by Joy Horn Main Image: Mr Frederick Warren (on left, bearded), builder, opening the new bridge in Knowle Lane at Waterland Farm in 1924
How did the Cranleigh of 1924 compare with the Cranleigh we know today?
Marriages and burials: the parish register shows that in half of all weddings in 1924, both partners were from Cranleigh. In a quarter of weddings, one partner came from a nearby village, and in the remaining quarter one partner came from further afield, including a sailor from H.M.S. Vampire and another from H.M.S. Flinders. (One wonders what stories lie behind these romances?)
Of the 35 people buried and recorded in the Parish Register, five had died at the Hambledon workhouse infirmary: all but one were very old and presumably in straitened circumstances. Five had died in the Village Hospital. Four young men died between October and December.
Major Herbert Sapte, third son of the long-serving rector of Cranleigh, John Sapte, died at Morpeth Mansions, Westminster, aged 70, and an urn of his ashes was placed in his father’s grave. After a military career, he had been appointed manager of the Consolidated Goldfields of South Africa by Cecil Rhodes. His family gave an episcopal chair to the parish church in memory of him.
Among news of shops, David Mann & Sons issued a New Year Announcement that Mr William H. Brand had been taken into partnership. He had been with the firm since leaving school in 1906, apart from the War, and it was ‘largely due to Mr Brand’s initiative and business acumen that the firm’s business has largely increased during the last few years’. Their Annual Bargain Sale promised ‘large and sweeping reductions’.
In April David Mann & Sons announced that a new showroom for garden tools had been opened on the first floor of the store. And in November they advertised a one-valve wireless set for £3 or complete wireless-receiving installation for £10, which must have occasioned a lot of excitement.
At the parish church, the staff this year included ‘Deaconess Mabel’. When she left the parish in May, the congregations at St Andrew’s, Hazlewood Mission and Smithwood Common were ‘all very sorry to say goodbye to her’, as she had been employed particularly there. At the Lent services, the five preachers were all former assistant curates (two of them from back in the time of John Sapte). At the confirmation service in March, ten males were confirmed and twenty-four females. The wooden ‘church hut’, acquired since the First World War, was in regular use for socials and concerts.
Among village organisations, the Cranleigh Ambulance Division was aiming to purchase a ‘motor ambulance’ which would cost £165. Donations were to be made to the divisional superintendent, Mr Hillman Attwell, pharmacist in the High Street.
According to the Parish Magazine, the Cranleigh Brass and Reed Band ‘was again reaching a high standard under Mr Whaley’ and at the Rectory Fête ‘in the gloaming, discoursed most sweetly’!
Meanwhile, the Girls’ Friendly Society won a shield at the Surrey County Musical Festival.
The Rector, together with Mr Samuel Mann and the Rev. R. Leatherdale (the curate), chaired a meeting to constitute (re-constitute, surely?) a Cranleigh Choral Society, which intended to perform Mendelssohn’s ‘St Paul’, under Mr Leatherdale.
Outings were great events at a time when not many people had their own means of transport. In July, 554 people went to Littlehampton by special train on the Parish Outing, including 220 Sunday School children from the parish and Baptist churches.
The next month, on a Wednesday, 28 members of the parish church choir went to the Isle of Wight, where they had lunch at the Union Hotel, Ryde, and went bowling or on tours of the Island. They returned to Guildford at 11.00pm and were met by Mr Weller’s charabanc.
The two village schools were then known as the National School and the County Infants’ School. At the National School’s prize-giving, the headmaster, Mr Frank English, reported that there had been ‘good progress, notwithstanding several drawbacks from changes in the staff and from epidemics’.
On Palm Sunday, gifts were made to the Village Hospital of flowers and 36 dozen eggs (= 432!), to be ‘put down’ for future use, probably using isinglass.
As for Events, players came from all parts of England and Scotland to take part in the Cranleigh Tennis Tournament in August. Fourteen courts were set up on the south side of the cricket Common, and there were ‘large companies of spectators’. The results had reached the national press and been reported in The Times.
Mr William Charman, of the Common, celebrated an incredible 50 years of bell-ringing in the parish church tower (30 of them as leader of the band of ringers), and was presented with a silver inkstand in the shape of a bell.
Mr Frank Greenfield (who had lost three sons in the Battle of the Somme) was asked to investigate the condition of the nave roof. In November, the PCC resolved to re-tile it, at a cost of £600, and Lady Chadwyck-Healey of Wyphurst launched a competition in aid of this. By November the re-roofing was in progress.
The Cranleigh History Society meets on the second Thursday of each month at 8pm in the Band Room. The next meeting is on Thursday December 12th, when Hugh Thomas will speak on ‘India Today’.
