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Hucklebury Cottage, 1 Common Road, Stotfold

Information taken from Stotfold Bury and Four Other Stotfold Houses by Bert Hyde.

Hucklebury Cottage stands well back from Common Road and is gable end to Regent Street. According to Historic England’s listing of the property it is:

“House. Late C17. Timber framed structure with colourwashed roughcast render. Thatched roof. 2-room plan, 2 storeys. Gable end to road. N elevation: 2 3- light cast iron lattice casements to each floor. Central plank door. Gabled trellis porch with tiled roof and wavy-edged bargeboards. Red brick central ridge stack, red brick stack to RH gable end.”

The cottage was built by the Lord of Stotfold Manor and was probably intended to house two families. The first known allusion to the property is in 1795. The cottage was one of four that went with Lordship Farm (now Manor Farm). The farm was owned by John Robinson Lytton of Knebworth House. He died in 1762 and in 1795 his heir Richard Warburton Lytton put up for sale seven of the Lytton properties including Lord ship Farm and the four cottages. The sale took place in chambers of Edward Leeds at Lincoln Inn, London on 24th March 1795. Lordship Farm and the four cottages were bought by John William Esq, a baker from Baldock who was also proprietor of Baldock Bank. When he died in 1830 the property passed to his grandson Rec. John Alington, the son of John’s daughter Sarah who was married to clergyman William Alington of Little Barford. The ownership of the cottage remained in the Alington family until 1908.

In the 1841 census Hucklebury Cottage is occupied by Thomas Reynolds, an agricultural labourer, alongside 12 other people.

In the 1849 Stotfold Tithe Award the entry for the cottage shows that the owner is Rev. John Alington and the occupier is Robert Reynolds, the son of Thomas. Thomas is still listed at the property in the 1861 census alongside his wife Mary, their eight children and his mother-in-law.

The occupier in the 1871 and 1881 census was Joseph Cooper, an agricultural labourer. By 1891 the occupier was William Jeffs, the horse keeper at Manor Farm. He remained at the property until the Alington family sold the cottage along with a large piece of adjoining land to Bernard Whitehead.

In 1959 Gordon Huckle bought the cottage from Bernard Whitehead’s daughter-in-law Alice and named it Hucklebury Cottage.

The cottage was Grade II listed on 2nd January 1985. 

List of sources at Bedfordshire Archives:

  • Z1255/1/29: Copy of old photograph showing Hucklebury Cottage, n.d.
  • Z1255/2/63: Photograph of back of Huckleberry Cottage, 2006