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A whole series of small tenements gradually acquired by the Adams family at the cross made them significant landowners in the developing village. Some of the individual tenements are difficult to identify with certainty but the identification of the sites owned by the family on the tithe map is largely correct. William Adams was acting as executor of the will of Ann Adams in 1840 and the tithe commissioners recorded him as owner of several tenements which he held in that capacity at that precise moment. Most of those tenements were purchased from the estate by other members of the family shortly afterwards. Because of that anomaly the tithe apportionment and the manor court books often identify different owners. We have associated the other tenements with the owners named in the tithe apportionment. The family was influential in the parish. George was the landlord at the Royal Oak while Henry was the owner of the non-conformist chapel that was then situated at the Cross, while other sources reveal that Elizabeth Adams was a shop owner at Barcombe Cross in 1839. These tenements demonstrate the continual partition and occasional reunification of holdings that characterizes the developments at Barcombe Cross in the 18th and 19th centuries. Clearly the Adams family was influential in the development of the settlement that now forms the heart of the community. Much of their property was later purchased by George Grantham and redeveloped. The present church of St Francis of Assisi lies SW of the chapel site depicted on the tithe map. The development of nonconformist chapels in Barcombe is worthy of further study. George Stanford, of Gallybird Hall, who purchased this tenement in 1809 was licensed in the same year to hold a meeting of 'Protestant Dissenters'. Moses Fisher was the minister. The size of the congregations certainly concerned the established church in the parish as it debated the construction of the new chapel at Spithurst. |
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