Quizzes & Puzzles2 mins ago
Sunnyside/Norbryght
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No best answer has yet been selected by Chrisheal. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.I know "Tilbuster" Hill, but I'm afraid I don't know the house.
Interestingly, a couple of hundred years ago there were natterjack toads at Tilburstow (breeding in one of the Godstone ponds -- can't remember its name, but I think the south-western one). This shows that the common must have been very open indeed at that time, probably just with heather and grass and almost no trees (common toads need cover and outcompete natterjacks). If your Berrisford Webbs were commoners, they would have grazed their cattle and sheep there.
In Anglo Saxon times the house and common would have been on the northern edge of the great Weald wilderness -- looking much like the New Forest does today. The farms and fields came along a lot later there than elsewhere in lowland England.
From Roman times until the industrial revolution, the Greensand ridge was also a great centre for iron making, as it had both ironstone and charcoal -- the pits and hollows on Tilbuster Hill are old ironstone quarries.
Good luck with your search!
Mr Webb's generosity (not monetary) many, many years ago changed my life.
Mr Gulliver was the man who owned the village store/post office who Jon Rogers mentions in his reply to you. I too remember the old mansion; to a child, as I was then, it was fuel for my imagination. The magazines, by the way, were old Punch Magazines in what was once the study. There was an orchard and large greenhouse. There was also a long canoe which was once used on the carp pond which I have also fished many times - so full of fish that all you needed was a bent pin and some bread and it worked every time. Mr Webb was a lovely man who was crippled from a racing accident...... as a child I spent holidays in the Lodge with him and my family. Happy days!!!