History
Large gentry house with a complex ground plan and development. The fabric of the original house (possibly C18 or early C19) is retained in the rear block of the present dwelling which was extended to form a double-pile plan in the mid C19. Service wings were also added to either end of the original house plan, probably in the mid-late C19, as was a solicitors office, probably built c1880s (now with visible RSJ joists from early C20 re-build). The house has been re-roofed and sympathetically restored in the late C20, with the replacement and addition of some new windows.
The present owners are descended from the Prichard family, who bought the property in 1806, and the original house may have been built when they acquired the property. On the Tithe Map of the parish, 1840, the house is shown as a simple rectangle alongside some of the early agricultural buildings on the site. The farm is owned by Robert Prichard, Attorney, and his wife Anne, an extensive farmstead of over 119 acres(48.2 hectares). In the Census Returns of the following year the Prichard family, then including just their daughter Elizabeth, employed 4 female servants and 4 agricultural labourers, the latter recorded as living in the cowhouse. The farm later became home to to Robert's son, Thomas Prichard (1846-1920), a solicitor and agent to the Meyrick Estate, and the farmstead has passed down through the family to the present owners. Much of the extensive social history of the farm was passed down from the parents and grandparents of the current owners who remember the prosperous early years of the C20 when there were 17 agricultural workers on the farm, as well as a number of domestic staff in the house.
The farm ranges were developed in two main phases; in the early C19 a number of new (freestanding) buildings were built to the N, W and E of the farmhouse, including a corn barn, cowhouse, stable and hammel/cartshed. These buildings are characterised by stone voussoir heads to the openings. In the mid-late C19 the buildings were extended to allow stabling for a greater number of horses, storage for carts and carriages, and extra grain storage areas, the latter a result of the need to feed more horses, and the mechanised production methods employed. These later buildings employed similar stonework, and retain the arched form of the openings, made in brick.