East Hendred Museum at Champs Chapel, Oxfordshire and Berkshire Heritage

CHAPTER X MILL LANE; ORCHARD LANE

Let us turn left from Cat Street into Mill Lane. On the corner is the farmstead occupied by Mr. Tom Cowdery. There has probably been a house here for centuries. Mr. Cowdery says that the present sitting room used to be a barn with double doors on Allin’s Lane, and there is an old slaughterhouse beside it. There used to be a picture over the slaughter house window showing a bullock with its head pulled down ready for the pole-axe: rather too grim for people today, who prefer to buy their meat without seeing it killed; but formerly everyone was well aware of the slaughter of animals and every child lent a hand with rubbing salt into the flitches of bacon.

Immediately past Mr. Cowdery’s come two very recently constructed houses, newness is not necess-arily objectionable nor age a virtue. One interesting feature of Mafraq. is the free-standing spiral stairway visible from the lane. In a centrally heated house it is possible to do away with the old "hall and stairs", to use the space much more economically, and make the stairs a light and airy element in the design of the house. This principle has been very successfully adopted at Mafraq.

Then comes an estate of fourteen council houses, built ribbon fashion along the lane in 1948. Before the second world war, Mill Lane was the lane that led to the mill, and the only building past Mr. Cowdery’s were the Mill, Mill House and Mill Cottage. There has been a mill here time out of mind, driven by water from the Ginge Brook. There is no evidence that this mill was ever used for anything but grinding corn; but there is no doubt that there was at least one fulling mill in East Hendred. Unfortunately the wool industry had completely died out here before the idea of keeping such sites in memory had developed. In the eighteenth century old men still remembered a field called Fulling Mill Meare (meare - boundary); but we can no longer trace it: fulling mills were made entirely of wood.

The present mill building is of no great age, - rather a simple structure which might well have collapsed if Miss Thompson, the potter, had not made it good. The mill still works but there is no work for it. In the 1880’s the Canadian Pacific Railway reached Winnipeg and wheat could be imported so cheaply that milling became a mass-production industry based on the great ports. Village mills could not compete. They struggled on for a while doing the coarser work of grinding for pigs and cattle; but the end soon came.

If a mill, then a miller’s house. The miller probably lived at first under the same roof with the mill; but there was certainly a separate house by the eighteenth century, and in 1857, the Eystons had the house completely done over. The present house is thoroughly sound Victorian in style; but with some traces of earlier construction.

The mill cottage is the oldest building, occupied in 1801 by John Robey Junior. It is a timber-framed, thatched cottage now in course of renovation. The inside had been stripped down when I visited it, and it was possible to see how the old builders had used timber without even stripping the bark. They were not concerned with such trifles, and aimed at durability regardless of refinement.

A public footpath to West Hendred enters Mill Lane just above the mill cottage. Immediately on the left of it is a very recent bungalow now occupied by Mr. Denly, who keeps his earth-moving equipment at the buildings down by the stream not far from the filter beds which were installed by the Wantage Rural District Council in 1930.

They take the place of the first sewage plant installed in 1915, which can still be seen beside the stream in Ford Lane. The first sewer extended north to just below the Abbey Manor and south to just below Framptons; but there had been some public drainage before that. The Stibbs account book shows work being done in Wyatts Lane in 1859 "opposite Mr. Robey’s at 4d per yard". Since many houses drew their water from their own wells, there was inevitably some seepage from cesspools, and only modern methods of sewage disposal, made possible by the introduction of mains water in 1938, could cope with the serious infectious diseases, - typhus, small pox, etc., - which recurred from time to time. There was, for example, a serious outbreak of smallpox in 1870 and again in 1876.

The Rector’s note about one such case merits quoting:

Dec. 15 Thos Stone dies at 6.15. "I buried him at midnight. Some difficulty in getting men to put the Body in the Coffin which the undertaker positively refused to do. At last 2 Giles did it. I gave them supper beforehand and made them put on old clothing - made them change after putting their clothes in a pail of chloride of lime".

