Shefford Woodlands and its people

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

These notes are a foreword to a summary of thirty years of farm diaries written by Jim Langford’s father Reginald and Jim during the years 1930 to 1980.

Jim Langford lived at Newtown Lodge Farm, Shefford Woodlands, from 1935 until his death in 2010.

The following is a description of the fields that comprised Newtown Lodge Farm before the M4 motorway cut the farm in two.

Shefford Woodlands lies approximately on the south corner of the intersection of the B4000 on the north side and the B338 to the west. There are a cluster of houses and a cross roads and on one side the church of St Stephen’s.

The farm lay beyond to the south of this cluster of houses. Newtown Lodge, was built in 1935, and the road that ran through the village and in front of the house went south towards Hungerford Newtown and joined the A338.

Behind the church of St Stephens is Church Field and beyond it Stouds.

Behind Newtown Lodge house is Barndown field, and opposite the house across the road is Shefford or Home field with Little Breach Copse at the east end of it.
Surrounding the large wood, Breach Copse, starting at the north end, is Stouds followed by Heathside, Fawley Heath and round to Long Meadow.

These fields and woods: Church Field, Strouds, Heathside, Barndown, Shefford Field, Long Meadow, Fawley Heath and Little Breach and Breach Copse woods, comprise the fields nearest the house.

Going south towards Hungerford, on the road side, are the farm buildings, Chilton Field, and then Lovelocks House and grounds.

The fields then stretch in a line towards Hungerford: Chilton Field, East Field, Sparrowbills, Park and South Park and Big Field.

The whole comprising about 250 acres. Apart from the woods, there were two areas of fir trees, one near Lovelocks House and the other between Big Field and Park and South Park.

M4 motorway: The whole of Chilton field, a cottage, the fir plantation near Lovelocks, part of East Field and part of Fawley Heath all disappeared under the motorway. Lovelocks is now located very close to the motorway on the south side and a bridge was built for access to the fields.

The following notes were written by Jim Langford circa 1980 and 1990, edited by Linden Langford July 2021:

Background

During the years at the end of the last century, the 19th, and the beginning of this century, the 20th, the greater part of the parish was owned by the Marquis of Downshire of County Down, in Ireland. He had his home at Hillsborough Castle and was an absolute landlord who also owned other estates in Berkshire and elsewhere.

At the Shefford Woodlands end of the parish in the area on either side of what is now the M4 there was also land owned by the Coxe family and the Waldrons.

In 1905 Lord Downshire sold his estate. Shortly before this the head of the Coxe family died without issue and then in 1911 the head of the Waldron family died. These three events caused a radical replanning of the area round the hamlet.

Marquis of Downshire

Shefford parish had fairly continuous ownership by the Marquis of Downshire, of Hillsborough Castle in County Down. Certainly, all through the nineteenth century. He followed Sir George Browne as Lord of the Manor from around 1770. At the latter part of the century 1885-1905, the Marquis took over the farming of some land that had been farmed by tenants. He imported James Brown from Dorset, put him in Hidden Farm House as manager of the estate, except for Templars Farm occupied by Henry Langford. George Langford had died quite young at Hidden, in 1884 and James Brown came around 1890.

Henry Wilson

Almost all the land sold by Lord Downshire in Shefford parish was bought by Henry Wilson. In doing this he took a calculated risk in business both in the property field and in livestock dealings.

The land and farmsteads at Northfield, Hidden, Fishers, Park and Templars were bought by him and he cut the timber for sale and grew cereals for two years to help raise the capital. He then fairly quickly altered from arable crops to all grass putting boundary fences around the land and the farms were then used as a sheep run for dealing purposes, but with a resident Cheviot breeding flock. 10,225 sheep for 1,470 acres – a fraction under £7 per acre. – and so it was for the next thirty years taking in even larger areas of land round Ramsbury, Ilsley, and Crux Easton as well as the Shefford area.

Henry Wilson lived at Axford, Ramsbury, and was not only an astute business operator but he had a phenomenal memory and ability in the field of livestock dealing. The thousands of cattle and tens of thousands of sheep that he bought and sold were contracts he carried in his head and he would know all the details of each deal many months afterwards – no books, no written contracts – and even recognising individual animals that he had seen only for minutes at a sale. When he died his executors had to depend on the honesty of his farmer customers because no one had a record of who owed money for livestock. At Shefford the family had to arrange a share out, and first Northfield went. Later Templars and Park farms also.

Templars

This area has been bought and sold several times. Park has fallen down and disappeared as a farmstead.

Templars is being thoroughly brought back to life by Charles Parry. I am very interested because my people lived there for 200 years – perhaps longer – as tenants.

The Wilson family has stayed on and a great grandson was the last to farm Fisher’s Farm. It was sold in 2015.

Mushrooms

From say 1910, to the war 1939 the Shefford farms were used for sheep and cattle only by the Wilsons – in the 1930s a quite extraordinary growth of mushrooms formed, particularly on Fishers Farm between Shefford Woodlands and Coldridge and people came with vans and cars collecting baskets of them every morning during the natural growth season, late summer during those years.

