The cottage was situated by the stream in Rocky Lane. All that is known is that a William Enticknap was born there in 1880 and his father had a donkey and cart. In 1952 William Enticknap was known to be living in Witley. The cottage was known to be occupied until 1905.
This article, written by Jackie Rickenberg, was published in the Parish Magazine in January 2024
Stream Cottage
Happy New Year to one and all!
2024 is an exciting and busy time for the Thursley History Society. We are currently in the early stages of organising an event to launch and showcase our new website. It will be relevant to, and hopefully of interest to, every single person that lives in our village and surrounding parish. It will be crammed with photographs and documents relating to the buildings, the people of Thursley and their lives.
In the meantime, if we cast our minds back to the December article, I asked about the location of a photograph featuring two Edwardian ladies standing on a path. Thank you to Sean Edwards, for not only did he recognise the photo, he had re-enacted it with his late wife Salosh and mother, Monica Edwards, exactly one hundred years after the original. The original was from 1897 and Sean’s reconstruction was from 1997. And the location was what we now refer to as The Valley of the Rocks, but in those days was known as Rocky Lane, at the top of Highfield Lane, just before entering The Punchbowl.
Notes, found in the archives but not signed, say:
“Rocky Lane, the BOAT (Byway Open to All Traffic), at the top right-hand side of Highfield Lane, was once an important track, as part of the route from Churt to Witley Station. Now, it is a lovely leafy path (written before off roaders obviously!) down to the stream at the bottom. However, if you look carefully, you may see the outline of a dwelling in the nettles. On the eastern side of the stream there was a cottage, aptly called Stream Cottage, which was inhabited up until about 1905. The Enticknap family lived there, one of the last members to be born in Stream Cottage was William in 1880. He became a bricklayer and lived in Witley. As a child, William remembered riding in his father’s cart pulled by the donkey which also lived at the cottage. William’s mother would go to Hindhead to see her uncle and aunt who kept The Royal Huts (a hostelry), known locally as Hut Inn, and William recalled seeing the local doctor driving his dog cart past on his rounds from Haslemere.
Even though Stream Cottage has long gone, we are fortunate to have pictures of the Enticknap home. The first is a very old photograph of Robbie Morgan’s, of two young Edwardian ladies by the stream with a building in the background. However, a watercolour painting (see below) of Stream Cottage by Josiah T Wilson hangs in the Victoria and Albert Museum. On inspection, it seems that the artist has abused his artistic licence somewhat, as the stream seems be on the wrong side of the cottage.”
And another unattributed handwritten note from the archives states:
“The stream leading to Rocky Lane and Ridgeway Farm, which was originally Ridgeway Nurseries, note the shed on the right. In in my grandparents time there used to be a cottage there also.”
Last month’s photo, this time looking up Rocky Lane, still showing Stream Cottage 1897.
The same view this time on 1st January 1997,100 years on with Salosh and Monica Edwards, but by now Stream Cottage has disappeared.
An earlier view of the bridge c.1860, again looking up towards Little Cowdray.
Rocky Lane, 2009, by Sean Edwards