Haslemere High Street still holds quiet surprises for those prepared to slow down and look more closely. One such detail is an everyday object, designed by a well-known dignitary, which countless people pass daily without a second thought.

Perhaps a small prompt to stir the memory? Think of the line from a song written in 1938 and made popular a year later by Marion Hutton with Glenn Miller and his Orchestra, Underneath the Spreading Chestnut Tree.

The tree itself is a venerable presence, said to have been planted in 1782. By 1907, local tailor Mr A. Waghorn found it sufficient to advertise his new premises simply as being “Opposite the Big Chestnut Tree”.

Standing beside The Georgian, its broad canopy still shelters a bench, from which the eye falls upon something both familiar and quietly distinctive. This is Haslemere’s replica Penfold pillar box, formally opened in 1993.

Painted green and marked by its narrow hexagonal shape, the original design dates from 1866 and was the work of local resident John Wornham Penfold (JWP). Considered too costly to manufacture, it was superseded in 1879 by the round, red Type A letter box that became standard across the country.

John Wornham Penfold was born in Haslemere in December 1828 to local farmer John Wornham Penfold and his wife Mary Simmons. He was soon joined by two sisters, Susanna and Katherine. The family lived at Courts Hill, on land held by the Penfolds since 1814. John and his sisters spent much of their lives, unmarried and together, in the 17th-century house now known as Penfolds Corner at the foot of Sandrock. During his long residence there, JWP made a number of alterations and additions, including the installation of decorative window glass that still draws the eye.

By profession an architect and surveyor, JWP served for many years as secretary to the Surveyors’ Institute and as surveyor to the Goldsmiths’ Company of London.

Although his work was largely based in the capital, the opening of the Portsmouth railway line allowed him to maintain close ties with Haslemere.

In 1858, he was involved in the sale of building plots near the new station, described at the time as offering “excellent sites for the erection of a superior public house or hotel, and for cottage residences”.

In 1886 he supervised the construction of the Comrades Club on the High Street for local philanthropist James Stewart Hodgson, with whom he had formed a close friendship.

His architectural work locally also extended to older properties, including additions at Hodgson’s Lythe Hill House.

Two years later, JWP prepared the plans for, and oversaw, extensive renovations to St Bartholomew’s Church, partly funded by Hodgson. The church was closed for a year while the work was carried out, after which contemporaries observed that “Those who knew Haslemere church in its days of ugliness and inconvenience, will hardly recognise it now”.

Old buildings and their gradual transformation held a lifelong fascination for JWP. The Haslemere Educational Museum now holds a remarkable collection of photographs he took during the 1870s and 1880s, many enlarged for display in the museum’s current exhibition, The Town through the Lens of Time.

Deeply attached to Haslemere, and wishing to commemorate their parents while giving something back to the community so closely bound to their family history, JWP and his sisters endowed a purpose-built cottage hospital and nursing home at the top of Shepherds Hill.

In use from 1898 to 1923, it stood as a lasting expression of that commitment. JWP remained engaged in local affairs and history until his death in 1909. His writings ranged widely, from church bells and parish registers to curates and court proceedings dating back to 1726. At the end of his life, he was gathering material on the shadowy politics of mid-18th-century Haslemere, touched upon in the well-known ballad of The Cow of Haslemere.

Which brings us, neatly enough, back to Glenn Miller in 1939, and his tune I Swung the Election — a story of corruption best left for another day.