H&W1

Hoe and Worthing Archive: Hoe Hall

This photo of Hoe Hall is believed to show the Grounds family at Hoe Hall. According to Carthew's The Hundred of Launditch, Thomas Grounds (1772-1827) bought the house in 1813. The family moved from the Hall at some time between 1872 and 1881 and thereafter rented it out, selling it finally around 1920.

Pevsner's The Buildings of England describes the front as 'Early c19 façade of grey brick with giant pilasters and a porch.' However, there's no mention of the back part of the house with its octagonal chimneys. English Heritage dates the back to the 17th century.

In 1845 William Grounds had part of the old house demolished and the new, larger part added to it. The specification was exacting, the work costing £1295 5s 5d. George Harrold was the contractor.

This part of the specification lists the stonework – sills, floors, fireplaces, etc. It notes that William Grounds had 'an old Portico' which was repaired and fitted to the new front of the house.

Seen from the churchyard, two phases of the building are apparent. The painted white area marks the site of a conservatory, since demolished, which was built by a tenant of the Hall in 1898. The doorway from the house was made then.

    William Grounds photographed by Brunton of East
    Dereham. William was born in Hoe in 1804, the son of
    Thomas and Margaret Grounds. He inherited the Hoe
    estate on the death of his father in 1827. In 1830 he
    married Ann Hester Freeman Sutton at Stanfield church.
    He died in 1866 and was buried in Hoe churchyard.



William Grounds kept a receipt book containing remedies for a wide range of human and animal complaints. Here he notes 'A Receipt to dry up a Cows Milk' and another 'To cure a dog of the Distemper':

1/2 drachm of Asafoetida every other night well mixed with Lard or Butter, repeat in four or fives times.

Grounds' account with his wine merchant, Edward Barwell of East Dereham, July 1854. A pipe is a barrel containing about 120 gallons/550litres.

Joseph Perkins, who worked as a groom for
    the Grounds family at Hoe Hall. In the census of 1861
    his age is 65. The death of a Joseph Perkins is
    recorded in 1865, most likely him, so this photo is
    probably from the 1860s.





William's son, Thomas Byam Grounds, photographed aged sixteen, in 1858. He attended Eton College. The silhouette is dated 1859.



TBG – the monogram of Thomas Byam Grounds on the gateway to the churchyard, formerly an entrance to the Hall garden, since the churchyard was not extended until 1920. The device also appears on the gables of numbers 1 & 2 Hoe with the date 1872, at which time he was thirty years old. Thomas inherited the estate from his father, William, in 1866. An earlier Thomas, probably his great-grandfather, was churchwarden in 1785.

The Hall in flower! The neat beds and the prominent exotic plant are characteristic of Victorian gardening.

    The Ordnance Survey map of 1882
    (above) shows the gardens laid out
    with paths and planting extending
    around the area which later became
    part of the churchyard. The large pond
    in the farmyard was probably for the
    working horses and a saw pit is
    marked. Comparing the the L-shaped
    pond with the 1811 Inclosure map (left)
    shows it reduced from what looks like a
    three-sided moat.

In 1873 the implements, live and dead stock of the farm were sold, and the Grounds family moved away from Hoe around that time. The catalogue of the sale lists the purchasers of the various lots, amongst them Samuel Norton, whose father, also Samuel, had farmed Manor Farm until 1855.


    Samuel jr then took on the tenancy of
    Hall Farm having spent over £500 on
    equipment and stock. He also took on
    standing and harvested crops valued
    at over £1000.

However, Thomas Grounds continued
    to add to his estate whenever land
    became available. When Azariah
    Waters sold Hoe Lodge in 1890,
    Grounds' agent bought two lots that
    filled in gaps: 'We think it will be an
    advantage if these lots are added to
    your property and therefore purchased
    at the sale'.

    Lot 4 is a meadow near Spring Farm;
    the little building numbered 41 housed a
    smithy, according to Peggy Butterfield.

