Shefford Woodlands

You are in [Family History] [Langford Family] [Shefford Woodlands]

(Kindly sent by Linden Langford, Jim Langford's niece, January 2023).

The Langfords of Great Shefford and Shefford Woodlands:

My paternal family lived and farmed in Great Shefford and Shefford Woodlands for many hundreds of years. My uncle, my father’s brother, James Stephen Langford, Jim, was very interested in the history of his family and he kept farm diaries and collected information, wills, documents, photographs and farm account books about the farm and the area where he and his ancestors lived. When he died in 2010 at the age of 95, I kept all his papers on the history of the family and also his farm diaries.

Introduction:
I remember when Jim was a very old man, probably about 90 and no longer aware of much, my nephew Sebastian Salas, his wife Maria and sons Santi, Marcos and Martin, went to visit him at Newtown Lodge, Shefford Woodlands. When they were there, he looked out the window at the boys playing on the lawn and said “My family”. The boys were very impressed that he had two full time carers – as one of the boys said: “a nanny and a nurse”.
So, this story is dedicated to all the generations of “Jim’s family”.

The following is a poem which was printed in an edition of Punch magazine on 15th December 1937. No author is listed and Jim changed the wood ‘seagulls’ to ‘rooks’: I have also changed the layout of the verses.

Ploughing:

My father’s father ploughed this land;
his father’s father thought and planned
to get increase upon the yield
of his forefathers from this field.

I yoke my team in long gears worn
and break the stubble fresh from corn.
The shining blade skims through the earth
that fruitfulness may have rebirth
after snow and the sun’s rays
as it used to do, in my father’s days.

The good earth needs my care and so
to distant lands I shall not go.
The rooks wheel round before my track
and settle swiftly at my back
and know that ploughing will go on
when all is said and all is done.

The clouds hang over bearing rain;
I crest the rise, then down again.
The shining blade skims through the earth
that fruitfulness may have rebirth.
Each solid horse pulls, as he walks
upon the chains, upon the baulks.
At headlands’ turn the heeltrees swing
then, hitching over, straightening.

I think each furrow means a year;
when eighty’s done I’ll not be here.
And I’ll be bound before I came
my father’s father thought the same.

The rooks wheel round before my track
and settle swiftly at my back –
the shining blade cuts straight and true.
And this I want: my son’s son too
to plough this field and give rebirth
to fruitfulness upon the earth.

The Area:

Great Shefford and Shefford Woodlands, are sixty miles, about ninety-six kilometres, West of London, England. Junction 14 of the M4 motorway.
The name derives from there having been a ford across the river Lambourn where sheep could cross. It is eight miles, or thirteen kilometres, from Newbury and three miles or five kilometres from Hungerford. Hungerford is about two miles South of the M4 motorway.
Great Shefford and Shefford Woodlands are the villages where the Langfords lived and farmed for many generations.
The M4 motorway was built in 1970 but historically the road was The Great West Road that went from London to Bath, and it was also known as the A4. The area has always been near a main road, the Roman Road called Ermin Street is close by and is now the B4000. Many Roman coins have been found in the area by metal detectorists.

There was an inn on the road between Hungerford and Newbury called Half Way and this was half way between London and Bristol, and also half way between Hungerford and Newbury, so the area is in the middle of the South of England.

The land:

The area is traditional English farm land: fields, hedges, paddocks, farms yards, copses and woods. The fields were planted with wheat, barley, oats and other crops such as root crops for livestock: swedes, turnips, mangolds, kale, rape, vetches, sainfoin, lucerne and clover which was also grown for seed.
Farms also had horses, cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens and other livestock.

Some of the native trees are alder, ash, beech, birch, blackthorn, cherry, crab apple, dogwood, elder, elm, hawthorn, hazel, holly, hornbeam, rowan, juniper, lime, maple, oak, Scots pine, walnut, yew, sycamore, horse chestnut, willow. Some of these trees, such as the elm, no longer grow in this area because of disease.

