The original house where these cottages stand seems to have been bought in 1838 by Peter Hales, who passed it for £5 in 1844 to William Hales, shopkeeper and his wife Mary Ann Hales. It appears that a sitting tenant, John Good, had the right to remain there during his lifetime. In any event, William erected two cottages on the land between 1844 and 1850. After Mary Ann died in 1890, the land was conveyed to John Drane, noted as the relieving officer for Saffron Walden.
Tricia Ridgway’s deeds for Appletrees show a number of land transactions involving John Drane and in 1929 there is a conveyance of ‘two freehold cottages and land adjoining’ from ‘John Drane, retired relieving officer’, to his son John F Drane, butcher. In 1932 the two cottages were sold to Beatrice Venn from Bow, who converted them into a single house.
Beatrice Venn died in 1942 in Merivale Sanitorium, Sandon, Essex – a specialist treatment centre for TB. She left the cottage to her sister Ena Cox for her “unfailing devotion and kindness since childhood” although, probably because of the War, probate took a long time to achieve and was only finally granted in 1951.
The property was auctioned at Saffron Walden Town Hall in 1986 before Colin Taylor, a local builder, acquired it and restored it to the two cottages that are there today.
Tricia remembers a visit from Ena Cox’s niece who came walking along the road one day, pointing at the house. When Tricia asked if she could help, the niece recounted her memories of playing in the house as a child and about Ena and her husband George Ralph Cox. She later sent Tricia these photos of Ena and George in the garden.
Ena remembered that the door frames were very low. Each one had a button hanging on a cotton thread just in front so that, as you walked, you hit the button with your head and automatically ducked to avoid banging your head! When the children were playing on the floor in what is now the dining room, the floor sloped so much that they would end up sliding across the stone floor towards the range in the centre.
There was a double outside toilet on what is now the Rosemary Cottage side and various outbuildings on the Appletrees side. Tricia attributes the fertility of the gardens to the fact that these outbuildings were once used to house pigs!