It took years of agitation to secure piped water and modern sewage disposal. Filter beds may not be attractive but they have made possible the disappearance of the privy, - one architectural element we can do without.

We now turn back up Mill Lane to the cross roads. At the junction of Allin’s Lane with Orchard Lane stands the Manor House. At the dissolution of the monasteries, the Hendred lands of the Prior of Littlemore were conferred on New College, Oxford, but later passed to the Allin family. Mr. Sowdon rented the house and land from the Allins about 1895. The property was later bought by a Mr. French, a London businessman with West Hendred connections, who employed a manager. He also bought two cottages which had been one house further east along the street and brought down his builders (he was in the building trade) from London, to transform them into Ball Haye. He came to live there during the second world war. He is said to "have spent £1,000 on laying out the garden, bringing in Suttons to do the work. He faced the old timber-framed building with bricks, and the only evidence of its age and character that a visitor will see is the joists still exposed in the sitting room. Mr. French sold both tke Manor House and Ball Haye in 1956, the Manor House to Mr. Morphew. Ball Haye has had several owners, and is now the property of Mr. Whiskard, the chairman of the Hendreds Society.

The Manor house is so called because the Prior and then the College exercised their manorial rights from a house on that site. The present house is mainly Georgian having been largely rebuilt in 1776. Memory of the Allin connection is still maintained in the name of Allin’s Lane.

Just past Ball Haye is Coulings, a house to which a farmer gave his name. The house and farm passed to Mr. Frederick Adolphus Smith who added to the old timbered house an extension with two gables. This, says Mr. Sowdon, made it into "an aglomeration of an old farm house and a second rate suburban villa. Since Mr. Sowdon is speaking of his next door neighbour calls him "the present owner a Mr. Smith" we may assume that his feeling was scarcely cordial. Even as altered, Coulings deserves more cordial description; and, to judge by the width of the chimney place (ten feet); it must have been a hospitable house: indeed Freddie Smith (as he is still known in the village) took an active part in village life.

Mr. F.A. Smith has been repeatedly described to me as an excellent farmer, and his farming operations spread widely throughout East Hendred and surrounding parishes: for example, in 1906 he took over Framptons and Wells Farm (now Mr. Parker’s. Just north of Coulings Farm House and between the site of the new Coulings estate garages and the A417, the foundations of his engine sheds can still be seen. Before the coming of the motor tractor, a pair of powerful steam engines, one at each end of a field, drew a many-bladed plough or cultivator back and forth across it by a steel cable. To possess such "steam tackle" was the mark of a wealthy and progressive farmer. The extent of his undertakings is indicated by the fact that forty eight horses were included in his farm sale when he went out of business.

Opposite Coulings stands the Plough, the licence having been transferred from across White Road. It began as a farm, possibly of the Wyatt family whose name occurs in court rolls and is remembered in that of Wyatts Lane. From 1844 to 1859 it was the home of a retired Scottish surgeon, whose memorial is in the parish church. Not long after that it became an inn and in 1890, Mr. Herbert Chasney’s father became the licensee.

Mr. Baden Stone has in his fascinating collection of Hendred photographs one of the Plough about 1905. It is undated but Mrs. Watts appears in it as a girl in her late teens. The outer appearance of the Plough has not changed.

It is a fine old house. Mr. Chasney says that a gentleman staying at Hendred House about 1930 and making a study of old houses in the village, told him that it was 300 or 400 years old. I should like to see documentary evidence of this, but the house could well have been built in the late seventeenth century. The west front of the house with its long slope of tiled roof and its dormer windows is beautifully proportioned, if one ignores the new chimney at the north corner of it. The lower extension to the rear (east) was originally open to the roof and used for all kinds of domestic activity but, when the inside of the house was completely overhauled in 1964, it was transformed into a large modern, saloon with imitation mediaeval timbering.

The great barn still stands. Mr. Chasney tells of big dinners held in it when farmers brought their rick sheets to cover the walls, and the floor was completely filled with tables. When the parish church was being renovated in 1860, services were held here. This barn has been important to village life and we must hope that it is not allowed to fall into decay.

