THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE - Old Gate Tea Rooms

THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — these Findon Chronicles were created by Valerie Martin and contain scenes from her home village of Findon,
West Sussex, U.K. Everyday stories about real people.

OLD GATE TEA ROOMS

Turnpike roads run by Trusts needed tollhouses and we had three in Findon in our time..... one being on the Long Furlong road (OS reference TQ101 075) run by the Worthing Trust. ThisTrust may have purchased the land and property from Richard Walker. You can read about this gentleman's activities by clicking on The Tussle Between Richard Watt Walker and George Cross.

The tollhouse could have started out as a lodge to Michelgrove. It was just a small, one up and one down house, in the Gothic style under a hipped roof. There was one room on the ground floor, the other above accessed by a ladder!

Additionally there was a small office at the front for business. This was where the tolls were passed through the only window facing the roadway.

The façade was stuccoed with a pair of flanking crenellated towers .... cunningly raised to sufficient height to hide the roof line beyond. Where was the tariff board? No pictures of this era remain but it was obviously displayed in the gothic recess above the front window.

A photograph is worth a thousand words and this one shows the property trading as The Old Gate Tea rooms 1938.

I do not know if the Lewes family were resident at The Old Gate Tea rooms or not at this date, but in all probability they were. An unfortunate episode brought the property into the news two years earlier. Part of the garden continued on the opposite side of the Long Furlong road and it was a sad day in May 1936 when a car killed the ten-year-old son, Peter, as he ran across the road to get to this garden.


The Lewes children playing in the garden of the Toll House with Long Furlong wending its way westwards in the background.

To read about the other tollhouses in Findon, click on my narrative entitled Findon Gate and Nep Gate

Continue if you would like to help solve The Bark Cutter Mystery.

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THIS IS FINDON VILLAGE — is a continually growing record created by Valerie Martin exclusively for documenting life around Findon.

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Do let me know of anything you hear about Findon - not too controversial. Please note that opinions expressed in the Findon Chronicles are not necessarily reflective of my own thoughts.... but sometimes they are!