GROVE COTTAGE
Grove Cottage, Grove Lane
Simon Rayson, a wheelwright by trade, sold his house on Low Road, now known as Commerce House, in 1802 and bought a small farm for which Grove Cottage served as the farmhouse. The Listed Buildings register describes it as an early 19th century cottage but it would seem that a mid to late 18th century date would be more accurate. Behind the house he built a barn and wheelwright's shop, a building which was still standing in 1906 when the Ordnance Survey published a large scale map of the village. However thirty five years later it had all but disappeared, with just traces of the clay lump walls remaining.
In 1805 he built a new house for himself on his adjoining land, now Holly Tree Cottage, and sold Grove Cottage as an investment property to Christopher Capon, a painter and gilder from Norwich, who already owned a number of other cottages on Low Road for letting. He was still recorded as the owner in 1840 but by then he had split the house into a double cottage and the first national census the following year records the occupants of one half as David Howlett, a 72 year old wheelwright, and his wife Sarah, with the other end home to a carpenter William Bunn and his wife and four young daughters.
Christopher Capon died in 1844 and his various properties were put up for sale by auction. The purchaser of Grove Cottage was another investor, Robert Bensley, who already owned the Mill, and he also bought three other cottages in Low Road previously owned by Mr Capon. In the Manorial Court records the property is described in the transfer to Mr Bensley as "All that double cottage or tenement formerly of Christopher Capon with the barn, wheelwright's shop, garden and grounds with pump and privy, containing 1 rood and 38 perches (nearly half an acre) occupied by William Atkins and David Howlett ", so by then the Bunn family had been replaced by the Atkins family. Sometime before 1851 William Atkins must have died because the census that year records only Mary Atkins, a 35 year-old widow, with her three young daughters as being in occupation of one half. She is referred to as a pedlar so must have been hawking goods door to door in an effort to provide for her family. Sarah Howlett had also died by then because David was living on his own and was described as a pauper and former wheelwright, but whether or not someone else had taken on the wheelwright's shop business isn't known.
Mr Bensley died in 1855 and his various properties were held under the terms of his Will for his wife Harriett for her lifetime but after her death in 1867, the cottage, together with the barn and former wheelwright's shop, was purchased by The Honourable Horace Walpole MP who owned Rainthorpe Hall, and the property remained part of the Rainthorpe estate until 1929, when the estate was offered for sale by auction in 34 lots following the death of Sir Charles Harvey. Grove Cottage, Lot 5, was purchased by the tenant, Alfred Goose who worked on the railway, out of Flordon station. His family had been in the cottage since at least 1891, when the census records his father George Goose, an agricultural labourer, and his wife Elizabeth with six children all born in Tasburgh, so it is possible that Alfred then aged 7 had been born in the cottage which is also where he died in 1968(?), sitting in his armchair.
After the death of Mr Goose the property was bought by a builder, and because of concerns that he was planning to pull the cottage down and build new houses on the land up to the Council houses, the Tas Valley Preservation Society stepped in and secured Listed Building status. As a result the cottage was restored and only a single new house was built on the land, now The Maples.
The property changed hands twice more, the most recent in 1980. It was extended in 1986 and again in 2018.