YESTERYEAR has received a letter from a reader in Crawley Down enquiring about the history of Duxhurst, a very small community between Sidlow and Hookwood.
Mrs Elizabeth Young, of Squires Close, writes: "As a former resident of Horley I still pick up the Horley Mirror and like to read your columns on yesteryear.
"My grand-daughter asked me last Sunday if I knew anything about Duxhurst House.
"She had heard that it had been a home for girls and did I know of it? So I thought you might like another project to look at. Duxhurst is off the A217 between Sidlow and Hookwood. It's marked as a farm on my map of the area.
"Looking again, there are two farms and also a house."
Yesteryear suggests Mrs Young tells her grand-daughter about a book published in the last couple of years which sets out the history of Duxhurst. It is titled "Duxhurst – Surrey's Lost Village" and is written by Ros Black.
By the 1890s, Lady Henry Somerset was travelling the world in her capacity as president of the British Women's Temperance Association. In 1894 she founded Duxhurst as a village for the care of inebriate women of all classes. Indeed, the site (just three miles south of Reigate, just off what is now the A217) was specifically chosen because there was already a manor house there.
This meant the project could get up and running quickly as a refuge for the rich and famous of the time, including several aristocratic ladies and music hall stars, who could afford to pay for their treatment. It was the Priory Clinic of its day.
But Lady Henry Somerset's plans involved all sectors of society. She had built a collection of thatched cottages arranged in a horseshoe around a village green. Each housed six to eight women, many of whom came from very rough backgrounds – one patient had been in prison over 200 times before being sent to Duxhurst.
A house sister, usually recruited from the Church Army, ran each cottage. Meals and social activities were held in a large hall. The village had a hospital, where each new patient was assessed. There were laundries, workshops, a dairy farm, gardens, greenhouses, lavender fields – even a pottery. Lady Henry Somerset believed that the women should be usefully occupied, but in a setting as far removed from their previous life as possible.
Children were cared for in The Nest. Initially this was used just as a holiday home, providing children from the London slums with a two-week break. But it soon became a permanent home for children cruelly abused by parents, often as a result of their excessive drinking.
The book is available at 1st Stop Stationers, High Street, Reigate.