Leases and Copyhold:

The Langfords had Copyhold leases. The following is a description of the different types of historic renting of property and land.

• Quit Rent: a rent, typically a small one, paid by a freeholder or copyholder in lieu of services which might be required of them.
• Lay Subsidy: Records from a tax levied on lay people on their movable property rather than land. The tax was usually raised as and when needed to fund a particular venture such as a military campaign. The poor were exempt from the tax as was clerical property. The clergy were subject to a separate clerical subsidy.
• Copyhold: It was an ancient form of tenure like freehold and leasehold but which was abolished on 1 January 1926 when all copyhold land became freehold land.
• Copyhold for Lives: three named persons were nominated, the first-named was the holder tenant and held for the duration of their life. The other two were said to be "in reversion and remainder" and effectively formed a queue.
• Messuage: a dwelling house with outbuildings and land assigned to its use.
• Heriot was the right of a lord in feudal Europe to seize a serf's best horse, clothing, or both, upon his death. It arose from the tradition of the lord loaning a serf a horse or armour or weapons to fight so that when the serf died the lord would rightfully reclaim his property.

Farming:

English farming is intensive and the Langfords always leased the land they farmed from the current owners at the time. There is a complete list of all the leases down the centuries and there are several cases where the wife or mother is named as the lease holder. They farmed about 300 acres or 120 hectares near the village of Great Shefford from just before 1600. In about 1906 the Langfords moved to land adjacent in the village of Shefford Woodlands, retaining some of the same fields. This farm was subsequently called Newtown Lodge Farm.

On a crop rotation map covering the years 1942 to 1969, the field names for Newton Lodge Farm are noted as Sparrowbills, East Field, Barndown, Heathside, Fawley Heath, Strouds, Big Field. Home Field, Church Meadow, Park and South Park and Longmeadow.

The land farmed by the Langfords - Coneybooth and Templars

Templars is now the name of the house and the farmland surrounding it. When Thomas Langford died in 1643, he left a will in which it is stated that he also left the lease for the land. Originally it seems that Coneybooth was a house and the land surrounding it, although where the house might have been is not clear from what is known of the area. Templars was the area of the fields.

There is a lease from 1792 with a description which says that Templars comprised 60 acres of pasture and arable land. The field names being Marefield, Great Mare field, Piddle, Upper Tilsleys Close, Lower Tilsleys Close, Barley, Shells, and the Mead, and a pasture called The Lane. And Coneybooth had a homestead or house and arable land, and an Orchard. Fields were called Whitefield, North Field, the Drove, the Mead, the Bells, Lower Heath, first and second part, Upper Heath, first and second part, and Breach Close.

Many of these field names still exist. Breach Close, the larger wood of more than 20 acres, was finally bought by Jim Langford just after the Second World War. This wood and the surrounding pasture were therefore farmed by the Langfords from be-fore 1600 to 1980, the lease and copyhold being passed from generation to genera-tion.

Charles Parry who now lives at Templars house and farms the land has noted that:

“The name Templars was being used as far back as 1643, which is the year of the first Thomas Langford’s will. The farm lies between Bisham and Chippenham which were significant Templars centres. The Knights Templars were persecuted to extinc-tion in France with the execution of Jaques de Molar in 1314 and their property con-fiscated by Phillip IV with some kept by him and some given to the Hospitallers of St John. In England their persecution was much less vigorous. There appear to be shadows in a field by the roman road which could be the remains of a rest house, perhaps Templars.

Coneybooth lay about a quarter of a mile east of Templars house and the 1905 map marks a place at Booth’s barn, the border lying south of the barn is known as Bells Border.”

Charles Parry also noted similarities in the field names like Shayles to Shells and Meersfield to Maresfield. Coldridge is still the name of the wood at the top of Hungerford Hill out of Shefford.

Jim Langford writing about Shefford in 1984:

The following was written in August 1984, by Jim Langford who lived at Newtown Lodge, Shefford Woodlands.