    [Map Courtesy of Norfolk Record Office
     BR 379/Hood, Vores & Allwood,
     14/03/1980/Box 39]

    Faith Evelyn Wigg (1874-1899) was the daughter of
    Charles Heyhoe Wigg and his wife Ann (née Grounds).

    Faith Wigg's death is recorded at Lowestoft, at such an
    early age that she may perhaps have suffered from
    tuberculosis.

    Charles Wigg is recorded in the 1881 census at Hoe
    Hall as a farmer of 700 acres employing fourteen men
    and six boys.

    Thomas Byam Grounds, Ann's brother, was visiting Hoe
    Hall at the time of the 1881 census. In the census ten
    years earlier he had been resident at Hoe Hall with his
    widowed mother Ann.

    Charles Wigg's wife Ann died in August 1889 aged 53
    and he ceases to be the tenant at Hoe Hall. He went to
    farm at Mowles Manor, Etling Green, near Dereham.

John Roots had taken on the farm tenancy by February 1893.

More bad weather in July 1893.

    In July 1895 the Hall tenancy appears
    to have changed hands again, to a Mr
    Devereux, whose employee James
    Brown was worried he might be sacked
    for being drunk.

In 1900 Thomas Byam Grounds let the Hall and the 368-acre farm to George Bagnall for a term of eight years* at a rent of £450 per annum. George was most likely to be the first person in Hoe to have owned a car. J. J. Wright, engineers in Dereham, were agents for a wide range of makes including Ariel, better known later for motorcycles. The Wright company records show the sale of a car in 1899 to George Bagnall of Hoe Hall. It was probably a Quadcycle, costing 120 guineas.

*Lease at Norfolk Record Office MC 468/13

Two intriguing photographs from the early 1900s. The location is the same in both and is thought to be in Hoe but hasn't been identified. Names of several Hoe residents present, including Peggy Butterfield's Barker grandparents, are known. Peggy Butterfield described the photographs as being of 'the entire staff of the Hoe estate'. She identified the smart man at the extreme right of the upper picture as Samuel Norton, the father of her step-father Cyril Norton. Samuel died in 1903, giving a latest date for the pictures. Very similar photographs were taken in other Norfolk villages to celebrate the coronation of 1902 and 1911 (see Discovering Old Norfolk, … the Photographs of Tom Nokes by Susan Wright [Halsgrove, 2011] ).

George and Elizabeth Bagnall and their children George Barry and Kathleen were living at Gorgate Hall in 1891 where, according to the census, George was a Warwickshire born farmer. Above: Elizabeth and George Barry.

Elizabeth Bagnall, née Hyatt, was from Birmingham. Both her mother, also Elizabeth, and her sister Eliza are buried in Hoe churchyard. They died within months of each other, Eliza aged 46 and Elizabeth 82, in 1899 & 1900.

Kathleen and Reginald St Vincent Bagnall. Reginald fought with the County of London Yeomanry during WWI having first enlisted whilst in Canada in 1914. After the war he went on to farm in Norfolk.

   George Barry Bagnall as a young man.

    George Barry died in a fiercely
    fought battle east of Arras in April
    1917. He is commemorated in
    Hoe church.

1920s

Hoe Hall photographed in the early 1920s, when it was let to the Brundle family.

Hoe Hall as a Boarding School

Ernie Tovell, in his recollections of working in Dereham and surrounding villages in the 1930s, in How We Lived, (published by the Mid Norfolk Family History Society, 2022) fills in one of the gaps in the Hall's history…

Well Boring by Hand
Now I must go back to Oldfields (a firm of Dereham builders) for work. I know when the wells get short of water we had to work on wells, boring by hand in those days. You could tell when you were getting near to water, as you used to listen on a machine to see if you could hear it. …we used to work at Mr Keith’s at Swanton Morley, and Hoe Hall when it was a boarding for Gentlemen’s sons. It was run by Mr Garnier, what I remember. He died and his widow married Major Wormald and one of the Barclay family moved into Hoe Hall.

