Sir Charles Orr's Memoirs Volume 3

Highbridge House

Highbridge House was the distinctive family home for Charles' mother and sisters. You can see its location more clearly here
It was delightful to be home with them again, and the house which my mother had bought some 2 or 3 years before near Frimley Green and and where I had found them on my return from India, just after they had moved in, was now looking charming. It had been built by and purchased from an artist, who evidently had some odd ideas about houses, one of which was that no country gentlemen's house was complete without a billiard room and a Turkish bath! He had also faced the house the wrong way, and most of the south wall was taken up by a large greenhouse, the rest being practically blank with only a tiny window giving light to his precious Turkish bath. The latter - which of course had an ordinary bath as well as the rest of the appliances - was on the ground floor, next to the drawing room. It was in fact the only bathroom in the house, so that whoever wanted a bath was obliged to come down the front stair case and pass round to the back of the drawing room, whose windows faced east, its southern side being entirely blocked by the greenhouse. As for the billiard room, this was built at the back of the house across the excellent stables and coach house, and had a glass roof. As both of the long sides (and I think the further wall as well) were outside walls getting the full force of wind, sun, rain or snow, this vast and ugly rectangular room was apt to be a furnace in summer and certainly was an ice-house in winter. So far as I remember, it had no fireplace, but my mother put in a big stove, and instead of a billiard table we installed a full size ping pong table which gave my sister and myself infinite fun throughout the winter, and lots of exercise, and kept us warm - the mere picking up of the balls being enough to do this, as every ping pong player knows. My mother handed the room bodily over to me, and I could use it as I pleased, smoke to my heart's content, fill it with all my belongings and rubbish and generally enjoy myself in it. I have a sort of notion that she even put a piano in it - we had a lovely Broadwood in the drawing room, but this was a less high-brow one, which I could punish as much as I pleased.
Highbridge was certainly a charming little home, with a pretty garden, and a lawn sloping down to the picturesque and long disused canal which was nearby flanked by a rustic towpath overhung with trees and bushes, and looking far more like a pretty stream than a man-made canal. My eldest sister had a Canadian canoe which was kept through the summer moored at the bottom of the canal (it was usually drawn up during the winter and kept in a tiny shed), and we could run down at any moment, get out the paddles, jump in and paddle ourselves for a couple of miles or more on this fascinating little stream, amongst woods and heather without meeting a soul unless it were one of the village folk making his or her way along the towpath. My mother's gardener, an old man of the name of Pack, was a character - one of the old type, slow of speech and movement, but hard working, efficient, and honest to the last degree, When I found that he had done his eight years in the Army in his young days I was of course delighted, and many was the talk I had with him about India and old times and Army customs while he dug and planted and weeded and I stood by idly and smoked my pipe. And he was kept pretty busy, for besides the lawn and flower garden and greenhouse there was a fairly large kitchen garden, with fruit trees and strawberry beds and currant bushes, and the whole place was kept scrupulously neat and tidy by old Pack. We had also a bit of wood - mostly graceful silver birch trees - in which primroses and bluebells and daffodils used to rest in springtime.
When my mother first bought the house, a great stretch of open moor, heather and gorse and bracken, lay just across the little used road that passed our front gate. Leading from Aldershot to Bagshot. This road climbed till it reached a spot when one obtained a marvellous view over the surrounding country - Chobham, Bisley musketry ranges, Brookwood and so on - and at all times of year a fresh and bracing breeze blew on this ridge, making one's blood race through the veins and giving me a strangely exhilarating feeling of space and power and adventure and burning happiness. We had at Highbridge a little dog cart and a fast trotting little pony which old Pack used to look after, and we used to take my mother out for drives when the weather was fine. I have said before how much she loved nature, and the buds and flowers and trees and all living things, and beauty. But, my sisters and I used to go about mainly on our bicycles, surely one of the most useful and simple modes of conveyance ever invented.
The house is still lived in although it has been divided into two residences nowadays. The side green house is long gone with a 1920/1930s extension covering a large part of where it had been located. The Turkish Bath is also long gone also! The photograph below has been kindly provided by the current residents of Highbridge House.

Charles Orr's Memoirs Volume 3 | Charles Orr's Memoirs Volume 5