14 The Slade Clophill

14 The Slade July 2010

This attractive cottage, now [2010] run as a bed and breakfast was, for some years, a different type of commercial premises. The Rating and Valuation Act 1925 specified that every building and piece of land in the country was to be assessed as to its rateable value. Clophill was assessed in 1927. The valuer visiting 14 The Slade [DV1/C46/31] found it owned and occupied by Frank Gobey.

The entry in the valuer's notebook identifies that the brick, cement and slate detached building was a shop (this has subsequently been crossed out). The premises (the left hand side of today's building, the right hand section being more modern) comprised a living room, kitchen and two bedrooms.

The valuer commented: "Room used as shop - neglect" and "Draw-in for Lorries". The shp measured 10 feet by 15 feet. Two stone, weather-boarded and corrugated iron pigsties ("disused"), a weather-boarded and corrugated iron trap house and two weather-boarded, stone and tile store barns and stable lay outside as did a weather-boarded and tiled earth closet.

The valuer described Gobey's business as that of a general carrier. Kelly's Directories for Bedfordshire for  1928, 1931, 1936 and 1940 (the last directory for the county) list Frank Gobey as a hawker.