Wychtree, 25 The Moor
This page was written by Pamela Hider
Wychtree Cottage, 1970s [Courtesy of HER]
The Historic Environment Record for Bedfordshire describes 25 The Moor as follows:
C17 house with C18 alterations and extension. C17 section of one storey and attics has coursed limestone rubble ground floor and timber framed first floor. Thatched roof. Front elevation ground floor has two casement windows with glazing bars flanking C2O trelliswork porch with thatched roof. To right is C18 projecting wing, lower than earlier section. Colourwashed coursed limestone rubble. Thatched roof. One storey and attics. Gable end to road has attic sash window and ground floor 2-light casement window.
In 1927, property in Carlton was valued under the Rating and Valuation Act 1925 (DV1/C218). Every piece of land and building in the country had to be valued to determine the rates to be paid upon it. The name of he property at that time was 'The Cabin' and the owner and occupier was listed as N.F.Eckford. The desciption of the property was as follows:
Stone & thatch. Living Room, Stairs, Scullery. Upstairs 2 bedrooms, very sloping. Outside: wash house and shed - wood & felt. Long lean to shed part used as garage, part as store and part as fowl house. Remarks: Quite nice but poor accommodation. Bad slope. But lettable.Very smart week-end country cottage.
*It is known that one of the interior doors downstairs once enclosed the vestry of Odell's Grade 1 listed church.
N.F.Eckford
The name of 'The Cabin' was presumably given to the property by Norman Finisterre Eckford who had a naval background. *He can be remembered marching up and down the front as if on board ship (he also had a beautiful car with brass lamps - one of the first in the village. It was also thought that mink were kept in a garage at the back).
His Scottish father had been in the navy and his mother, born in Madras, came from a military family, her father having become a Chelsea Pensioner. Born in 1871 at sea, the 1881 census for Portea Island refers to him being born at Finisterre "(Free BS)". He was commissioned as a mid-shipman in 1889; was presumably at sea in 1891 as he doesn't appear in the census for that year; and married Mabel in Hampshire in 1896. The 1901 census describes him as 'decidedly a British Subject' and his occupation is given as a commercial clerk in Teddington. By 1911 he was still a commercial clerk, but now living in Hammersmith. Electoral Rolls tell us that in 1918 he was living in Harrow, but by 1927 had moved to Carlton where he was still registered in 1939. No records are available for the war years, but we know that Norman died in Renhold in 1953 aged 81 and that Mabel died in Harrow aged 86. The name 'The Cabin' was susequently altered to Wych Tree.
Wychtree Cottage, 2024
* Both from an unpublished memoir of Carlton & Chellington Historical Society.