Captain Arnold Burmester

The change caused by the death of James Thring Coxe was brought about by the fact that his property was entailed and so inherited by Arnold Charles Burmester whom he disliked. However, Burmester’s mother was a Coxe, the daughter of the Rev Charles Batson Coxe, who had been Rector of East Shefford, also sometime Rector of Avington, and a landowner. Reverend Batson Coxe was Rector of East Shefford from 1804 to 1846. He owned Little Breach wood and five acres of land which he farmed. It was previously owned by Francis Lovelock.

Note: entailing property means that inheritance is limited over a number of generations so that ownership remains within a particular family or group.

The Burmester’s were also related to the Lovelocks - a General Lovelock was a Cavalier leader at the Battle of Newbury. Francis Lovelock was Captain Burmerter’s great-great uncle. The name is over the lounge fireplace at Lovelocks.

When Arnold Burmester arrived in Shefford Woodlands he was a little over 40 years old and had retired from The Royal Artillery with the rank of Captain. Although an acknowledged pessimist, he was nevertheless enthusiastic in the maintenance and improvement of his property. He had very bad eyesight, but could see a blemish anywhere in a building and immediately got Wooldridge of Hungerford on to the job. He often stumbled over rough ground or fell from his bicycle but never seemed to hurt himself.

Land bought by Arnold Burmester

Captain Arnold Charles Burmester, inherited land and the house originally known as Newtown Lodge but renamed Lovelocks. He also had money and immediately started improvements, as well as purchases of property adjoining his own.

When Downshire sold in 1905, Arnold Burmester bought the land on the south side of Newbury Road, the B4000 or Ermin Street, about 80 acres with cottages that were adjacent to his land.

He bought up any property he could in Shefford Woodlands and by World War I owned most of the village and about 250 acres of land, land running from old Ermin Street at Shefford Woodlands down to Hungerford Newtown and nearly all the houses. He also owned other land mostly in Hungerford parish but including Shefford Field, fourteen acres, and Church Field, eight acres. Some of the buildings near the crossroads were converted to dwellings by him. When Stephen Waldron died in 1912, Arnold Burmester bought his house and land so owned nearly all of Shefford Woodlands.

His legacy

The rather sad end was that the only near relative whom Captain and Mrs Burmester cherished was killed flying during 1941. He and his wife Alicia, disappeared down to Bath and appeared to lose all interest in the village and never visited again.

When he died 1945 the village was sold in lots – mostly to the tenants and Toby Streatfield Moore bought the big houses and the land. Streatfield Moore sold the land to father and me.

Burmester’s money went to a Major John Haslam who apparently ‘got rid of it’.

Arnold Burmester’s memorial, apart from his initials remaining over a few porches, is surely St Stephen’s Church

Stephen Waldron

Stephen Waldron, a father of 12, was my mother’s father: During the later years of the last century, 19th, he was a treasurer and church warden of St Mary’s, Great Shefford, and he is buried in the family tomb at the north side of the churchyard.

His father - also Stephen – had come to the hamlet when he married and in 1820 built Shefford Woodlands House which remains much as it was at that date.
A census in 1851 when my grandfather was 15, mentions that apart from his family, Stephen Waldron senior employed 12 men.

The Waldrons were a strong local family of landowners and farmers. Their achievement was the pioneering development of vast areas of Patagonia, Southern Chile and the Falklands for the production of wool from the Corriedale sheep.

In the early days there was nothing there but the pampas and everything had to be landed on unknown beaches. Nearly every young member of the family was despatched to the sheep farms when old enough and many local families also sent young men out there in the years from 1850 to 1940.

The Waldron family has been researched and recorded by Joyce Scott Hart (1915-1996), daughter of Wilfrid Waldron and Gladys Townsend. She is my first cousin and about a year younger than I am. Our great grandfather Stephen inherited land and buildings around Shefford Woodlands and built the very substantial house and buildings now known as Shefford Woodlands House.

Great Grandfather built a pair of Cottages just to the West of the Crossroads which at present, I own - Waldron Cottages When he died his son Stephen, who married in 1865, inherited, and lived at Shefford Woodlands House till he died in 1912. There were twelve children, one of whom was my mother, Maud.

The Long Meadow and Strouds were owned by Stephen Waldron along with other land and houses in Shefford Woodlands and farmed by him. Later Stephen Waldron also owned Church Meadow. There was no division between the south end of Breach and Little Breach woods and therefore Stephen Waldron must have grubbed the south end of Long Meadow at some time during the last century.

Stephen Waldron’s sons, executors, sold the house when grandfather died, to Captain Burmester who let it first to a Mrs Shafto and later to the Plunket Greene family. Harry Plunket Greene was a well-known baritone. In 1917 it became vacant and my family, father Reginald and mother Maud, Tom my brother born 1910 and myself, born 1915, rented it. We stayed there until 1929 when Beauchamp Seymour took it and we built and moved to Barndown, where we owned a small farmstead of 10 acres.

