Herbert Samuel Toms

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Herbert S Toms (1874-1940), Curator of Brighton Museum from 1897 to 1939, took this photograph of the rain water catch at Stanmer at 4 pm on Whit Sunday, 19 May 1929. This image, from a glass plate negative, and the following notes, are reproduced with the kind permission of Brighton & Hove Museums.

Herbert Toms wrote these notes having interviewed Albert Mason (the Head Gardener, whose house still exists in the Walled Garden) and Frank Jones, who, like his grandfather Thomas Jones, creator of the Water Catch, lived at the old Rectory, traditionally the residence of the Stanmer Estate Foreman. The Rectory, one of the oldest buildings on the Estate originally stood between No. 16 and No. 19 Stanmer Village, but was accidentally burned to the ground in October 1940 and inexplicably was not rebuilt after the war.