By contrast to earlier times, the subsequent development of Hedgecock’s is straight forward because it became the home of gentry and aristocracy, who leave a well documented paper trail (and now an internet one too). The advertisement above appeared in The Times on 2
June 1877. On 15 May 1879 Rudgwick Vestry Meeting agreed that the new house at
Hedgecock’s Farm be allowed 2 acres of land as garden & shrubbery, and that its gross annual rental be estimated £44 5s. On 15 August the house appeared in Building News, see below. So, by 1879, confirmed in the 1881 census, the Nash family were replaced by William and Mabel Renton. Living with them were Mabel’s brother Hugh Drury and two servants.
William was a 33 year old ‘fundholder’, born in Edinburgh Scotland on 26 th
January 1848.
His wife was the second child of the vicar of Rudgwick, who was, of course, living at the
Vicarage in Lynwick Street, and was our vicar for over 30 years. The Rentons were newly married (21 st
October 1880) and it seems she wished to live near her parents.
In 1871 Renton was a 26 year old Stock Exchange clerk, with three servants and a gardener, living at Bradstone Brook, just off the Common at Shalford, Surrey, the country home of his father, which subsequently was occupied by his younger brother James well into the 20 th century. It is now a listed property that won an award for its renovation in 2006. Its grounds are gardens of some note with a notable 19 th century gazebo, but also include the playing fields of Royal Grammar School Guildford. The house is now home to several businesses.
Through contact with Mr David Renton, on whose website some details of Renton family history can be found, and from census information, I have discovered that Renton’s father,
John, was originally from Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh. He came to London, where in 1861 he was living in style in Kensington and making good money as a Member of the Stock
Exchange - more than enough to buy Bradstone Brook in Shalford, Surrey and set up his children with property. John, though still living in London (Chelsea) in 1871 was a Member of the Stock Exchange and landowner. Maintaining two homes, though normal for one of his standing was very expensive and required two sets of domestic staff, as the census makes clear. John Renton was also a Surrey JP.
John Renton wrote a history of his family, with a pedigree from 1698, when he had retired to
Shalford. The family are originally from Birsley, Eastlothian, 1698, and descendents of a branch of the Rentons or Rentouns of Renton, a barony in the parish of Coldingham,
Berwickshire, only 14 miles from the border, and hereditary Foresters of the Woods of the
Priory of Coldingham (Roman Colania) from the 16 th century. For further information see http://www.dkrenton.co.uk/familyhistory/rentons.html
.
The first Renton to move to Edinburgh was Peter in 1745. He became a damask weaver, marrying into another important weaver family. A descendent married Agnes, William’s grandmother, and the National Library of Scotland in 2005-6 celebrated an acquisition:

