A large audience heard
the September talk by Lucy Quinnell of Fire and Iron Gallery on what had been
her family’s house since 1932. Lucy’s own story is a fascinating one while the
mysterious origins of her house have led to much speculation. BILL WHITMAN
reports.
Lucy told us she was born at the northern tip of
Leatherhead, opposite the Star pub. She later lived close to what is now
SeeAbility, while her father ran Rowhurst Forge. She went to Therfield School ,
Epsom Art
School and Exeter University
She returned at a time of major change. The M25 now
bisected the family farm and had taken many acres. Her mother died that year
and then too her grandmother - the first family owner of Rowhurst - so Lucy
found herself living at Rowhurst with her three-year-old son while her father
still ran the forge.
She founded Fire & Iron Gallery to showcase and
sell metal artefacts. The business grew and after assisting with London ’s Globe Theatre gates she designed and produced a
sculpture at Ironbridge, the Amesbury Archer at Stonehenge , and a gold medal-winning garden at the Hampton
Court Flower Show. Fire & Iron’s work in Leatherhead includes the sign for
Neate’s Alley, ‘hand’ archways for a local park, the cyclists on the wall of
the Letherhead Institute and the bridge-themed installation at the Church Street/High Street
Fire & Iron’s site is also a nature reserve and
more recently Lucy led the successful campaign to protect the adjacent 57-acre
Teazle Wood, now a major local conservation project.
Rowhurst house is located on a spur at the highest
point in the area, 60 metres above sea level between two tributaries of the
River Mole. The house was evidently built in three phases: a first building,
represented now only by the semi-basement; a second timber framed building
dated by dendrochronology to 1346; and the newest part dating from 1632. The
tower-like semi-basement is a 25 feet square room with flint walls 2.5 feet
thick. There are five cupboard niches in the walls, suggesting storage of
important items, and arches similar to those in a large dovecote in France
Lucy referred to Edwina Vardey’s A History of
Leatherhead which describes Leatherhead as “a key place in local
government; a centre of royal authority and the site of a minster church”.
Leodridan, thought to be Leatherhead, is a royal vill in King Alfred’s will
(800s) and later records for Pachenesham (North Leatherhead) feature a prison,
pound, courthouse, gatehouse and church.
Might Rowhurst’s origins date back to that time - or
even earlier? The semi-basement has been suggested as the missing Anglo-Saxon
minster church which lay at the north end of present Leatherhead. Buildings on
The Mounts dated from the 1200s, so the earlier minster church may still be
found somewhere else in the area. It may be unlikely that Rowhurst itself was
the church, but it is possible that Teazle Wood might one day reveal new
evidence.
Rowhurst appears as a name from 1418 to 1543 in
connection with some fields, followed by a long gap to 1712 where it appears as
a ‘messuage’ with 40 acres. A series of very short tenures followed and the buildings
became ruinous. The major development of 1632 is not documented, which is
puzzling. Exactly three centuries later, Lucy’s family moved in and the modern
story began.
