The three properties now named Pear Tree, Glynde Shop and Little Cottage can trace their history from the building of the house later named Pear Tree Cottage. This is an attempt to trace the history of the site of that house and for the history of Glynde Shop and Little Cottage you should look at their own pages.

The Glynde manorial court books show that in 1691 John Grover inherited property in Glynde from John Grover the elder. The premises contained not only a house, probably Stepney’s, but also a smith’s forge, one barn and one small close adjoining and another small parcel of land called the hemplott containing one rood of land in Glynde and paying to the lord of the manor yearly 12d. He also inherited one parcel of Brookland called the Bridgebrooke containing by estimation 2 acres lying near Glynde Bridge in Glynde and one parcel of customary land containing half an acre in Badnor in Glynde paying to the Lord yearly 12d.

The house, Stepney’s, stood in the middle of Glynde Square and the blacksmith’s shop stood on the site now occupied by Pear Tree Cottage and both Stepney’s and the blacksmith’s shop can be seen on the 1717 Glynde map. By 1722 John Grover the younger had died and his widow Johanna was alive and owner of the property. Johanna was dead by 1729 and her son and heir, Simon Grover, was also dead. Johanna’s daughter Mary, the wife of John Willard, was Simon’s only sister and now inherited the premises.

The Grover’s had been blacksmiths but John Willard was a farmer and probably in the 1730s he demolished the blacksmith’s shop and built a newly fashionable red-brick house that became known as Pear Tree Cottage. During his ownership Willard also built a malthouse on the old hemp plot sometime before his death in 1778. Mary Willard had died in 1776 and they had no living children so the property passed to Mary’s niece Sarah, the wife of John Ellman. After Sarah’s death John Ellman (who was not the John Ellman the improver of the breed of Southdown sheep) inherited the property and after his death his executors sold it to William Stretton in 1785 for £200.

It was about this time that the first record of a village shop in Glynde occurs in an inventory, 1 January 1785, of the assets of Thomas Rickman of Barcombe, and his son Thomas Rickman of the Cliffe, Lewes, who had money owing from a shop at Glynde. In 1788 Stretton sold to William Wisdom, then described as a carpenter, but who not only ran the malthouse but also the village coal merchant’s business from the premises. Wisdom rented a wharf by Glynde Bridge river where coal and other materials could be landed by barge. Wisdom took out a mortgage on his property in 1802 for £485 and appears to have struggled to meet the repayments. This may have been because the government had imposed a malt tax to help finance the struggle against Napoleon and the custom of cottagers brewing their own beer had fallen into disuse.

Wisdom sold his property to the Glynde estate in 1815 but continued to occupy part of the house, now divided into two, and the coal wharf, but not the malthouse. Wisdom’s wife Lucy died in 1818 when he appears to have left the village, dying in Cambridge in 1841.