This old house is well documented from 1533 onwards and was an independent farm until Lord Lovelace bought it. It had always belonged to well-to-do families in the wool trade who had large flocks of sheep, including the Parkhurst and Redford families in the 16th and 17th centuries who were wool merchants of Shere.

Old Green Dene Cottage
Image: HCPS

When Lord Lovelace bought the farm he divided it into three cottages and set about encasing it in flint and brick and inserted the usual ‘Lovelace’ windows.

It is not lavishly decorated like most of the cottages, but has roll-moulded arches above the windows and a red tiled roof. A date plaque says 1874, which was the year it was renovated.

The left-hand wing is in fact a medieval house which had an open hall, and to the right, built out at right-angles, is an early 17th century house with a new innovation called a ‘smoke bay’. The people who lived here were always sheep farmers until the 19th century. The farmerlived in the larger, newer part of the house and a shepherd lived in the older house.

To the east of the house is Honeysuckle Bottom, which is part of an old trackway leading from Gomshall and Shere and joining up with the Old London Road which runs behind Rowbarns Manor.

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