“Among the most compelling acquisitions of the year was a remarkable example of
Victorian culture: an elaborately-bound Bible presented to William and Agnes Renton of
Edinburgh on their golden wedding anniversary in 1852. The inside board has a family tree incorporating locks of hair of the couple's 22 grandchildren”.
“Agnes was a feisty woman: 'She rejoiced in the repeal of the Test and corporation
Acts, heartily concurred in Roman Catholic Emancipation, took a lively interest in the agitation for Political Reform, entered with great zest into the Voluntary controversy, was one of the first Temperance Reformers in Edinburgh and a zealous advocate of
Total Abstinence; was an active worker for the abolition of slavery, warmly supported the abolition of the Corn Laws and was an efficient member of the Peace Society.'”
William must have met Mabel in his social circle in the Surrey-Sussex borders. The two families were obviously close because in 1891 I first thought Mabel had died childless as
William lived alone at Hedgecock’s on census night, but once I had found the link to the vicar it mostly fell into place. The Drury family had a granddaughter Elizabeth Mabel
Renton, aged 4, born Rudgwick staying with them at the Vicarage. However, the only conclusion I can come to about her mother is that she was travelling outside the country as no amount of searching can find her. On 17 November 1882, Elizabeth Renton’s eldest brother,
William, had been born at Hedgecock’s, the first birth there since my great aunt in the old farmhouse in 1876.
William Sr does not seem to have had employment other than running his estate at
Hedgecock’s, and managing his affairs. In 1891 (1901and 1911) he has ‘independent means’.
However he must have put a huge effort into rebuilding the house, because the whole central section of the present house was built during his time in Victorian style with gable ends and mock-Tudor timber at front and rear. The change in the plan of the property between the OS
25” to a mile maps of 1879 and 1897 is profound and total (see drawings, next page) .
The matron, Mrs Cutler, told me that when a new rear window was put in, old timbers and what she called wattle and daub were found, indicating that some of the old house was incorporated into the new. This part of the house has small rooms even now and later would become the household ‘offices’ for the servants.
However, the map (right, 1879 map in bold overprinted on 2007 outline of buildings and gardens) proves otherwise, as the old farmhouse was in front of the new, and the stable block was built on, but not using, the plan of the old farm buildings. Only the well survives (W on map), which confirms the site of the house.
The gable on the right where the main entrance is may have led to the new principal rooms as it still does (see photo on page 1) . So, by the 1880s, Hedgecock’s farmhouse had been replaced a small country house, set in a landscape that had also been altered to make the gardens or ‘pleasure grounds’. The 1897 map
(next page) clearly shows an area of garden with paths and a curving southern boundary that is similar to today’s. West Lodge was built by William Renton for his gardener, the kitchen garden and glasshouses too. His gamekeeper lived in one of two more cottages he built, and his coachman the other (these are now Rose
Cottage and Southern Rose). Servants living in were a cook, a parlourmaid and two

housemaids, one of the latter being 14 year old Mary
Etherington from Honeybush next door, and the same family as that at Broadstone. Renton completely destroyed the old house and barns to make way for the carriage drive and a wide turning area, which remain today, as does the gravelled drive, which he constructed just before selling up, to North Lodge in Oakwood Hill, which is now the Sussex Border path (both partly seen in the 1897 map, left) . The new house, constructed by the boundary, put the stables and kitchen garden in
Abinger similar to the previous arrangement of buildings.
Two of the three central gables of the present-day house were completed 1878-1880 (either side of the front door in the photo, right) , designed by the architect
Henry Shaw. The drawing in The
Building News Aug 15 1879
(below) shows the western aspect of the central portion of the house containing many features still there now. Shaw adorned the south aspect with a flower room, balcony over, and verandas to the side, sadly all now gone, replaced in
1898. The attractive fluted chimneys remain. The 1879 date suggests this was a commission in preparation for William and Mabel’s marriage the next year. If so, it was a fine wedding present.
Detail from Henry Shaw’s drawings (shown in full below), Building News, 1879

Inside, downstairs the hall led to a cloakroom/WC to the left of the door, a large dining room opposite, where the current dining room is; to the right a morning room with a south-facing vestibule. Behind it the largest room was the drawing room with flower room and another vestibule, all facing south. This latter was not the present drawing room, which was added in the 1890s. As now, the ‘domestic offices’, kitchen, pantry etc, were to the left. Upstairs in
1878 there were six bedrooms approached by two staircases to the left of the door. Three bedrooms to the left are connected to the principal suites through a lobby and were probably for live-in domestic staff. The principal bedroom had a dressing room leading to a veranda over the flower room, but there is only one upstairs bathroom. Apart from this last point, this is a house that would look good on any estate agent’s books in the 21 st
century. The house also made use of mock tudor beams perhaps reflecting something of the old timber-framed farmhouse which Shaw might have seen on his initial visit.
(photo left, the rear of Shaw’s house, with extension, right)
By 1878 Shaw was practising alone at 25 New
Broad Street. In 1881, he was living with his wife and family at 39 Clapton Square Hackney. From this we learn he was born in 1840 in
Birmingham. He was still alive in 1914 when his address was The Town Hall, West Ham where he was presumably surveyor. he seems never to have sought member ship of the RIBA but he was member of the Society of Architects and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries.