We done a lot of work when they moved. I remember when the maids got (there) we used to have tea morning and afternoon. Some of those halls were good places to work for different reasons.

    Dereham Times, 3 February 1945.

    During the 1940s the Hall was tenanted by the
    Barclay family.

    On 24 March 1945, the Dereham Times reports
    "Great Record of the Norfolk Yeomanry –
    Officers and Men in Grand Heart Now
    Bound for Berlin". It continues: "The history of
    the Norfolk Yeomanry was outlined … by the
    second-in-command, Major J.J. Barclay, M.C.,
    of Hoe Hall, Dereham, grandson of its founder,
    Colonel H.A. Barclay, of Hanworth Hall. Family
    association with the regiment is continuous.
    Major Barclay's father, Lieut-Col. J.F. Barclay,
    also of Hoe Hall, having fought with it in the
    Great War, serving for a period as C.O. …
    Major Barclay … won his M.C. at Villers-
    Bocage in Normandy … ."

    December 1950.

Hoe Hall was divided and let to two families in the 1950s, the Standleys and the Gowings. Tennis at Hoe Hall: (standing) David Standley and Anne Abbott (from the Chestnuts), Ian Harper and unknown.

Newspaper photograph from 1960.

    December 1966.

Penelope Keith, Eve Abbott and an American visitor whose mother had had relations in Hoe, outside Hoe Hall.

In 1975 the award-winning short film Leaving Lily was shot locally by Graham Baker (see The Angel page). Hoe Hall appears in the opening sequence.

The Hall farm

This is a very jolly group, thought to have been taken at Field House farm, Swanton Morley, in the early 1940s. Back row, left to right, are Cecil Nunn, Ted Butters snr, Albert Dawson, Joseph Brooks, Charlie Holmes; front row: Ivy Butters, Stanley Sutton, Winnie Butters, unknown, Sid Dack.

Field House sold for £11,000 with about 900 acres when the Bylaugh estate was broken up in 1917. E. C. Keith lived at Field House and farmed Hoe Hall farm in the 1940s when this picture was taken. Most of the people here lived in Hoe.

Ted Butters (second from left) and mates at haytime.

Snap – Ted Butters on the right.

A shooting party on Ayers Lane. Cliff Hudson (extreme right) worked as Keiths' gamekeeper for many years.

