W and HL Carruthers, Daws Heath Builders

1867 Daws Heath Ordnance Survey Map
Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland https://maps.nls.uk/index.html
1867 Haresland Estate Area Ordnance Survey Map
Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland https://maps.nls.uk/index.html
1919 Haresland Estate Area Ordnance Survey Map
Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland https://maps.nls.uk/index.html
WL Carruthers in front of the bungalow he built next to Windyridge
1938 Haresland Estate Ordnance Survey Map
Typical Bungalows in Moorcroft Avenue on the Haresland Estate
Typical Fairmead Avenue bungalows
Rev C Lansdown in 1929 with W Carruthers top left, Mr Choppen to his right and and Lawson Carruthers in front of Mr Choppen
M Brown
Moorcroft was the double fronted right hand property at 106 Rectory Road
Unknown source
Moorcroft Bramble Rd

This article has been written based mostly on the collective memories kindly provided to the Archive by David Carruthers (now 94 in 2020 and living near Exeter) and by his sister Jean de Jong, who now lives in the USA.

Cast your mind back to the 1920s and imagine a Daws Heath without any estate east of Daws Heath Road (and where the Haresland Estate stands today). Daws Heath then consisted mostly of scattered farms and Victorian cottages joined by unmade roads.

A number of builders created much of what we recognise as Daws Heath from the 1920s onwards. Little is known of the earlier builders in the area, so please tell us if you know who built your Daws Heath house.

David and Jean’s grandfather, William John Carruthers, moved his wife, Charlotte, and family from Islington to Southend sometime in the first decade of the 20th century and they appear on the 1911 census at Oswald House, Tunbridge Road, Prittlewell. Their son, William Lawson Carruthers, was the eldest of three brothers.

The Carruthers involvement with Daws Heath started when William John Carruthers and Harry Hall (Charlotte’s stepfather and an estate agent in Southend) purchased Haresland Farm at an auction in Wickford in 1922 and sold the farmland to his son William Lawson Carruthers to develop the estate in plots.

William Lawson Carruthers, born in Islington in 1900, had become a Master Builder after the First World War and started his business by building a number of properties in Southchurch, Southend.

The Haresland Farm outbuildings were used by William Lawson and his brother Harry who joined the firm W & H L Carruthers.  Some of the farm buildings were also used for cows owned by Mr Clark who rented the fields. Mr Clark had a milk-round all over the Heath.

The Haresland farmhouse was very old;  a family called White lived there, renting it and the land from Carruthers.

William Lawson Carruthers built Windyridge on the west side of the entrance road to the Haresland farmyard as the first property in what was to become Haresland Close before marrying Constance (née Moss) in 1924 and they moved in. It was very isolated before the estate was built. At the time, they were one of the few car owners! (He also built an identical house to Windyridge at the back of Badger Hall, Kiln Road, for one of Dr Littlejohn’s daughters. They were close friends).

Constance’s youngest brother, Alan Moss, was apprenticed to, and then employed by, Carruthers as a carpenter and joiner.  In those days carpenters and joiners made all the doors and windows for the bungalows. (After the war Alan started his own building business and built most of the properties in Haresland Close).

When the surrounding estate was planned in 1927 it was called the Haresland Garden Estate and when built it included the streets  Fairmead, Moorcroft and Lansdowne Avenues. (Haresland Close itself was a later development, but the estate was all built on Haresland farmland).

The 1927 plans for the Haresland Estate that Carruthers built are in the Essex Record Office ref: (O D/UBe 2/1E/4). He also built a bungalow in Thorington Avenue (and that plan is D/UBe 2/1/233). He probably built more houses in Daws Heath.

As a matter of interest, Lansdown Avenue was named after the minister of Hadleigh Congregational Church (now URC) where William Lawson Carruthers was the organist.

David’s grandmother was Miss Moorcroft and Moorcroft Avenue was named in her honour. When the older generation, William John Carruthers and his wife, lived in what was (until demolished and rebuilt as two new houses in 2019) a large double fronted house at 106 Rectory Road opposite what is now the cricket ground, they also named that ‘Moorcroft’. They finally moved to the first bungalow to be built opposite the end of Pound Wood (at 122 Bramble Road). Another Moorcroft!

