At the beginning of the twentieth century Tom Pickard, land agent for the Glynde estate, called Ragged Land ‘the best field for barley in the parish’ so it was not surprising that, according to his daughter Kathleen, he was rather put out when the field was leased to Frances Garnet Wolseley in 1905.

Frances, later Viscountess, Wolseley, was born in 1875, the daughter of Field Marshal Garnet Joseph Wolseley (1st Viscount Wolseley, KP, GCB, OM, GCMG, VD, PC who had reached the pinnacle of the British army when he served as Commander-in-Chief of the Forces from 1895 to 1900) and his wife Louisa.

Frances Wolseley had started her College for Lady Gardeners at Old Farm House (now called Trevor House), Glynde in 1902. In 1905 she rented the field called Ragged Lands, built a new house there and moved the college to the site. The students did much of the excavation for the house foundations themselves and the house was finished in 1906. There were two later additions to the house which has been known as Ragged Lands ever since.

Frances Wolseley moved out of Ragged Lands in 1918 and rented Massetts Place at Scaynes Hill with her friend Mollie Musgrave. Frances had a troubling relationship with her parents, especially her mother, who died in 1920. Although mother and daughter appeared to have been reconciled before the Dowager Lady Wolseley’s death, Frances was virtually disinherited in her mother’s will, apart from a small annuity. Her mother had left an estate of £55,000 and did not even leave Frances any of her parents’ possessions.

In 1921 Elsa More suffered what was probably a physical and mental breakdown. She gave up her post at Ragged Lands and moved to Somewhere at Glyndebourne Corner, dying there in 1933. Elsa’s ashes were scattered on Firle Beacon

Frances sub-let Ragged Lands to a Miss Matheson who tried to run the College until 1923 until she married a man named Threlkeld and Ragged Lands passed to a Mr and Mrs Hart in 1924. The property was still listed as the Glynde College for Lady Market Gardeners, Ragged Lands, in Pike's Directories until 1933. In 1934 the property was let to Gay Wilkinson as a private house and has remained so ever since

For further reading try: Jane Brown, Eminent Gardeners (1990); Frances Wolseley, Gardening for Women (1908), In a College Garden (1916), Women on the Land (1916) and Gardens, their Form and Design (1919; Marjory Pegram, The Wolseley Heritage: the Story of Frances Viscountess Wolseley and her Parents (1939); Diana Crook, Ragged Lands (2002)