The White Hart, Heath and Reach

There are three references to the White Hart in Heath and Reach. Maureen Brown in Transactions of Leighton Buzzard and District Archaeological and Historical Society Number 3 (2009) suggests that the White Hart may have been somewhere near Shenley Hill Road.

In 1758 it was owned, together with property in other parts of the village and in Soulbury [Buckinghamshire], by John Wilkes. He leased the property to John Carpenter [Z752/2]. From a reference in a deed held at the Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies it appears that in 1775 the White Hart was owned by a pair of brothers, Richard and Henry Causton, who also held considereable lands in Tottenham as well as Stoke Hammond, Mursley and Soulbury [Centre for Bucks Studies D-BAS/42/654].

By 1844 the establishment had closed and the building had been divided into three tenements [NC836]. It was leased by Elizabeth Knight of Mursley [Buckinghamshire] to Thomas Swinstead of Over End Green and included an adjoining close of pasture and plot of newly inclosed land, formerly occupied by J. Vinnell now by Swinstead. The rent was £22 per annum. In 1850 Elizabeth Knight dedicated the adjoining close to the use of the chapel in Heath and Reach (now Saint Leonard's church) abating £7 from Swinstead's rent. The use to which the chapel put the land would, no doubt, have been to lease it for income. It is difficult to locate the pub precisely because there are two inclosure maps for Heath and Reach with differing numbering! The likliest spot, however, seems to be a house and adjoining field standing between today's Evans Yard and Wellington House.