This 1903 view of Charterhouse Road was taken from Frith Hill, probably by the photographer who took the picture of
Peperharow Road, Godalming, 1903; the two pictures were taken from the same position.
Charterhouse School can be seen on the skyline on the left and there are a few properties set back from the left hand
side of Charterhouse Road. Some were the school's boarding houses. However, most of the land beside the road
was still undeveloped. The large building top, right of centre and to the left of the arrow, is Bodeites which
was also a Charterhouse masters' house where the pupils boarded. Hodgsonites is to its left but is largely hidden by
trees.
The large Edwardian house surrounded by trees on the right, near the bottom of the picture, was initially called
Sylvanhurst[1] and is now known as Fairhill but in the inter war years it was
given the name "Dibrugarh"[2] by its then owner. It is on the hillside
above the road, at the top of a long drive.
The property had been bought by a surgeon in the Indian Army, Lt-Col Asher Leventon, who retired there in
1925[3]. He is believed to have named his home
"Dibrugarh" because the terraced position of the house reminded him of the hills of northern India. Equally,
the name may have reminded him of happier times in India.
Asher was born in Leicester in 1870, although the census the following year mistakenly records him as being born in Poland.
However, he held an English birth certificate. The family subsequently moved to Dublin where, in 1892, he won the Barker Anatomical
Prize at the Royal College of Surgeons Schools of Surgery[4]. He qualified
as a surgeon in Dublin in 1894 and was commissioned into the Indian Medical Service the following year. In 1908 he was
promoted to the rank of Major in the Service[5]. He was Gazetted once more in 1916,
when he became a Lieutenant-Colonel[6].
He was the superintendent of the Berry White Medical College and Hospital in Dibrugarh (now the Assam Medical School). He became
a CIE (Companion of the Indian Empire) in the King's Birthday Honours of 1923[7].
and ended his career as superintendent of the Campbell Medical School in Calcutta, having been appointed on 21 August 1918.
He was "allowed to take consulting Practice only"[8].
He sent this postcard to his relatives, marking his home with an arrow, two years before he died on 30 April 1938.
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