Mr. Stone has another photograph taken outside the Plough. Mr. Billyeald invited his London employees at the Shot Tower down to play East Hendred at cricket. The visitors and their supporters are shown aboard a farm wagon about to return to Steventon station behind a gaily decorated team of horses supplied by Mr. Smith and with Matthew Kimber at their head. The adults in the photograph include Mr. Billyeald, Mr. Chasney senr. Mr. Smith, and Mr. Arthur Harrison senr. Amongst the children are Mrs. Watts (Nellie Chasney), George Besley, and Mr. Smith’s daughters. For anyone reviewing the recent history of the village, this photograph is invaluable evidence. What lovely trees there were then in the village.

Opposite the Plough is a house now occupied by Mr. Reavey. Before Charles Robey built Orchard House, this
was the home of Stephen Besley, Maltster. The site of the kiln was cleared to provide room for Mr. Robey’s private stables, and they in turn have been cleared to make way for the racing stables, Orchard Stables. Mr. Robey used the house for his coachmen.

Of the two houses past the junction with Chapel Square, the first was in an almost derelict condition until quite recently when the roof and upper storey were stripped and the house reconstructed. The second house was certainly built before the window tax. In some houses built later, provision was made for windows which were not to be inserted until the tax was removed. In the Bee Hive, for example, one such window space was not opened and fitted with a window until Mrs. Tinson went to live there; but in this house there is clear evidence that the sashes already fitted were removed, and this makes the house eighteenth century, possibly as early as Anne. It is believed that it was once an inn. One half of it is occupied by Mrs. Hitchcox senr. It may soon be empty and we must hope that it is preserved.

Past the racing stables come Mr. McDonagh’s houses, and, on the south side Duke’s Orchard and Wyatts. This stretch of Orchard Lane was Wyatts Lane until the name of Orchard Lane was given to the whole street a few years ago, by a lapse of historical sense.

