History of Whitwells Farm - Updated

WHITWELLS FARM [the apostrophe seems to be optional in records] stands on manorial land which has been inhabited time out of mind. Archaeological excavations have unearthed a number of Roman coins and a bucket dating from much the same period. In 1553 the land on which the house now stands formed part of the vast estates of the sovereign, Mary Tudor. Robert White, the son of Sir John White, Lord Mayor of London in 1563, died seised of it, together with other land within the manor of Frimley. He bequeathed it to his two daughters and co-heirs both of whom married into the Tichborne family. Whitwells Farm, remained in the Tichbome family until 1790 when Sir Henry Tichborne and Elizabeth his wife conveyed it with the rest of the Manor of Frimley, to James Laurell for £20,000. Laurell died 6 July 1799 and was succeeded by his only son, James, who sold the Manor to a Mr. Tekell. It was bought about 1858 by J.F. Burrell.

These, then have been the owners of Whitwells Farm and site through some part of four centuries. What of the house itself, and those who have lived in it? It is one of five farms constructed locally in the late 16th century and is listed Grade 11 by English Heritage as a building of 'architectural and/or historic interest'. Circumstantial evidence suggests that the oldest part of the house dates from about 1580, the twenty-second year of the reign of Elizabeth 1 and the year Sir Francis Drake returned to Plymouth in the Golden Hind after his successful circumnavigation of the world. The house is timber-framed, render-clad to the left, with whitewashed brick cladding breaking forward slightly to the centre and to the right. The latter is a late 18th century extension. The fenestration is irregular and reflects the many changes which the house has undergone. It has also known many names, its present one being ancient then lost for many years then resurrected in the twentieth century. During the Victorian era it was occupied for a time as a satellite of Cross Farm and appears in some of the censuses without a name under the general description of 'the Cross'. In 1871 it was being used to house agricultural labourers employed by Esther Bedford at The Hatches. For a time it was called Gosling Farm, then Stone's Farm, after its Edwardian occupant Joseph Stone.

Despite the fact that in later life it suffered from being pushed from historical pillar to post, its size and craftsmanship suggests it was originally regarded as a house of importance. Nearly all dwellings constructed before 1750 were considered grand houses in their day, not least because by modern standards the number of people needing a place to live was small. When this house was built there were only about 3.5 million people in England and Wales - half the population of modern-day London - of whom more than half were the labouring poor. The occupants of houses such as this stood some way above the poor but below the gentry. Most were small landowners, farmers or yeomen. They would have held this property from the Lord of the Manor not for a term of years but for a series of lives - most commonly, their own, their son's and their grandson's. This interest was termed 'copyhold' because details of it were, literally, copied into the Manorial Court Rolls. It was quite common for the chief copyholder to issue sub-leases of his interest from which under-leases could sprout with such complexity that it is sometimes almost impossible to say who the physical occupant of a property might have been. In this case we know that in 1685 the copyholder was James Green and in 1724 his son or possibly his grandson, also called James Green. It then passed to Thomas Lodge, yeoman. The term 'yeoman' was first noted in 1362 by Piers Plowman and probably meant 'young men'. Yeomen were the backbone of middle England: conservative farmers and 'freemen', fiercely proud of their independence from feudal servitude [at least from Tudor times]. A yeoman had his own servants and was addressed as 'Master', his wife being called 'Mistress'. From these terms derive the modern 'Mr.' and 'Mrs.'

Thomas Lodge, who afterwards farmed at Lodge's Farm, Frimley, died in 1753. He was a rich man who also owned a 300-acre farm at Sandhurst in Berkshire, which was farmed by one of his sons. Beyond Lodge's occupation, Whitwells Farm disappears from records until 1797 when the copyholder was William Donaldson. In 1822 it was with his son, Henry Donaldson, 'husbandman', the second 'life'.

