In 1781 Stephen Whetham drew up his will in which he left "all that Dwelling house & Garden situate in Netherbury Street adjoining to the Dwelling house of Francis Mills" in trust to James Dunning & Richard Wilks until "my Daughter Polly shall attain her age of twenty one years" whereupon they were to surrender it "to the use of my said Daughter Polly Whetham and her assigns for ever."
Stephen Whetham died later that year, aged 80, and James Dunning was granted "Admission" to the property under a CopyholdType of feudal land tenure
with duties and obligations
to the Lord of the ManorType of feudal land tenure
with duties and obligations
to the Lord of the Manor tenancy on 23rd May 1782. The deed goes on to say the property was formerly in the "Tenure Possession or Occupation of William Way but late of Stephen Whetham his Tenant or Tenants". So William Way is the first person we have any record of occupying the house that is now called Yew Tree Cottages.
Mary (Polly) Whetham would have been 21 in 1798 but, before that, the property appears to have been mortgaged and then sold to John Travers of "Bittlake" who was granted admission by the Manor of Slape to the property on 16th May 1787. Three years later, in 1790, John Travers sold the property to Mary Sergeant who was Polly Whetham's aunt.
The property was left to Polly's daughter Anna (Hannah) when Mary eventually died, aged 80 in 1833. By then Polly had married John Denziloe who Mary appears to have fallen out with over a debt of £75. Much of Mary's will seems to be designed to ensure that John did not benefit in any way until the £75 had been repaid. In those days any property owned by a married woman would become the property of her husband which may explain why the house was left to their daughter (Mary) Anna AKA Hannah.
The 1835 Tithe Map and Apportionment lists John Denziloe Junior (Anna's brother) as the landowner and occupier. Mary Sergeant's property was to have been sold "in one lot" and the money was to go to Anna but a good enough price could not be secured this way and, in that case, the property was to be held in trust by Richard Kiddle until Anna was 21 years old. It would then be transferred to her on condition that Anna spent nine months of each year in Netherbury.
Anna Denziloe was listed in the Tithe Apportionment as landowner and occupier of some land over the road (now the site of the Denziloe houses and flats) and a different house in Netherbury. She left all the properties to her nephew, William Le Gros Denziloe, in 1879. William converted the copyholdType of feudal land tenure
with duties and obligations
to the Lord of the Manor of what is now Yew Tree Cottages into a freehold by paying the Lord of Slape Manor £29 and then sold it the next day to James Cleall, a retired Metroplolitan policeman, ending the link between the property and his family (from Whethams to Sergeants and Denziloes) which had lasted over one hundred years.
James Cleall kept it for five years and it then passed into the posession of another family, the Pyes, for a couple of generations spanning 65 years. John Pye bought it from James Cleall for £145 in 1885 but died six years later. His wife, Flora, was 37 years younger than John and he left the house to be held in trust for her to use until she died or remarried. She didn't remarry and remained living there for 33 years until she died in 1924. During this period it passed through the hands of three local solicitors (William Macey, Robert Leigh Snr & his son Robert Leigh Jnr) who were acting as trustee.
It then passed on to John A Pye, John & Flora's eldest son, who died only two years later aged 47 without making a will. A law passed the year before (Administration of Estates Act 1925) meant that Lilia, his widow, was able to claim ownership which she retained until her death in 1939. Her executors sold the house to Thomas Hansford for £275.
Hansford who was part of a local farming family had retired to Lyme Regis and nine months later sold the house to Rolf Gardiner of Springhead at Fontmell Magna for £400, a considerable profit.
Rolf Gardiner, amongst many other enterprises and activities, was engaged in an attempt to revive the flax industry locally. He reopened Slape Mill and spent several years at the beginning of World War Two attempting to demonstrate how, if organised along the lines he recommended, the growing and processing of flax could be viable. In his book "England Herself" (Faber & Faber, 1943) he devotes a chapter to his efforts and eventual failure in this endeavour. He makes several references to sharing the living quarters at Slape Mill with the people who worked there but doesn't mention anything about the cottage he bought in Netherbury. To date he is the only owner of the property to have his own Wikipedia page.
Gardiner remained the owner until his death in 1971 and it was then sold to Laurence (Fred) and Joan Holland. Although Yew Tree Cottage had often been descibed as two or more dwellinghouses in the past it had always been bought and sold as one property. The Hollands now took steps to split the property formally into No.s 1 & 2. and were granted planning permission to do so in 1979. This involved giving No.2 a right of access to the road and providing off-street parking for two cars (one for each property). The parking issue was eventually resolved by creating a "lay-by", using some of what used to be No.1's garden, and in compensation moving part of the boundary between the two gardens a few feet to the west.
It may be that this is when the eponymous Yew Tree disappeared. Descendants of the Pye family have said in conversation that they can remember there being one at the northern edge of the hedge that abuts the road. This hedge would have been moved to create the parking spaces and presumeably led to the felling of the yew tree.
On 3rd June, 1981 the Hollands sold No.1 Yew Tree Cottages to Nigel and Penelope Parkinson whilst remaining in No.2 themselves. Although the property was now split into two the tendancy for it to stay in the same family seems to have continued as Penelope was Fred & Joan Holland's daughter who had married Nigel Parkinson in 1976.
