Farmers and their Farmhouses

Farmers and their Farmhouses

Photographs L - R

1. A small herd of dairy cows at Bournes Green. Five or six cows provided a living for the hardworking smallholder or the eighteenth century farmer.

2. A stern Victorian figure, Edwin Hunt, wearing the howler hat, leans on the pig sties at Rookwoods Farm; his son stands behind him. All the farm buildings in the photograph have been demolished.

3. King's Farm, Tunley. 'One of the last farms in the area where all the original farm buildings are preserved'. The farmhouse, on the right, was built by Thomas Hancox in 1777, at the time when farming was a very prosperous business. Phyllis Croft's family has been at King's Farm since 1909, first as tenants of lord Bathurst and later as owners.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries most farmers called themselves 'yeoman' - from the wealthy William Hancox of Daneway House, who had his own coat of arms, a grand house and owned several farms, to Richard Peglar of Waterlane, who lived in a one-up, one-down farmhouse.

The term farmer did not come into general use until the middle of the nineteenth century. At the same time, clothiers and handloom weavers invested their profits from the cloth trade in land - there were yeoman / clothiers and wealthy broadloom weavers who had quite extensive land holdings. Even the poorest weaver would have a garden of at least an acre where he would keep a pig and possibly a cow. He would grow all his own vegetables and have a couple of fruit trees and perhaps a nut tree. Thus, all were involved in a country way of life, they watched the weather, looked out for their crops and tended their livestock whatever their trade or calling.

In 1842 there were thirteen working farms in and around Oakridge and a number of smallholdings as well. Even in the 1930s 2 or 3 acres could, with a great deal of ingenuity and hard work, provide a living for a man and his family.

Today (2005), there are only four working farms left, King's Farm and Hillhouse at Tunley, Oakridge Farm and Limbricks at Waterlane. Some of the former farmhouses now provide magnificent homes for the wealthy, who are able to afford the expensive restoration these beautiful properties require. Immaculate gardens have now replaced the pig sties, the muddy farmyard with its piles of manure and wandering chickens and ducks.

While the farmhouses in the area are different in size and layout, all were built on carefully chosen sites, slipped into a fold in the hills, where there was a plentiful supply of fresh water and shelter from the east winds. There needed to be a level area for the farmyard and a good site for an orchard facing south-east. The house would face south, to get every advantage from the sun's warmth, and building materials needed to be close at hand as it was extremely costly to transport stone.

The above is an extract from 'Oakridge a History' by Pat Carrick, Kay Rhodes and Juliet Shipman, available from Oakridge History Group, price £15 through the ‘Contact Us’ page or from the Oakridge Village Shop.