	This photo of Hoe Hall is believed to show the Grounds family at Hoe Hall. According to Carthew's The Hundred of Launditch, Thomas Grounds (1772-1827) bought the house in 1813. The family moved from the Hall at some time between 1872 and 1881 and thereafter rented it out, selling it finally around 1920. Pevsner's The Buildings of England describes the front as 'Early c19 façade of grey brick with giant pilasters and a porch.' However, there's no mention of the back part of the house with its octagonal chimneys. English Heritage dates the back to the 17th century. In 1845 William Grounds had part of the old house demolished and the new, larger part added to it. The specification was exacting, the work costing £1295 5s 5d. George Harrold was the contractor. This part of the specification lists the stonework – sills, floors, fireplaces, etc. It notes that William Grounds had 'an old Portico' which was repaired and fitted to the new front of the house. Seen from the churchyard, two phases of the building are apparent. The painted white area marks the site of a conservatory, since demolished, which was built by a tenant of the Hall in 1898. The doorway from the house was made then. William Grounds photographed by Brunton of East Dereham. William was born in Hoe in 1804, the son of Thomas and Margaret Grounds. He inherited the Hoe estate on the death of his father in 1827. In 1830 he married Ann Hester Freeman Sutton at Stanfield church. He died in 1866 and was buried in Hoe churchyard. William Grounds kept a receipt book containing remedies for a wide range of human and animal complaints. Here he notes 'A Receipt to dry up a Cows Milk' and another 'To cure a dog of the Distemper': 1/2 drachm of Asafoetida every other night well mixed with Lard or Butter, repeat in four or fives times. Grounds' account with his wine merchant, Edward Barwell of East Dereham, July 1854. A pipe is a barrel containing about 120 gallons/550litres. Joseph Perkins, who worked as a groom for the Grounds family at Hoe Hall. In the census of 1861 his age is 65. The death of a Joseph Perkins is recorded in 1865, most likely him, so this photo is probably from the 1860s. William's son, Thomas Byam Grounds, photographed aged sixteen, in 1858. He attended Eton College. The silhouette is dated 1859. TBG – the monogram of Thomas Byam Grounds on the gateway to the churchyard, formerly an entrance to the Hall garden, since the churchyard was not extended until 1920. The device also appears on the gables of numbers 1 & 2 Hoe with the date 1872, at which time he was thirty years old. Thomas inherited the estate from his father, William, in 1866. An earlier Thomas, probably his great-grandfather, was churchwarden in 1785. The Hall in flower! The neat beds and the prominent exotic plant are characteristic of Victorian gardening. The Ordnance Survey map of 1882 (above) shows the gardens laid out with paths and planting extending around the area which later became part of the churchyard. The large pond in the farmyard was probably for the working horses and a saw pit is marked. Comparing the the L-shaped pond with the 1811 Inclosure map (left) shows it reduced from what looks like a three-sided moat. In 1873 the implements, live and dead stock of the farm were sold, and the Grounds family moved away from Hoe around that time. The catalogue of the sale lists the purchasers of the various lots, amongst them Samuel Norton, whose father, also Samuel, had farmed Manor Farm until 1855. Samuel jr then took on the tenancy of Hall Farm having spent over £500 on equipment and stock. He also took on standing and harvested crops valued at over £1000. However, Thomas Grounds continued to add to his estate whenever land became available. When Azariah Waters sold Hoe Lodge in 1890, Grounds' agent bought two lots that filled in gaps: 'We think it will be an advantage if these lots are added to your property and therefore purchased at the sale'. Lot 4 is a meadow near Spring Farm; the little building numbered 41 housed a smithy, according to Peggy Butterfield. [Map Courtesy of Norfolk Record Office BR 379/Hood, Vores & Allwood, 14/03/1980/Box 39] Faith Evelyn Wigg (1874-1899) was the daughter of Charles Heyhoe Wigg and his wife Ann (née Grounds). Faith Wigg's death is recorded at Lowestoft, at such an early age that she may perhaps have suffered from tuberculosis. Charles Wigg is recorded in the 1881 census at Hoe Hall as a farmer of 700 acres employing fourteen men and six boys. Thomas Byam Grounds, Ann's brother, was visiting Hoe Hall at the time of the 1881 census. In the census ten years earlier he had been resident at Hoe Hall with his widowed mother Ann. Charles Wigg's wife Ann died in August 1889 aged 53 and he ceases to be the tenant at Hoe Hall. He went to farm at Mowles Manor, Etling Green, near Dereham. John Roots had taken on the farm tenancy by February 1893. More bad weather in July 1893. In July 1895 the Hall tenancy appears to have changed hands again, to a Mr Devereux, whose employee James Brown was worried he might be