After William John died in 1938, Charlotte Carruthers lived  exactly opposite the tip of the Triangle and slightly back from the road and next to the old cottage where there was a bakery run by Mr Smith. (Jean remembers people being able to take their turkeys, etc to cook there in the large oven at Xmas and she remember going there with her father to get theirs!).

The 1939 Register confirms that William Lawson Carruthers, a Building Contractor, was living at Windyridge, Bramble Road with his wife and children, David and Jean. (Windyridge is now 2 Haresland Close. The house has had major changes since the Carruthers lived there).

The war prevented further development and the remaining land become Green Belt. It was let to a local dairy farmer, Mr Clark of Poors Lane. (David has a vivid memory of helping the farmer at harvest stooking the hay and climbing the haystacks!). Eventually the farm lane was given planning permission and Haresland Close was built on the site. [Some less countrified readers, such as me, might like to know that a “stook” (also referred to as a “shock” or “stack”) is an arrangement of sheaves of cut grain-stalks placed so as to keep the grain-heads off the ground while still in the field and prior to collection for threshing – Ed].

Eventually, the Bramble Road office was sold to David and Jean’s cousin Peter and he built a house on it, so that’s another local builder.

David and Jean inherited the remaining land and let it to Peter Grigg a local farmer. Peter Grigg and David were boyhood friends and he remembers playing with him on his father’s farm near the triangle. They lived near the Peculiar People’s Chapel, now the Evangelical Church. The Grigg family were many in number in Daws Heath.

[The Archive would be more than interested to know who built your house in Daws Heath. Was it Carruthers, when and where was it built? If you have this information or can find it in your deeds, please add a comment below -Ed] .

Related articles:    Builders of Daws Heath;      Broom Brothers

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  • I have some memories of the Littlejohn family who came from Ohio and lived in Thundersley. Dr John Martin Littlejohn  was an Osteopath. Osteopathy was not recognized in the USA at that time so they relocated to London in 1913. He  founded the British School of Osteopathy in 1917 and served as Dean for  40 years. They settled in Badger Hall, Thundersley. They were  certainly there in the 1920s and 1930s  when my parents got to know them.  I remember going to that big old house down a very long driveway off the Benfleet Road.  They were lovely people and  Mrs  Littlejohn  (whom we called “Auntie Mim”)   ran a small kindergarten school at the house.  They had  at least 3 children; 2 sons, a daughter, Libby, and maybe more. When Libby  married, my father built  a  house for her  [ as her parent’s wedding  present]  on the land at the back of the Hall.    The sons became doctors  and their friendship with my parents continued for many years. I remember them attending my parent’s   Golden Wedding in 1974.
    I remember hearing tales of their youth  when they were young people  at the Congregational Church.
    An uncle of mine [a teenager at the time] described them as the JET SET  OF  THUNDERSLEY as they all had motorbikes and sidecars as well as some early cars.        

    By Jean de Jong  (04/10/2021)
  • A Few Corrections ___
    It was our maternal grandmother, Louise Moss who lived at the Triangle, our grandmother Charlotte remained at Moorcroft, Bramble Road until her death in 1949. Her maiden name was Glover and the name Moorcroft came from her grandparents who were manufacturers of Moorcroft China in Staffordshire.

    By Jean de Jong (27/07/2021)
  • I am finding the Hadleigh Archives so interesting. I was born at Windyridge Bramble Road Daws Heath in September 1930 and lived there until my marriage in 1954. My father William Carruthers with his brother built and developed the Haresland Estate in the 1920’s and 30’s: Fairmead, Landsdown and Moorcroft Avenues. My brother David [94] and I often talk of our happy childhood playing in the fields and woods at Daws Heath and into Belfairs.
    I started school at Hadleigh Infants, then at Leigh Heath School on the London Road, Leigh Highlands, but returned to Hadleigh School when that school evacuated at the start of the war before I went to, first, Chelmsford High until Westcliff High returned from evacuation in Derbyshire.
    My parents met and were married at Hadleigh Congregational Church, my father was the organist there and my mother sang in the choir when I was little. I remember sitting there with my brother either side of our grandmother who lived in Hadleigh at Moorcroft, Daws Heath Road close to Scrub Lane.
    So many memories of those happy childhood years and very thankful for them. I have lived in the USA for over 60 years and have been back to the area many times and still have cousins in Leigh.

    By Jean de Jong (10/09/2020)

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