“Great Shefford could still be called a downland parish area, but has changed greatly since 1900, when the Marquis of Downshire, an absentee landlord, owned the greater part of the village, and most of the land. The village community which at that time was largely orientated toward agriculture, and with a strong Methodist tradition, has changed to commuting business people of many types, and the chapels have closed.

“The church also was strong, and the Rector lived in the biggest house, surrounded by a substantial area of glebe land. He now lives at Wickham, and cares for four parishes.

“The Marquis of Downshire lived at Hillsborough House, County Down, at present the residence of the Governor of Northern Ireland. The Marquis also owned the Berkshire house and estate of Easthampstead Park, of late years a Berkshire college. The family parted from Shefford in 1905 after a century as Lord of the Manor. Previously this position was held by the Browne family, and a tablet to Sir George Browne in St Mary’s church is dated 1673.

“All these changes have accelerated since 1971 because Junction 14 of the M4 is just two miles to the south of the village. Much building development in the main village area caters for the new population.

“The parish is in lovely country with two main hamlets round the central village – East Shefford and Shefford Woodlands. The Lambourn stream, with useful trout fishing, flows between chalk hills with a clay cap. Although the heyday of the grey partridge went with the red clovers, roots and grasses of the pre-1939 days, there is good pheasant and other mixed shooting.

“Along the valley from West or Great Shefford is East, or Little Shefford, originally a separate parish, but now joined both civilly and ecclesiastically. Down in the water meadows is the redundant church of St Thomas. The walls are of early Norman date, and hold splendid tombs of the Fettiplace family from the 15th and 16th centuries – a great family that came and went from here. Nearby an Anglo-Saxon burial ground was found when excavating for the now defunct Newbury and Lambourn railway. The modern church of Holy Innocents, built around 1870, was totally demolished some 12 year ago (early 1970s); since then, the parish church of St Mary’s suffices.

“Southwards up the hill from Shefford village is found the East/West Roman road known as Ermin Street, and on it the hamlet of Shefford Woodlands – residences, farmhouses, a small church and a pub, with woodland bordering the modern motorway. The church of St Stephen contains oak panels and carving, mostly done in the early half of the century by Arnold Burmester. It was enlarged into the present church from a previous Methodist chapel in 1911.

“The population of Shefford Woodlands in 1900 was almost certainly greater than it is today. Noticeable differences would be the narrow roads with banks and a hedge on top, so that heavy snow would isolate the community for weeks on end. There was no electricity, telephone or water supply. The only clean water available was from the deep chain-and-bucket wells of the farmhouses which supplied drinking water. All other water – for people and animals – relied on rainwater tanks. In dry seasons the farmers ran a service of water carts to Shefford, where water was dipped from the ford – a crossing of the Lambourn stream near the Swan Inn. Just about 100 years ago one of the boys ferrying an empty water cart to Shefford hit the roadside bank as he went down the hill. The cart tipped over, breaking the shafts, and the horse ran home to Templars’ farm. After a considerable search for the boy, someone at last went to examine the water cart, and a small voice from inside called ‘I be in here!’ Relief – and, no doubt, some laughter! About the same date a toddler of the Allen family, out in the field with other families and children harvest working, as usual, wandered into the corn on Fishers Farm, and was not missed until too late in the evening. Unhappily he died of exposure. A different hazard in a different era.

“Returning to the main village, the church of St Mary’s is a building with transitional Norman tower base, arch and south doorway, the whole building in flint, and typical of the Henry III period. As with St Thomas’s, some Saxon remains have been excavated. The records date from a little before 1600.

“Alongside the church is the old Manor Farm House, reputed as a hiding place for the king, Charles I, as he retreated from the Battle of Newbury in 1643. The church records show the burial of a soldier who died from wounds after the battle – and in the same year an early member of the farming family whose descendants have farmed in the parish to the present day. Down the street is Gower Cottage, a listed dwelling of early date, and other interesting thatched cottages.