sacked for being drunk. In 1900 Thomas Byam Grounds let the Hall and the 368-acre farm to George Bagnall for a term of eight years* at a rent of £450 per annum. George was most likely to be the first person in Hoe to have owned a car. J. J. Wright, engineers in Dereham, were agents for a wide range of makes including Ariel, better known later for motorcycles. The Wright company records show the sale of a car in 1899 to George Bagnall of Hoe Hall. It was probably a Quadcycle, costing 120 guineas. Lease at Norfolk Record Office MC 468/13 Two intriguing photographs from the early 1900s. The location is the same in both and is thought to be in Hoe but hasn't been identified. Names of several Hoe residents present, including Peggy Butterfield's Barker grandparents, are known. Peggy Butterfield described the photographs as being of 'the entire staff of the Hoe estate'. She identified the smart man at the extreme right of the upper picture as Samuel Norton, the father of her step-father Cyril Norton. Samuel died in 1903, giving a latest date for the pictures. Very similar photographs were taken in other Norfolk villages to celebrate the coronation of 1902 and 1911 (see Discovering Old Norfolk, … the Photographs of Tom Nokes* by Susan Wright [Halsgrove, 2011] ). George and Elizabeth Bagnall and their children George Barry and Kathleen were living at Gorgate Hall in 1891 where, according to the census, George was a Warwickshire born farmer. Above: Elizabeth and George Barry. Elizabeth Bagnall, née Hyatt, was from Birmingham. Both her mother, also Elizabeth, and her sister Eliza are buried in Hoe churchyard. They died within months of each other, Eliza aged 46 and Elizabeth 82, in 1899 & 1900. Kathleen and Reginald St Vincent Bagnall. Reginald fought with the County of London Yeomanry during WWI having first enlisted whilst in Canada in 1914. After the war he went on to farm in Norfolk. George Barry Bagnall as a young man. George Barry died in a fiercely fought battle east of Arras in April 1917. He is commemorated in Hoe church. 1920s Hoe Hall photographed in the early 1920s, when it was let to the Brundle family. Hoe Hall as a Boarding School Ernie Tovell, in his recollections of working in Dereham and surrounding villages in the 1930s, in How We Lived, (published by the Mid Norfolk Family History Society, 2022) fills in one of the gaps in the Hall's history… Well Boring by Hand Now I must go back to Oldfields (a firm of Dereham builders) for work. I know when the wells get short of water we had to work on wells, boring by hand in those days. You could tell when you were getting near to water, as you used to listen on a machine to see if you could hear it. …we used to work at Mr Keith’s at Swanton Morley, and Hoe Hall when it was a boarding for Gentlemen’s sons. It was run by Mr Garnier, what I remember. He died and his widow married Major Wormald and one of the Barclay family moved into Hoe Hall. We done a lot of work when they moved. I remember when the maids got (there) we used to have tea morning and afternoon. Some of those halls were good places to work for different reasons. Dereham Times, 3 February 1945. During the 1940s the Hall was tenanted by the Barclay family. On 24 March 1945, the Dereham Times reports "Great Record of the Norfolk Yeomanry – Officers and Men in Grand Heart Now Bound for Berlin". It continues: "The history of the Norfolk Yeomanry was outlined … by the second-in-command, Major J.J. Barclay, M.C., of Hoe Hall, Dereham, grandson of its founder, Colonel H.A. Barclay, of Hanworth Hall. Family association with the regiment is continuous. Major Barclay's father, Lieut-Col. J.F. Barclay, also of Hoe Hall, having fought with it in the Great War, serving for a period as C.O. … Major Barclay … won his M.C. at Villers- Bocage in Normandy … ." December 1950. Hoe Hall was divided and let to two families in the 1950s, the Standleys and the Gowings. Tennis at Hoe Hall: (standing) David Standley and Anne Abbott (from the Chestnuts), Ian Harper and unknown. Newspaper photograph from 1960. December 1966. Penelope Keith, Eve Abbott and an American visitor whose mother had had relations in Hoe, outside Hoe Hall. In 1975 the award-winning short film Leaving Lily was shot locally by Graham Baker (see The Angel page). Hoe Hall appears in the opening sequence. The Hall farm This is a very jolly group, thought to have been taken at Field House farm, Swanton Morley, in the early 1940s. Back row, left to right, are Cecil Nunn, Ted Butters snr, Albert Dawson, Joseph Brooks, Charlie Holmes; front row: Ivy Butters, Stanley Sutton, Winnie Butters, unknown, Sid Dack. Field House sold for £11,000 with about 900 acres when the Bylaugh estate was broken up in 1917. E. C. Keith lived at Field House and farmed Hoe Hall farm in the 1940s when this picture was taken. Most of the people here lived in Hoe. Ted Butters (second from left) and mates at haytime. Snap – Ted Butters on the right. A shooting party on Ayers Lane. Cliff Hudson (extreme right) worked as Keiths' gamekeeper for many years.