Pond Farm Wingfield

Pond Farm February 2013

Pond Farm was listed by the Department of Environment in September 1980 as Grade II, of special interest. The date 1699 is written on a panel on the first floor of the south elevation along with the letters CSA. The building is of chequered brick and comprises two storeys beneath an old clay tiled roof. It is built in an L-shape and the east wing has exposed timber-framing to the north gable end. There is a brick band between floors

The Rating and Valuation Act 1925 specified that every building and piece of land in the country was to be assessed to determine its rateable value. The valuer visited Pond Farm on 1st November 1926 [DV1/H29/32]. The owner and occupier was George Pratt and the farm comprised 86 acres.

The valuer noted: "House at present is occupied by Smith who has paid no rent and is going to leave. House old. 1699. Buildings fair".Another hand has written: "Big but ordinary". The house comprised two reception rooms, a kitchen, a scullery, a dairy and a parlour with four bedrooms and a boxroom on the first floor. Outside stood a brick and tile earth closet and a weather-boarded and tiled coal barn

The homestead comprised: a brick, weather-boarded and corrugated iron stable for three horses; a chaff place; a barn; a loose box; a two-bay cart house; a brick, weather-boarded and corrugated iron cow house for eight beasts; a mixing house; a cowhouse for four; a stable for two and a trap and cooling house.

Directories reveal that by 1931 the tenants were Herbert and his daughter Constance Keen. A lease of 1st May 1935 [BML10/14/7] is from George Ambrose Pratt, then residing at Rectory Farm, Weedon [Northamptonshire] to Thomas Edmund Buckingham of Dunstable. The farm then comprised 91.832 acres and Buckingham’s rent was £150 per annum

Directories for Bedfordshire were not published every year but every few years from the early to mid 19th century until 1940. They reveal that in 1940 Samuel Fleckney was tenant of Pond Farm.

Earlier directories show that from at least 1920 to 1928 the tenant of the farm was Frederick Smith. Henry Whinnett is mentioned as tenant in 1914 whilst in 1910 it was James Whinnett. Directories list a James Whinnett as farmer of an unnamed farm in Wingfield from 1847 and this may be the same man.