New Surrey Romany Gypsy research: The Hurtwood Bungalows and Tin School

Last year, Lucy East contacted us about researching her Surrey Romany Gypsy heritage. Lucy is descended from members of the Lee, Parker, and Bird families who travelled in Surrey before settling at Field Common, Walton on Thames. Her grandfather, Jim Lee, attended the Tin School in Walton-on-Thames, and Lucy was intrigued by the school's history and how it had originated from Surrey County Council's Gypsy School located in The Hurtwood, near Albury. Lucy's fascinating new research has come from painstakingly trawling through papers held at Surrey History Centre, online newspapers, and family history websites. It also builds on the groundbreaking book by our volunteer, Alan Wright, Their Day has Passed: Gypsies in Victorian and Edwardian Surrey (2018). The new page is now live on Exploring Surrey's Past, an extract of which is below.

Leaving The Hurtwood

In 1933, the Hurtwood Gypsy School at Albury was closing down, and the Gypsy families that had been in living in the woodland at Hurtwood Common were given notice to quit. Mr Reginald Bray and Mr Stopford Brooke of the Hurtwood Control Committee needed to find an alternative accommodation for them and proposed Walton-on-Thames as there were already 'a large number of gipsies' living there.

The proposed new site

The residents of the Hurtwood raised over £1,000 in donations to help the Gypsies settle into their new home. The money raised was used to build 6 huts at the end of Homefield Road, at Field Common, Walton-on-Thames, which would be made available to the families for a small rent (Surrey Advertiser, 9 December 1933). They were steel framed huts with a corrugated asbestos skin and sheet asbestos lining. Each hut had 4 rooms, 3 bedrooms and a single living area with a portable range. The water supply was from a well and pump outside huts 3 and 4 and each hut had an earth closet at the rear of the plot.

An aerial photograph of Field Common and the newly built Hurtwood Bungalows in 1934 can be seen on the Historic England website.

The Gypsy families move

Sixty men, women and children made the move to Walton-on-Thames. Among the families were members of the Loveridge, Sayers, Fagence, Davies, Hoadley, Roberts, Williams, and Carey families.

The electoral register for the Molesey Road area of Field Common, in October 1945, shows occupants including the Sayers family. The Sayers family lived at the encampment at The Hurtwood, before moving to Field Common, and they feature in the Pathé newsreel 'It's an Old Romany Custom' (1934), which filmed the burning of the camp when the families left. You can watch this film and another about the Hurtwood Gypsy School on the Gypsy School at Hurtwood web page.

Part of the negotiations for the new settlement of the Hurtwood Gypsies included provision of a new public elementary school in Walton-on-Thames (East Walton Temporary Council School). In an early and innovative example of recycling the entire Gypsy school building was physically moved from The Hurtwood encampment to the site in Terrace Road at the cost of £300 and was used as an extension to the existing school. Mr Milner, the headmaster of the Gypsy school, became the headmaster of the East Walton Temporary Council School and 18 children moved with him. The school was known locally as the 'Tin School' and was on the site of what is now Grovelands Infant and Nursery School, Terrace Road, Walton-on-Thames. The school celebrated its centenary in 2008.

Images:

The corrugated iron building of Hurtwood Gypsy School, c.1926 (from a postcard of Harold G Bailey; courtesy of Albury History Society)

Walton & Weybridge Urban District Council plan for Hurtwood Bungalows by John Lake, architect, Godalming, plan no. 3724, 1 July 1933 (Surrey History reference 3541/3/Box3)