directory adjacent to Laburnham Road, in premises which became 28 The Parade.
Frank John Brewer (1850 -1907) was an architect practising from The Green, Richmond. In the 1900 Epsom Rate Book the tenant of Mrs Brewer’s property, ‘Parade Cottage’, was listed as James Jeffries (sic). Mr James Jeffery (as mentioned above), educated at Battersea Training College, from Bowyer School, Clapham [St. John’s Bowyer’s, a Church of England school located between Clapham Junction and Clapham Common ], had been appointed to the Royal Medical Benevolent College, Epsom, by early 1858 three years after its foundation. Particulars of his life may be found related to a marriage with Elizabeth Andrews. A photograph of a bearded James Jeffery, circa 1862, appears online at https://archive.epsomcollege.org.uk/1851-1889/College_History/Ch4_The_Infant_School.pdf . Evidently, on retirement Jeffery had moved from his school [at 28 The Parade] into what became 14 The Parade and eventually ‘Roseberry Cottage’.
In the Epsom Advertiser for 5 July 1962 it was remarked that Mr Jeffery had been ‘a large man of some 17 stone, and for this reason, it is said, he preferred to sleep downstairs’. That description does not accord with youthful images of him as a cricketer and has not been verified.
In the 1901 census, aged 66, James described himself as a journalist and author: he appeared in the 1905 Street Directory as ‘Householder, The Parade’. James Jeffery, Gentleman was buried in Epsom Cemetery, Plot A504, on 19 June 1907. His widow, Mrs Elizabeth Jeffery, nee Andrews, remained at The Parade until 1914 but later moved to Wimbledon. She survived until 20 August 1924.
Fred Carter had become the tenant by 1917.
On 12 November 1923 the cottage, then called ‘Ferncot’, was purchased by Frederick James Mapstone, an accountant. He sold on 10 August 1925 to Arthur Edward Ayles, turf accountant who changed the property’s name to Rosebery Cottage during 1928. The Epsom Advertiser mentioned earlier records that this ‘bookie’ had a reputation ‘both for giving fair odds and for dressing always in top hat, frock coat and stock’. Mr Ayles, retired, from 73, Ragotsky House, Grafton St, Newmarket, was interred in Epsom Cemetery, 21 August 1950, aged 73.
Walter Southwood Smith (an Incorporated Accountant), and his wife Charlotte, from Sydenham, acquired Rosebery Cottage, 15 July 1930. Charlotte Emma Southwood Smith died on 21 November Her widower sold the cottage to Mrs Maria Wedderburn, 22 April 1952, and died in 1954.
R S Wells purchased Rosebery Cottage on 1 September 1953.
Ronald Stephen Wells, born 19 October 1894, has been registered as a Temporary Boy Clerk in the Civil Service during 1910 and became a 2nd Division Clerk in 1913. He enlisted as a 2nd Lieutenant in Bedfordshire Regt., and R.F.C., for WWI: Aviator’s Certificate No.1985 was awarded to 2nd Lieut. Ronald Stephen Wells (9th Bedfordshire Regt.) (Maurice Farman Biplane, Military School, Birmingham), 3 November 1915. He married 1st, during 1919, Thelma, daughter of William Wakeford & 2ndly, 1941, Margaret [‘Peggie’], daughter of Herbert and Florence Sidebotham. Created C.B.E. (Civil) 1954 as Assistant Secretary, Home Office. Retired to Rosebery Cottage,The Parade, Epsom. Died 24 May 1982 – registered Surrey Mid. E, 6/1982 . His widow survived until 1997.
Brian Bouchard © 2019
Details of the structure taken from the Domestic Buildings Research Group’s report No. 88.