“Just completed is a new Church of England school on a freshly developed site, the old school, presented by the Marquis of Downshire in 1873, having become too small and outdated.

“Great Shefford was inhabited and recognised as a North South crossing point in Domesday Book, the year 1086 survey, and can therefore claim interest as an Ancient Village”.

Note: The Easthampstead Park estate was 5,000 acres or 2,000 hectares and included the whole Shefford area.
Note on the Marquises of Downshire:
Wills Hill: 30 May 1718 – 7 October 1793. The title of Marquis of Downshire was created in 1789 for Wills Hill, 1st Earl of Hillsborough. He was known as Viscount Hillsborough from 1742 to 1751 and as the Earl of Hillsborough from 1751 to 1789. He served as Secretary of State for the Colonies from 1768 to 1772, a critical period leading toward the American War of Independence. Hillsborough was visited by Benjamin Franklin in January, 1772. Unfortunately, Franklin and Hill disliked each other, Hill being unable to countenance American independence.

Churches:

St Mary’s Church, Great Shefford:

The building largely dates from around the year 1200, the octagonal section of the tower is 15th century and the large window in the south wall of the chancel is 14th century. The lower two section of the Tower and the Tower Arch date from around 1200. There are six bells, the oldest is dated 1662. They were all renovated and restored in 2012. When the bells were refurbished and rededicated on 28th April 2012, the old clangers were made into a cross which is now called the Langford cross and is at the entrance to the avenue of lime trees leading to the church.

The Norman Font has a cylindrical basin richly carved with scrolls of foliage.

Major restoration of the church took place in 1870. The organ was installed at this time and it was fully restored in 1979. The painting on the east wall of the Virgin Mary and the Angel Gabriel were discovered when the restoration was done.

The reredos was erected in 1911 as a memorial to Mary Waldron of Shefford Woodlands, by her family, mother of Maud, grandmother of Jim Langford. The family also had the Sanctuary floor re-laid and gave the oak Communion rails, also the oak Altar Table.

Jim wrote in 1990:

“There is a Waldron vault on the North Side of the churchyard in which seven members of the family were buried – there is one vacancy - as well as the grave of the eldest son, Frederick, beside the west path. Also buried in his father’s grave is Sir John Waldron – one-time Chief Constable of Berkshire and later Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis. Added have been ashes of his wife.

These burials span 100 years of the Waldron family. When Mary Waldron died at Shefford Woodlands House in 1911, the family did considerable work in the Chancel of St Mary’s in her memory.

The panelling either side of the Altar is in Austrian Wainscot oak. No ancient work was disturbed except the tiles and a shelf behind the Altar. A memorial tablet beneath the altar was replaced. The Sanctuary remained the same size. All this is fully recorded by Thomas Hudson in the Churchwardens Book 1911-1912.”

Church Wardens:

The Churchwarden’s Book - St Mary’s Great Shefford 1748 -1922.

The finances during this time were dealt with by the Churchwardens. Now there is a treasurer of the Parochial Church Council
In 1748 Richard Langford, born in 1720, was one of the signatories of the account. Between 1749 and 1775, when he died of smallpox, he was churchwarden nine times. At that time the wardens were changed most years and not, as recently, appointed year after year without change.

Between 1777 and 1786 his eldest son, Henry, was a churchwarden but he then moved away to Wanborough where he and members of his family have tombs, in the South East corner of the churchyard. Over a long period, all through the 18th century, his young brother John, of the Manor Farm, and John’s son were frequent holders of the office of Church Warden.

In 1790 Thomas, Richard’s third son, began a period of churchwarden. He is the Thomas on the South wall of the church married Mary, née Mitchell, and he was active until around 1820.

From 1820 all through the 19th century Stephen Waldron senior and junior were wardens. Stephen junior was Reginald’s father-in-law and donated the reredos and parts of chancel of the church. He also gave the west window and some land for St Stephen’s Church, Shefford Woodlands.
1873 to 1914 Henry Langford was Churchwarden, Thomas Langford’s grandson
1915 to 1951 Reginald Langford, his son, was Churchwarden
1955 to 1974 James Langford was Churchwarden. Grandfather, father and I did 100 years consecutively.”

