Photographs from Philip Townsend

Photographs from Philip Townsend

We are very grateful to Phil Townsend for sending us photographs of his family who lived, worked, married and some of them buried in Mickleham during the end of the 19th and well into the 20th centuries.  

Phil’s great grandparents, Walter James Knight (born in Worthing 1865) and Alice Baker Knight (nee King, from Dorset) moved to Mickleham Hall Stables soon after their marriage in 1893.  Walter was coachman and Alice house-keeper to the Gordon Clark family at Mickleham.  Later Walter was their chauffeur.  Both are buried in Mickleham churchyard.

  They had four children:  Violet Lilian, Walter William, Albert Victor and Grace Ivy.  Grace was head seamstress for the Gordon Clark family at Mickleham Hall before her marriage to Bay Fairs;  they lived in Leatherhead and their ashes are in Mickleham churchyard.  Albert married Annie Bailey who was the daughter of the Pippbrook Mill Manager.  Walter William married Laura Hibbert from Salford.   Violet, known as Titch, married Archie Frederick Townsend who on the census is described as an engineer at Mickleham Hall Garage    They had a son, Peter, born in 1930, who married Cissie (Mary) Clark and had a son Philip.  Later they were divorced but some people may remember Mary who worked in Rose’s Stores for many years.  Phil spent his first 30 years of his life in the village at Yew Tree Cottage.