Woodlands Farmhouse • House History

Vintage Tractor

The first origins of the house date back to approximately 1631 when records show that the large estate that it sat in owned by Sir Dudley North was mortgaged. It has since been extended and adapted through the centuries to the present day, providing a somewhat more comfortable house today that would have originally existed!

1631 - 1700

The first and original parts of the house were the current lounge, the library and the kitchen and it was originally built as a dairy farm. The current lounge would have been used as the main living/kitchen room with small stairs positioned to the side of the large inglenook fireplace leading to the two bedrooms upstairs. The library and kitchen parts would have been single storey outhouses used for milking the cows, although today we respectfully ask that guests do not bring cows into the kitchen.

1700 - 1800

What is now the cinema room would have been added in this century just on the ground floor and would have been used as a storage/equipment room for the farm. More evidence from this period can be found in the Georgian door knockers that are still there today, so when you knock on the door, just imagine the centuries of people and the history that has gone before! This was also the period when the now downstairs bedroom was added, probably as a calving shed, but don't worry the bed there now is no longer made of straw.

1800 - 1900

The 19th Century continued to see the house develop further and second storeys were added to the now cinema room and downstairs bedroom, as well as to what is now the library when the huge open fireplace was created to form a kitchen. This is illustrated by the mantel shelf and the original bread oven in this room. The house was now becoming much grander and would have been occupied by a more affluent family that would have had one or more servants to look after their every need. This is an extra we no longer provide. The house also then added the affluent signatures to make it grander such as the re-crafted veranda and the French windows with shutters which we have extensively restored in the kitchen and the lounge.

In 1841, our ancestors are first recorded as living in the house, when William and Mary Norris lived here with their 7 children and their parents. William’s brother and his wife also lived here as well totalling 16 people living together in the house! The farm had 6 labourers and was 200 acres during this period.

1900 - 2006

The house was largely unchanged in the twentieth century and was a thriving dairy farm with the now redundant barns in the yard used as a milking parlour, a cider making facility and a bull pen. The tenant farmers retired in March 2006, with none of their children wishing to succeed them. The farm was therefore handed back to us by the tenants and we had to make a decision; the farm and the milking parlour were now very small and inefficient by modern standards, so maintaining it as a working farm was not an option. We didn’t want to sell it, so the decision was made to renovate and restore the house to be used as the holiday property you see today.

2007 - 2009

The house is grade II listed and was in need of complete renovation as there was no heating and many unused and dilapidated rooms. We have extensively restored all the original features in the house, such as the veranda outside and all the large inglenook fireplaces, as well as reinserting the fireplace in the west bedroom. The twin bedrooms opposite each other were found to have high ceilings and beautiful exposed beams once the flat ceilings had fallen down, one of the wonderful discoveries made during the renovation.

The bedroom with the 4 poster bed would also have had a fireplace in it and was split into 2 small unused bedrooms when we discovered it, with the window used for both rooms. We hope you now enjoy the slightly more spacious accommodation! If you are staying in the downstairs bedroom, you may be interested to know that this was a washroom until recently, complete with a copper boiling pot. We now have a boiler and central heating you'll be glad to know!

2009 - The Future

We finished renovating Woodlands Farmhouse in early April 2009 and the first guests arrived on April 10th 2009. It was extremely hard work but ultimately very rewarding, ensuring the survival of Woodlands farmhouse for the next generation to enjoy and provide the opportunity to extend its history for the next 368 years!