St Stephen’s Church, Shefford Woodlands:

This church was originally a Wesleyan Chapel in 1837. It was built on land belonging to Stephen Waldron.

By 1910 it was no longer used and Captain Arnold Burmester, who lived at Lovelocks and owned a lot of the land, acquired it and proposed its use by the Church of England. Small North and South transepts were added for a vestry and harmonium and also a porch on the South side.

Many of the interior furnishings were donated by other churches in the area. Captain Burmester turned the church into what is, in essence, a 1914-18 war memorial. The South windows are dedicated to ‘war’ and ‘peace’. Eleven officers and men are remembered and their names, dates and place of death are carved in relief on the back of the pews. Captain Burmester personally did all the oak carving.

This church is a daughter church to St Mary’s Great Shefford.

Jim wrote:

Arnold Burmester, in 1910, converted the Methodist Chapel at the crossroads to Church of England – building lean-to vestry and organ extension, moved the doorway from the West end to the North side and refurbished it. Over the next 25 years he carved oak pews and panelling and put in stained glass windows. Burmester left bits of carving all around the village over doorways etc, but most have now been removed.

M4 Motorway – Junction 14:

During 1969 and 1970 there was a great deal of work with the construction of the M4 motorway. At least 20 acres of Newtown Lodge farm were lost, and the farm itself was cut in two. A bridge had to be constructed to get to the fields on the other side of the motorway. Subsequently, Breach wood was reduced slightly in size in order to make up for the loss. I believe Jim was paid about £5,000 for the land which included a cottage which was demolished.
The disruption was constant as the workmen had a depot on the land and farm tracks were destroyed making access to paths difficult for the movement of livestock.

Some of the things involving the motorway were:

Alterations to farm buildings, demolishing and rebuilding them; fencing and gates moved; electricity power lines altered to farm buildings; many trees felled and a large section was torn out of Little Breach fence; Grange Cottage demolished; bulldozers on the land churning up the fields; they took topsoil from fields to build the embankments of the motorway; snow slowed works in 1970; cattle had to be moved through the works; many repair jobs to fences, gates, access roads damaged by the works; There was also a major incident when the men threw stones at the barn windows which involved a lot of negotiation for compensation.

18th December the Breach Copse Motorway Bridge was used for the first time, when some ewes went over the bridge to East Field.

22nd December M4 Motorway opened to public in the afternoon. There are photographs of the old and new farm buildings and the cottage that was demolished.

Houses:

Templars

The current house dates from the reign of Queen Anne, about 1700. The Langfords had leasehold and copyhold on Templars and Coneybooth from the 1600s to 1915. Both my father Thomas and Jim Langford were born at Templars and Jim was about two years old when they left to live in the Woodlands House.

Woodlands House

A Georgian house owned by the Stephen Waldron. His daughter Maud, my father and Jim’s mother, lived in the Woodlands House before she married Reginald Langford, when she then moved to Templars for about eight years, from 1915 to 1928. When the family moved out of Templars in 1917, they lived again in the Woodlands House until they moved to Barndown.

Barndown House

Reginald Langford built Barndown in 1928 and they lived there for a few years before building Newtown Lodge in 1935. They rented Barndown to a number of people and then on 21st October 1949 they sold it.

Newtown Lodge

Originally it was called New House because what is now Lovelocks was called Newtown Lodge. This house was completed in 1935.
The Langfords also owned several cottages in Shefford Woodlands, including Waldron Cottages.

Lovelocks

This house is now on the South side of the motorway and was the house where Captain Arnold Burmester lived. He inherited it from his wife, Alicia Coxe and it was called Newtown Lodge. The name was changed to Lovelocks in about 1935 and the Langfords took the name for their house as their farm was called Newtown Lodge Farm.