At some time the rectangular plan of Shaw was altered to an L-shape (see photo above) with an extension to the rear in the servants’ wing. This is in a different style to both Shaw original house and George’s later extensions, but as it matches the older part more than the later part I suggest this is an extension built by Renton, and would go further to suggest the third gable at the front was built at this time too, say c1890. Close examination of the 1897 map seems to verify this, a longer L-shaped house. Viewed from the rear today it seems to be an attached cottage, which would have effected a greater segregation of servants living area from the main house, where Renton’s growing family needed more space. The 1954 sale catalogue includes a description of a ‘third suite’ with NE/NW aspect, which may be this part of the building.
I am struck by the perceptiveness of landowners like William Renton in choosing to gentrify a property with a view (though not as good as that from Pitch Hill a few miles north). The prospect across Sussex from both the garden and the house is of The Weald, to the South
Downs, and even in Winter it is a marvellous view. This is the same ridge (290 feet above sea level) on which Rudgwick church was built many centuries before. The surprise is that
Renton built facing west, not south. It would be the next occupants who would try to put that right. Apart from being near his in laws, the location is not far from Rudgwick station (to
Shalford). Access to a station was essential, and Horsham Road, a former turnpike, had a tolerable surface for a carriage. The East Lodge (later North Lodge), and its carriage drive through the landscaped woodland, appear not to have been built until the mid 1890s, the 2storey lodge referred to in the sale particulars of 1896 as “a handsome modern structure”. The subsequent owner added her crest built into the wall. The north entrance, led to the Stane
Street turnpike to Ockley station, and/or Dorking.
In addition land was cheap at the time because agriculture was in depression with competition from the Empire, particularly wheat. Farmers were having a tough time and labourers were deserting the villages for town jobs, hence unoccupied cottages in Rudgwick.
Some like George Nash turned to farm management for the new class of urban incomers like the Johnsons. Nash left Ridge Farm about 1888, to manage farms elsewhere. At first, near
Haslemere, then at Clammer Hill, near Haslemere, and at Guildenhurst near Billingshurst, eventually he joined his family at Ifield, where he and Betsey are buried, and where George jnr (he of the long name!) ran a tobacconist/ hairdressers in Crawley for a while until in 1914 the call of the land brought him back to Andrews Farm in Warnham.
Meanwhile, at nearby Hermongers the Teshmaker Busks replaced the Chrichtons, who had had Hermongers Hall built as the grandest house in the neighbourhood, and at Millfield
House a young widower George Haycock, a shipbroker and farmer of 650 acres in Cley next the Sea, Norfolk had moved in. Little Millfields was also the home of an incoming widower
Clare House in Tiverton. living on his own means, James
Goodchild from Reading. Through the church and the Drury family it is likely their social circle included all the prominent families of the parish. The parish was changing rapidly and was much more class based than it had been, giving work in service to local

young school leavers. Kelly’s Directory gives a steadily increasing number of these ‘private residents’.The Rentons sold Hedgecock’s. They were last listed at Rudgwick in Kelly’s
Directory, 1895, and in 1896, moved to Tiverton, Devon, near where Mabel’s father had been living when she was born. William, Elizabeth and another son John then aged 18, had been born in
Rudgwick. They lived at Clare House a 17 room house (about the same size as Hedgecock’s if the domestic offices and servants’ rooms are included) in Newport Street until at least
1911, described as a Regency style villa, and a rectory. It is now listed grade II, and a doctors’ surgery, built 1816, ironically occupied by a Dr Cadell before it was owned by the
Rentons. The Rentons had a telephone by 1910, many years before this was available in
Rudgwick. A search for John in 1891 found him at a small prep school in Eastbourne with his elder brother William. William was not in Tiverton in 1901, as at the age of 19, he had enlisted and was in South Africa fighting the Boers. Renton’s Rudgwick estate, on his removal to Devon, is shown in detail from the auctioneer’s description below, dated 1896.
The acreage of Hedgecock’s was 292 acres in 1896, which combined with neighbouring
Pound Cottage was 312, purchased by Donna Teresa Caracciolo, as explained below, slightly more than she would sell in 1911. This is about 100 acres more than he bought in 1877.
Northlands farm in Warnham, off the A29, which he also owned, and was as much again, 318 acres, and was destined to be sold separately. Pound Cottage is on the road to Oakwood Hill.
The description makes clear the two north and south entrances by carriage drives and protected by lodges were an important feature. Honeybush Cottages were occupied by a coachman and a gamekeeper. The outside appurtenances were considerable and to an extent
Hedgecock’s Icehouse, drawn in 1985 by
Sussex Industrial Archaeology Society, and photo, right,2008. self-sufficient for the owner’s enjoyment, and for his employees in this somewhat remote location.
One omission from the list of ‘utilities’ in 1896 is the icehouse. This is clearly marked on the 1898 map, to the north of the gardens, a map made before the enlargement of the house described in the next section. The icehouse has recently been cleaned (2007-8) of its rubbish and is in fairly good repair.

