This house on the north side of Moor Lane, with a date stone of 1742 above the front porch, was built on a piece of land owned by Richard Bishop from at least 1712 to 1717. The land was rented by John Barnden in 1739 and by Henry Burgess from at least 1743 to 1758. It may have been Henry Burgess who built the house and he probably purchased the land from Bishop before 1750 when it was described in the land tax as his own land.

Henry lived at Harveys in Glynde Street, which he had rented from the Reed family, and when Henry died in 1757 at the age of 65 his widowed sister-in-law Jane Burgess lived at Harveys and his widow Mary paid the land tax on the piece of land formerly Bishop’s.

Henry and Mary Burgess had a daughter, also Mary, baptised at Glynde 23 July 1727. She married William Alchorne at South Malling, 14 November 1752, and their daughter Ann Alchorne of Cobb Court, Selmeston, married Nathaniel William Thomas of London in 1777.

Ann’s marriage settlement included a messuageHouse or dwelling,
inc. outbuildings &
orchard, courtyard
or gardens [now Lake Cottage], garden and croft containing 1½ acres at Glyndebourne, Glynde, as well as Cobb Court and 40 acres in Selmeston; the estate of Anne’s uncle Richard Alchorne, comprising 372 acres in Milton Street and Wilmington; and the estate of her late father William, comprising 127 acres in Bodle Street Green in Warbleton and Ashburnham.

Mary Burgess, widow, was still alive at this date and described as ‘of Selmeston’ although she was buried in Glynde churchyard on 15 September 1783 aged 93. Thomas Ford had occupied the house and paid the land tax from 1776 and continued as the occupier after it passed to Ann Allchorn after her marriage. William Homewood ostensibly occupied the house in 1790 even though he was also listed as the owner and occupier of the old Trevor Arms in Glynde village.

Scrase and Chitty, brewers of Lewes, who had succeeded Homewood as owners of the Trevor Arms, were the occupiers in 1793 and 1796, when the owner was given as Mrs Thomas. By 1799 Joseph Als, farmer at Glyndebourne farm, was the tenant and the house was probably occupied by one of his farmworkers. Als was still the tenant in 1810 but from 1813 the occupier was William Diplock who was still tenant at the time of the Glynde tithe map in 1838, when Thomas Goldfinch and Henry Willard were named as the owners. Mary thomas’ daughter, Catherine Eliza, had married Henry Goldfinch of Hythe, Kent, in 1816, and the property appears to have remained in the Goldfinch family until 1878 when it was purchased by the Christie family, owners of the Glyndebourne Estate.