When the twentieth century began the settlement at Jacobs Well had grown to comprise six homes in the vicinity of the crossroads namely, Jacobs Well Farm, Beehive Cottage, the Old House, Greencroft and the two Crabtree Cottages. Perhaps it could be claimed that a village now existed.
Sooon after the 1901 census Frederick William Fuller and his family moved to Beehive Cottage. He was a carman but also appears to have been a smallholder and carried out ploughing and mowing services locally. This photograph - provided by Carol Knatt (née Fuller) and her father, and reproduced with their kind permission - shows the children of Frederick Fuller standing at the gate of Beehive Cottage in about 1911.
Henry Treeby Elsewhere in the locality the principal event was the arrival of Henry Treeby in 1905. He had been an army officer and he had married the eldest daughter of the Reverend Francis Paynter who lived nearby at Stoke Hill. After being invalided home from the South African War Henry Treeby acquired, and took up residence at, Hurst Farm, retaining the various barns, granaries etc which stood between it and the main road and then, for reasons known only to himself, renamed it Willow Grange. He also increased his holdings by purchasing Queen Hythe with its 46 acres which had been farmed by William Burt. However Hurst Farm cottages continued to be occupied by several families until about 1920.
Tentacles begin to stretch out Apart from an occasional change of ownership of some of the other farms the next major event was around 1911 when twelve new homes appeared along Stringers Common Road - later called Sutton Green Road and renamed Jacobs Well Road only as recently as 1968. The buildings nearest the crossroads were a pair of semidetached cottages called Elmhurst and Batchelor's Cottage (the latter recently renamed Honeysuckle Cottage) and a detached house, Meadowside. These three homes were built on a plot which had been described as Lot 5 at the 1877 auction, when it was sold for £125.
At the same sale Lot 6 was a slightly smaller plot, called Roundabouts, on the other side of the road which was acquired for £95. Rose Cottage was built on this island plot which lay between Stringers Common Road and a track which branched off to the east to join Clay Lane near Jacobs Well Farm.
Further west along the road several more new homes were built on what had been the fields of Queen Hythe Farm, owned by Henry Treeby. These were Moat Farm, Queen Hythe Farm Cottage, Pear Tree Cottage, 1 & 2 Elm Cottages, 1 & 2 Adeline Cottages and Artillery Cottage. Elm Cottages belonged to William Burt so he had probably retained one plot when he sold out to Henry Treeby. However by this time it may have been his son who was the owner.
The southernmost of the new buildings was Moat Farm, the name of which derived from the fact that the brook then flowed along two sides of it, requiring a footbridge for access to the road. At that time the brook turned north-east alongside the road before passing underneath it opposite Queen Anne Farm.
Two old houses disappear The Old House had been purchased by a builder from Lower Malden who demolished it and built Burpham Cottages, but there is no actual record of their occupation before 1915. Another building which appears to have been demolished around this period was Watts Farm.
Finally, on the Woking Road the semi-detached pair of Oak Cottages put in an appearance on another plot which had formed part of Queen Hythe farm. Thus in the period between the turn of the century and the first World War the number of homes in the "triangle" had risen from eighteen to at least thirty. About twenty now claimed to be at Jacobs Well while the remainder retained their addresses as Stringers Common or Woking Road (as some do today).
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