Langfords

My father, Reginald Langford, became Captain Burmester’s farm tenant which was convenient because the Downshire farms where my father’s family had held and farmed for many generations, were now a part of the Wilson Estate.

Grandfather, Henry Langford, also farmed Fawley Heath and had Breach Copse – which was bought by Arnold Burmester about 80 acres in all. Father was fortunate to get Burmester’s land to farm – about 240 acres, and Wilson allowed him to stay in Templars House until 1917. Grandfather went to Heathside, now Redroofs, where he died in 1914.

On the 1840 Tithe Map, Breach wood was just over 22 acres and was owned by the Marquis of Downshire and was included in Templars Farm – farmed by Thomas Langford Junior. Thomas Langford Senior lived there and died in 1851.

My father rented and farmed any land Burmester acquired and added to the 20 acres of Barndown, farmed about 270 acres.

We owned a number of cottages and the village blacksmithy for several generations though the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In this century the smiths were Tom Alexander and Norman Higgins. Norman married the daughter of Cornelius John Robinson, who was ‘fogger’ at Templars all his life – which meant he did the garden, brewed the beer, milked the cow; fed the nag, dog, poultry, pigs, just having time to walk up the road for a few hours’ sleep at night. He lived in what in 1980 has become Pineapple Cottage.

The Langford family appears to have been tenants of Downshires, Trumbells and Sir George Brown, for at least a hundred years before 1840 – but there is no record of the woodland now in my possession. Maybe in the record of the Enclosures it would show. If you go back to 1719 Sir George Browne owned the Estate, so it is likely that the woodland of Breach would have been there at that time and he was Lord of the Manor from 1613.

Note: 'Enclosure' or 'Inclosure' is a term, used in English landownership, that refers to the appropriation of "waste" or "common land" enclosing it and by doing so depriving commoners of their ancient rights of access and privilege.

Houses

As in many hamlets most of the houses built in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which are now near a road, were built on roadside waste - squat on by people who first built temporary dwellings and then developed them. The Pheasant Inn was a wooden house of this type dating from the early nineteenth century, and even in this century I can think of two roadside ponds that found themselves incorporated in someone’s garden, one at the old bakery, now The Little House, now renamed again, and another at Heathside. But some cottages later disappeared, one above and one below The Pheasant, and two pairs on the left of the road below Lovelocks toward Hungerford Newtown.

Water and Electricity

In 1935, owing to financial pressure we built and moved to the small house where I now live. At that time there was no main water or electricity in the village, and any unboiled drinking water had to be carried from the Woodlands House well. We also, in dry seasons, had to haul water by farm water cart, from the old ford by the Swan at Shefford to satisfy household needs of the village, and even for livestock.

In 1936/37 the main water was laid on and in 1938/39 mains electricity, so allowing us to put aside oil lamps and rest from pumping house water from underground rainwater tanks.

People and places

I have a photo which has been reproduced for the Newbury News, and which has a framed copy in St Stephens at the crossroads. In May 1986 there was a 75th anniversary service and Nigel Sands Rector, wrote on the reverse of the picture “This picture is a copy of an original owned by Mr Jim Langford and shows the Church during its reconstruction in 1911”. The man second from right is Jesse Pike and the little boy on the far left may have been his eldest son who was killed in 1917 at the age of 17 whilst serving in a destroyer. One of the church pews is carved in his memory. Jesse Pike sang in the choir of this church for at least 30 years and lived and died in Shefford Woodlands. The boy at the far right is probably George Kempster, an orphan descended from Christopher Kemptster who built the dome of St Pauls Cathedral. George and his brother came to live with an aged aunt, who lived at the cottage by the M4, who had been in service with Captain Burmester – the prime mover in the purchase and restoration of this church. George married a girl from Bedwyn where his son and daughter still live.

Note: I have this photograph and a photograph of Jesse Pike and his wife.

Grandfather spoke of Shefford Feast – though I think it must have petered out during his life. All that was handed down was the date – June 9th – and that the old gardeners competed with one another to have new potatoes on that day.

Up to the end of the Second World War, the meeting room where all whist drives, dances, jumble sales and other festivities were held was situated where the present War memorial stands, - the War memorial having been moved from the built-up area or cover now known as Hunter’s meadow, where Rev Thomas Hudson had erected it. The meeting room was Church-owned and known as The Iron Room, it was galvanised iron and wood lined. I can remember plays and concerts, political meetings, Ringers and Choir suppers, in fact all the things that go on in a village, even wedding receptions. I have not checked on it but I believe that it was put up by Canon Menzies as an extension of his restoration of the Church.

The Reading Room at Shefford Woodlands was a gift from the Craven family at Ashdown from whence it was moved and put on the patch adjoining Waldron’s cottages about 1907. Services were held there before 1911 after that St Stephens was used. At one time it was regularly used but village needs changed. The WI were the final users.

Looking back, it seems unlikely that the population of this hamlet is now as great as it was in 1900. At that time Tom Alexander and his mate were busy blacksmiths. Mr and Mrs Shutt were carrier and postmistress, John Green had a carpenter’s business and Killick a bakery, quite apart from the farms.