Earlier this year Michèle Kohler, a friend of mine who lives in Dorking (Surrey, UK), sent me the exciting news that she had discovered the location of the house which Wallace lived in there. Several people have tried to work out which of the houses on the Rose Hill Estate Wallace lived in, but have had no luck - possibly because they concentrated on the grand houses surrounding the famous grassy oval and not the houses in the side roads - where the house actually is. This is what Michèle wrote for this website (sorry for the delay in posting it but I am only now catching up with work which built up whilst I was away in south-east Asia):-
Wallace's Dorking House
By Michèle Kohler, 20th April 2009
The Wallace timeline on this website notes that from July 1876 to March 1878 he “Rented Rose Hill, Dorking, Surrey”. But where on Rose Hill? Rose Hill is a road in Dorking that surrounds a grassy oval with a tail going off in a northwesterly and finally a northerly direction. The actual location was “lost” because no one could remember it. But it was found again by me in January 2009.
We knew that Wallace rented in Dorking. How would one find rented accommodation in 1876? The same way that you might find it today - from an estate agent! White & Son are a long established agent in Dorking and between 1963 and 1969 they deposited their archive at the Surrey History Centre in Woking. This seemed a likely place to find a record of Wallace’s rental - if it existed at all.
In January 2009 I ordered up some likely material and in the box for 1877 I found an unrecorded letter from Wallace to White and Son about subletting the property. But still no mention of the property itself.
I then turned to two large volumes. In the first, a letter book, under the Shearburn account was a note that a house agency or rental agreement with Mr. Wallace had been executed and that he was paying £55 per annum for “No. 2 Rose Hill”. It was clear to me that this related not to No. 2 on the Oval but to No.2 in a group of houses owned by the Shearburns. It was then fairly easy, with the use of the censuses of 1870 and 1880 and some other references in the Shearburn account, to figure out which house it was. It is today called No. 12 Rose Hill. The second volume included a reference that a house agency agreement had been drawn up for AR Wallace so we know it is our man. Alas there is no agreement in the box where where it should be but it may have been misfiled and will turn up when the entire archive is properly calendared.
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12 Rose Hill is the right hand side of the semi-detached property behind the double garage. Like most of Wallace's houses, it is not small. Copyright Michèle Kohler. |
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