Milland has been “home” to the club for over half its existence, but it has also a link to a great Victorian civil engineer.
Sir John Hawkshaw was a famous civil engineer who was responsible for many railway and civil engineering projects in the UK, Europe & South America. He made his home in Hollycombe House in 1888 which at that time included the Hollycombe estate and covered most of the Milland Valley in what is now West Sussex, bordering and possibly covering lands in adjacent Hampshire. The family retained the estate until 1936 when it was sold and fairly soon split up.
No railway passed through the Milland Valley, although one was planned linking Midhurst & Haslemere on the Portsmouth line*, but was never built. The Portsmouth line skirted the estate to the north and the Midhurst to Petersfield line to the south.
A new biography by Martin Beaumont is about to be published & is available from the Lancashire & Yorkshire Railway Society www.lyrs.org.uk priced £18
*This line was constructed by Thomas Brassey
See wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Hawkshaw