When the census enumerator came knocking on the door of Whitwells Farm in the spring of 1841 it was in the hands of a farmer named Michael Ham 45 who lived here with his wife, Elizabeth 50 and with their daughter, Elizabeth 15. If these ages appear to have a suspicious symmetry, it is because in 1841, although not at subsequent censuses, the enumerators were instructed to round the ages of all adults up or down to the nearest five years. By 1861 the farm was being used to outhouse farm workers at Cross Farm. One section was occupied by the family of George Hardy 36, a 'sawyer of wood' who, one suspects, did not make old bones. Before the widespread use of machinery, the sawing of timber by hand was heavy work. A contemporary chronicler, Adam Smith, remarked that 'a carpenter is not supposed to last in his vigour above eight years'. Respiratory complaints were commonplace; and it was estimated that at least ten percent of carpenters were afflicted with hernia. Although sawing usually required two, neither man had a soft option. The top sawyer had the harder work, while the under-sawyer had to suffer a constant shower of sawdust. Frequent exposure to this drove many a man blind.

In 1861 the second section of the farmhouse was held by the family of Stephen Finch, a 36-year-old agricultural labourer who, to the modem eye, would have cut a comical figure. Almost black of face due to exposure to the elements, he would have dressed for warmth, ease of movement and protection from the cold and wind. His trousers, of rough serge, would have been strapped at the knee either by strips of leather with buckles or by means of string. Some agricultural labourers wore smocks, the forerunner of the overall. Richard Jeffries, writing in 1872, stated: 'Almost every labourer has his Sunday suit, very often really good clothes, sometimes glossy black, with the regulation 'chimney-pot' hat. For the ladies it was the age of the Dolly Varden, chignon and parasol and bonnets. The latter [the size of a coal-scuttle when Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837] had dwindled until they were not much larger than a half-a-crown'.

If he was typical of his kind, Stephen Finch would have fenced, hedged, sewn and reaped. He would have repaired barns and herded cattle. He would have woken at dawn and seldom repaired to the relative comfort of his home much before dusk in winter or about 9 p.m. in summer. When the evenings were long, he would have toiled for another hour or so in his own scrap of garden or tended his pig if he had one [or a share in one], which at harvest festival would have been slaughtered amidst much rejoicing. Between the two families of George Hardy and Stephen Finch there were fourteen souls living at Whitwells Farm in the spring of 1861, six of them children under the age of ten.

Stephen Finch was still living here twenty years later in 1881. He was still working as an agricultural labourer. The other section accommodated the family of William Brown 41, also a farm labourer. Between the two families and their lodgers the house's nine [or possibly ten] rooms were accommodating twenty people, thirteen of them children. About 1888 - the year Jack the Ripper was stalking the streets of London's Whitechapel - the house got a new tenant as well as a new name [Gosling Farm] when it was taken by a bricklayer and farmer named Noah March. In 1891, aged fifty-two, March was living here with his wife, Eliza 52 and with their five children: Edwin 23 and Bertie 16, who helped their father about the farm, Annie 16, Ada 9 and Maria 7.

By 1911 Whitwell Farm had been taken by Joseph Stone, a 58-year-old farmer, who later changed the name to Stone's Farm. In April 1911 he told the census enumerator that he and his wife, Catherine 58, had been married for thirty-three years and that they had produced five children, three of whom were still living, two of them at home: Henry John 18, a student, and Thomas Edward 17, a gardener. Their father told the census authorities that his farmhouse had nine rooms including the kitchen but excluding any 'sculleries, landings, lobbies, closets or bathrooms'. Some part of the farm complex was called 'Frimley Cottages, Whitwell's Farm'. This was occupied by Thomas Fairbairn Wingate 33, a 2nd Lieutenant in the 3rd battalion the Dorset regiment. His accommodation had five rooms and he shared it with his wife, Julia 33 and their three young children, who were cared for by a resident nursemaid, Annie Warne 19. In the parlance of the day, the Wingates were 'a cut above'. What the circumstances might have been which brought them to Whitwells Farm are long since lost.

Joseph Stone, then his sons, continued at Whitwells Farm until shortly before the Second World War in 1939, the last period for which records have been searched, Local knowledge attests that post war Whitwells became a pig farm. In 1959 the farmhouse was the home of Alexander and Hilary Stewart, nee Boyce, and their daughter, Alexandra. A son, christened Patrick James, was born to the Stewarts in one of the bedrooms of this house on 26 March 1959.

Since 1997 Whitwells Farm has been the home of Philip and Karen Russell who at the time of writing in December 2010 live here with their children, James, Jennifer and Katherine. The Russells are thus the latest in a long line of owners and occupiers of this distinguished old house and site spanning some part of six centuries, from the days of Tudor England when this land belonged to 'Bloody' Queen Mary.

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