EXCERPTS FROM AN ARTICLE LENT BY JOAN ANDREW
The Hampshire Herald and Alton Gazette - Thursday August 27th 1959

The Charm of Froyle
STATELY HOMES AND STATUETTES

The Statues.... led to at least one bright London magazine in recent years dubbing Froyle “the village of the Saints”. Certainly they tend to give a unique touch.

Its history and development have been closely linked with farming and the yeomen families whose names are still borne by many of their houses.

The upper village has some fine properties grouped near the Church and principal manor house, Froyle Place, which, together with its 3250 acre estate (most of Upper Froyle) was in the hands of the Miller family until Sir Hubert, the last of the line, died in 1940. Recently the Elizabethan house, said to date from 1588 ... has been given a new lease of life by its conversion into the Lord Mayor Treloar College for physically handicapped boys. The College Trustees have also acquired the remainder of the estate for investment purposes, enabling existing tenancies of farms and residences to continue.

Post Office & General Store
A timber framed, thatched building, it was originally a Tudor smallholder’s dwelling adjacent to the former common..... Within living memory it was used as a carpenters shop, then it became an ordinary little post office, and now, run by Mr. Reg Carr, of Alton, assisted by a local lady, Miss Knight, it has been built up into a really flourishing store.

Fewer Hops
In 1800 there were 141 acres of hops in Froyle and a village directory of 1859 states that “There are hop yards on all the farms”. Nearly all of them still have an oast..

Mr Percy Butler of West End Farm, Upper Froyle, who is in business with his son Peter has farmed in the parish for over 43 years.

Up to the First World War many of the girls got their after school training in the service of the big houses and many of the boys were taken on in their stables or gardens. Now that is a thing of the past.

MRS EDWIN STACEY (Annie Louisa Pinnells)
Wife of the former blacksmith, of 2 Mount Pleasant. Nearly 82, she has lived in the village since she was 4. (About 1881) In addition to some time in private service at Husseys, she worked in the fields for five years during the First World War. She recalls when there were many more hop gardens in the vicinity and the picking rate was 1s per seven bushels, the present rate being about that amount for just one bushel. A lot of the farms have disappeared and several of the farm houses had turned into private residences. When she was young her father - a carter for Mr Knight at Saintbury Hill Farm - used to be in charge of a team of six horses and have a lad of 14 - 15 working with him as under-carter. Now all that had changed and it was difficult enough for a carter to find work, let alone for a boy to be taken on with him.

As a child Mrs Stacey attended the village school in Upper Froyle. Next door to the school, in fact just over the wall, Mr. Lewis Simpson, the old village butcher, used to carry on business and kill animals to supply the village with meat. To say the least, it does not seem to have been a very suitable position for a slaughterhouse, but apparently there was little fear of complaint from the school authorities for Miss Anna Simpson, the butcher’s sister, used to be school teacher when Annie Pinnells went to school.

Old Crafts Dying Out
Opposite Upper Froyle Post Office in those days was the old blacksmith’s shop (later moved and rebuilt further down the hill where the building still stands) and Mrs Stacey can remember getting boots tipped there as a child, while the boys used to take their iron hoops to be mended by the blacksmith. Mr Stacey, now nearly 83, worked as a blacksmith for fifty years in all - nineteen of them for Mr Faulkner (wheelwright, carpenter and undertaker) at Upper and Lower Froyle, twenty four at South Warnborough, when he walked the two and a half miles each way every day, and seven at Binsted. The last working blacksmith in the village, Mr Morris, retired some years ago and several other old trades have died out. There is for instance, no longer a wheelwright, thatcher or hurdle maker and bread, too, is no longer baked locally.

For over fifty years Walter and Alfred Brownjohn ran the village general store and Post Office in Lower Froyle....... In several of the old cottages in Froyle one can see rooms which were used as shops............ Just retired from the Anchor after being connected with the licensed trade in the village all her life is Mrs K Radford. Her father, Mr J Knight, held the license of the Old Traveller’s Rest, the Prince of Wales and the Anchor for a combined total of 50 years, and, after his death, she - at first with her mother and later with her husband - kept on at the latter for another 36 years.

Oldest Resident
In a cottage named “Villa San Joseph”.... lives Mrs Rawson, the oldest inhabitant who will be 90 in January and was landlady of the Hen and Chicken for 21 years, from 1918 until 1938. ...it would be hard to beat the record of Mr Charles Herson, the chauffeur, who has worked for successive occupiers of Highway House since 1911.

According to Mrs Stacey the social life is much stronger now than in the old days. The turning point came in 1922 when Mr F.B.Summers of Froyle Place presented the village with a recreation ground and sports pavilions. Strong cricket and football sections developed and these were successfully reformed after the war and turned into a Sports Club.

A popular feature with young people in the village and district is the riding school at Upper Froyle run by Joan Andrew, who with horses like Harlequin, Greek Hero and Egyptian Star, made such a name for herself in show jumping, hunter trials and point-to-point races a few years ago.

The Treloar College staff have closely associated themselves with village affairs since they “moved in” a few years ago, and helped to make up for the loss the village sustained by the departure of Sir Hugh Smiley (Chairman of the Parish Council) and Lady Smiley (President of the W.I.) From Froyle House to Bentworth in the early 1950's. Colonel C Newton-Davis has succeeded Sir Hugh Smiley as Chairman of the Parish Council.