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Home About Museum Museum History Disabled Access Heritage Trust Fire Pump Local History Places to Visit Photo Gallery Audio-Visuals Getting Here Events Diary How You Can Help? Contact Us Links	CHAPTER X MILL LANE; ORCHARD LANE Let us turn left from Cat Street into Mill Lane. On the corner is the farmstead occupied by Mr. Tom Cowdery. There has probably been a house here for centuries. Mr. Cowdery says that the present sitting room used to be a barn with double doors on Allin’s Lane, and there is an old slaughterhouse beside it. There used to be a picture over the slaughter house window showing a bullock with its head pulled down ready for the pole-axe: rather too grim for people today, who prefer to buy their meat without seeing it killed; but formerly everyone was well aware of the slaughter of animals and every child lent a hand with rubbing salt into the flitches of bacon. Immediately past Mr. Cowdery’s come two very recently constructed houses, newness is not necess-arily objectionable nor age a virtue. One interesting feature of Mafraq. is the free-standing spiral stairway visible from the lane. In a centrally heated house it is possible to do away with the old "hall and stairs", to use the space much more economically, and make the stairs a light and airy element in the design of the house. This principle has been very successfully adopted at Mafraq. Then comes an estate of fourteen council houses, built ribbon fashion along the lane in 1948. Before the second world war, Mill Lane was the lane that led to the mill, and the only building past Mr. Cowdery’s were the Mill, Mill House and Mill Cottage. There has been a mill here time out of mind, driven by water from the Ginge Brook. There is no evidence that this mill was ever used for anything but grinding corn; but there is no doubt that there was at least one fulling mill in East Hendred. Unfortunately the wool industry had completely died out here before the idea of keeping such sites in memory had developed. In the eighteenth century old men still remembered a field called Fulling Mill Meare (meare - boundary); but we can no longer trace it: fulling mills were made entirely of wood. The present mill building is of no great age, - rather a simple structure which might well have collapsed if Miss Thompson, the potter, had not made it good. The mill still works but there is no work for it. In the 1880’s the Canadian Pacific Railway reached Winnipeg and wheat could be imported so cheaply that milling became a mass-production industry based on the great ports. Village mills could not compete. They struggled on for a while doing the coarser work of grinding for pigs and cattle; but the end soon came. If a mill, then a miller’s house. The miller probably lived at first under the same roof with the mill; but there was certainly a separate house by the eighteenth century, and in 1857, the Eystons had the house completely done over. The present house is thoroughly sound Victorian in style; but with some traces of earlier construction. The mill cottage is the oldest building, occupied in 1801 by John Robey Junior. It is a timber-framed, thatched cottage now in course of renovation. The inside had been stripped down when I visited it, and it was possible to see how the old builders had used timber without even stripping the bark. They were not concerned with such trifles, and aimed at durability regardless of refinement. A public footpath to West Hendred enters Mill Lane just above the mill cottage. Immediately on the left of it is a very recent bungalow now occupied by Mr. Denly, who keeps his earth-moving equipment at the buildings down by the stream not far from the filter beds which were installed by the Wantage Rural District Council in 1930. They take the place of the first sewage plant installed in 1915, which can still be seen beside the stream in Ford Lane. The first sewer extended north to just below the Abbey Manor and south to just below Framptons; but there had been some public drainage before that. The Stibbs account book shows work being done in Wyatts Lane in 1859 "opposite Mr. Robey’s at 4d per yard". Since many houses drew their water from their own wells, there was inevitably some seepage from cesspools, and only modern methods of sewage disposal, made possible by the introduction of mains water in 1938, could cope with the serious infectious diseases, - typhus, small pox, etc., - which recurred from time to time. There was, for example, a serious outbreak of smallpox in 1870 and again in 1876. The Rector’s note about one such case merits quoting: Dec. 15 Thos Stone dies at 6.15. "I buried him at midnight. Some difficulty in getting men to put the Body in the Coffin which the undertaker positively refused to do. At last 2 Giles did it. I gave them supper beforehand and made them put on old clothing - made them change after putting their clothes in a pail of chloride of lime". It took years of agitation to secure piped water and modern sewage disposal. Filter beds may not be attractive but they have made possible the disappearance of the privy, - one architectural element we can do without. We now turn back up Mill Lane to the cross roads. At the junction of Allin’s Lane with Orchard Lane stands the Manor House. At the dissolution of the monasteries, the Hendred lands of the Prior of Littlemore were conferred on New College, Oxford, but later passed to the Allin family. Mr. Sowdon rented the house and land from the Allins about 1895. The property was later bought by a Mr. French, a London businessman with West Hendred connections, who employed a manager. He also bought two cottages which had been one house further east along the street and brought down his builders (he was in the building trade) from London, to transform them into Ball Haye. He came to live there during the second world war. He is said to "have spent £1,000 on laying out the garden, bringing in Suttons to do the work. He faced the old timber-framed building with bricks, and the only evidence of its