It is impossible to identify the additional 100 acres, but as there was no farmstead on the
Hedgecock’s land, it having been demolished for the stabling, the possible conclusions are, a)
Boundstone Farm, as previously, c) Honeybush Farm, occupied in 1891 by a farm labourer, b) Honey Lane Farm, Rudgwick (94 acres in 1844). In support of the latter, the particulars

state that parkland slopes to the south. In 1891, the farmhouse at Honey Lane was occupied by a German tailor and his wife - certainly not a farmer.
When the Rentons left Rudgwick, their children were still of school age. The eldest, William
Gerald Forester Renton was at Charterhouse School, which he left in 1898, immediately joining the army. He was commissioned to be a Second Lieutenant in the 6th Battalion, Royal
Warwickshire Regiment, and then transferred in 1900 to The King’s Dragoon Guards, with whom he served in South Africa, where he was mentioned in Despatches, July 1902. In 1906
Lt and Adj William Renton was awarded The Knights Cross of the Franz Joseph Order by the
Austrian emperor, colonel in chief of his regiment. In 1907, promoted captain he sailed for
India, where he remained until 1914. Arriving in 1915, his company attacked the undefended
Chateau Hooge at Ypres. There followed a massive bombardment of their position there, with over 80 casualties. Only one officer died in action, Capt Renton, aged 33 (photo, and memorial in Rudgwick church, located near the pulpit, below) . The memorial was erected by a family which felt it still had ties to the village, even after the death of Revd Drury in 1908.
“About Renton. Ward was about the last officer to speak to him, and the Cherub was in command of the party at Hooge Chateau. A rapid rifle and machine-gun fire was opened on the working parties, and Ward went to him to ask if they should retire to cover for a bit, but Renton, who was walking up and down very coolly in front of the Chateau right out in the open all by himself between the Germans and ourselves, told him to carry on. We did not get his body back for two days, but the infantry recovered it for us at a second attempt. As far as I can make out he had only one wound - slick through the heart. The regiment paraded about midnight, and he was buried in Vlamertinghe Churchyard, by a Chaplin, in sacred ground, and a cross placed over the grave. The shelling was apparently appalling and the dugouts were deathtraps.”
Attributed to an unknown fellow officer. Cherub must have been his nickname.
His younger brother John Drury Renton, was an artist and designer, according to the
Charterhouse registers. He died in Devon in 1951. No marriage has been found.
Elizabeth Mabel Renton married Algernon Mawson, an Old Etonian from Manchester, in
1905. They lived in Clatford near Andover. They had at least three children. Elizabeth
Frances married Roland Duncombe-Anderson who was killed in action in Belgium in 1940.
She later married Brig Howard Greene. In 2003, she lived at Glebe Cottage, Bishopstron,
Warminster, Wiltshire . They had one child Alistair born in 1938. The youngest was
Algernon John born 1916, living near Andover. His father died in Hampshire in 1938, she in
1975, aged 89.
Their parents, William and Mabel, both died in Tiverton in 1929, still at Clare House.