Overgrown Phoenix House

The very overgrown site of where Phoenix House once stood, opposite the location of the Phoenix Foundry & Ironworks.

Randall, writing in1952, asks "where did they [John Ferrabee and his family] live?"

He suggests Phoenix House and it was possible John Ferrabee lived here since it is nearest to the foundry John created and bears the same name. The 1834 county electoral register lists John Ferrabee as resident "freehold" at Thrupp Mill. 

Clive Gravett in his book "Two Men Went To Mow" suggests Phoenix House was potentially the site of the trials of the first lawnmower. Certainly the house and cottage were the nearest domestic dwellings to the foundry. 

The apocryphal story of Edwin Budding testing the prototype lawnmower at night and causing a noise nuisance could be true as the quiet valley sides would certainly reverberate any noise at night after the cacophony of the fulling stocks, forges and mills running by day. Testing in secrecy at night might also have been prudent considering the various "clothier" entrepreneurs were constantly copying each other's designs, notably in the sphere of textile machinery improvements.

Ordnance Survey maps of the time show a small domestic area adjacent to the house on the south west side. The north east side was very close to the modern road, which was built prior to 1824 as shown on Bryant's Map.