age and character that a visitor will see is the joists still exposed in the sitting room. Mr. French sold both tke Manor House and Ball Haye in 1956, the Manor House to Mr. Morphew. Ball Haye has had several owners, and is now the property of Mr. Whiskard, the chairman of the Hendreds Society. The Manor house is so called because the Prior and then the College exercised their manorial rights from a house on that site. The present house is mainly Georgian having been largely rebuilt in 1776. Memory of the Allin connection is still maintained in the name of Allin’s Lane. Just past Ball Haye is Coulings, a house to which a farmer gave his name. The house and farm passed to Mr. Frederick Adolphus Smith who added to the old timbered house an extension with two gables. This, says Mr. Sowdon, made it into "an aglomeration of an old farm house and a second rate suburban villa. Since Mr. Sowdon is speaking of his next door neighbour calls him "the present owner a Mr. Smith" we may assume that his feeling was scarcely cordial. Even as altered, Coulings deserves more cordial description; and, to judge by the width of the chimney place (ten feet); it must have been a hospitable house: indeed Freddie Smith (as he is still known in the village) took an active part in village life. Mr. F.A. Smith has been repeatedly described to me as an excellent farmer, and his farming operations spread widely throughout East Hendred and surrounding parishes: for example, in 1906 he took over Framptons and Wells Farm (now Mr. Parker’s. Just north of Coulings Farm House and between the site of the new Coulings estate garages and the A417, the foundations of his engine sheds can still be seen. Before the coming of the motor tractor, a pair of powerful steam engines, one at each end of a field, drew a many-bladed plough or cultivator back and forth across it by a steel cable. To possess such "steam tackle" was the mark of a wealthy and progressive farmer. The extent of his undertakings is indicated by the fact that forty eight horses were included in his farm sale when he went out of business. Opposite Coulings stands the Plough, the licence having been transferred from across White Road. It began as a farm, possibly of the Wyatt family whose name occurs in court rolls and is remembered in that of Wyatts Lane. From 1844 to 1859 it was the home of a retired Scottish surgeon, whose memorial is in the parish church. Not long after that it became an inn and in 1890, Mr. Herbert Chasney’s father became the licensee. Mr. Baden Stone has in his fascinating collection of Hendred photographs one of the Plough about 1905. It is undated but Mrs. Watts appears in it as a girl in her late teens. The outer appearance of the Plough has not changed. It is a fine old house. Mr. Chasney says that a gentleman staying at Hendred House about 1930 and making a study of old houses in the village, told him that it was 300 or 400 years old. I should like to see documentary evidence of this, but the house could well have been built in the late seventeenth century. The west front of the house with its long slope of tiled roof and its dormer windows is beautifully proportioned, if one ignores the new chimney at the north corner of it. The lower extension to the rear (east) was originally open to the roof and used for all kinds of domestic activity but, when the inside of the house was completely overhauled in 1964, it was transformed into a large modern, saloon with imitation mediaeval timbering. The great barn still stands. Mr. Chasney tells of big dinners held in it when farmers brought their rick sheets to cover the walls, and the floor was completely filled with tables. When the parish church was being renovated in 1860, services were held here. This barn has been important to village life and we must hope that it is not allowed to fall into decay. Mr. Stone has another photograph taken outside the Plough. Mr. Billyeald invited his London employees at the Shot Tower down to play East Hendred at cricket. The visitors and their supporters are shown aboard a farm wagon about to return to Steventon station behind a gaily decorated team of horses supplied by Mr. Smith and with Matthew Kimber at their head. The adults in the photograph include Mr. Billyeald, Mr. Chasney senr. Mr. Smith, and Mr. Arthur Harrison senr. Amongst the children are Mrs. Watts (Nellie Chasney), George Besley, and Mr. Smith’s daughters. For anyone reviewing the recent history of the village, this photograph is invaluable evidence. What lovely trees there were then in the village. Opposite the Plough is a house now occupied by Mr. Reavey. Before Charles Robey built Orchard House, this was the home of Stephen Besley, Maltster. The site of the kiln was cleared to provide room for Mr. Robey’s private stables, and they in turn have been cleared to make way for the racing stables, Orchard Stables. Mr. Robey used the house for his coachmen. Of the two houses past the junction with Chapel Square, the first was in an almost derelict condition until quite recently when the roof and upper storey were stripped and the house reconstructed. The second house was certainly built before the window tax. In some houses built later, provision was made for windows which were not to be inserted until the tax was removed. In the Bee Hive, for example, one such window space was not opened and fitted with a window until Mrs. Tinson went to live there; but in this house there is clear evidence that the sashes already fitted were removed, and this makes the house eighteenth century, possibly as early as Anne. It is believed that it was once an inn. One half of it is occupied by Mrs. Hitchcox senr. It may soon be empty and we must hope that it is preserved. Past the racing stables come Mr. McDonagh’s houses, and, on the south side Duke’s Orchard and Wyatts. This stretch of Orchard Lane was Wyatts Lane until the name of Orchard Lane was given to the whole street a few years ago, by a lapse of historical sense. [Back to the Table of Contents]
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