QUEEN ANNE FARM
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The oldest part of this house is a timber-framed medieval house considered to date from the late 15th century, with a roof construction and some other features which are usually only found in West Surrey. Although it was the last of the farms to receive its modern name, by chance its history is the best documented.

Fagothers & Greencroft. In October 1592, towards the end of the long reign of Queen Elizabeth, the Lord of the Manor of Burpham, Edmund Winsor, signed a thousand year lease allowing Thomas Russell the Younger of Burgham to farm a property previously occupied by Thomas Dendye. The property comprised "all that messuage or tenement with Barn Stable Edifices Buildings Garden Orchard thereunto belonging or appertaining called FAGOTHERS" as well as several parcels of land totalling about ten acres. Three of these were adjacent to the house, while a fourth lay "between the lands of William Crosse and the lane called Clay Lane". This last plot was known as Greencroft, a name which will reappear much later in the history of the village. Two other plots were called respectively the Corner Acre and the Long Acre of a large field across the river called Northmead. The yearly rent for all this was two pence sterling.

In due course the lease passed to his younger son, Peter of Hurst. When the latter died in 1655 he invested the lease of this particular property in his executors although his son Thomas retained Hurst.

In the following year the lease of Fagothers was sold to William Tisbury of Guildford whose ownership is recorded in the Court Book of the Manor of Burgham for the period 1666-1685. The lease passed down through the family to his grandson, another William Tisberry, of Shalford, and then to the latter's widowed sister Susanna Drewett. In 1738 she sold the lease to Robert Williams of Worplesdon for £320.

However in 1800 the Rent Roll of the Manor records that John Cobbett held Freehold tenure of Faggotters (sic). This was presumably the same man who had taken over the lease of Great Hurst after the death of his father Joseph in 1795. By 1840 the property was in the hands of Richard Fathers and was complexly described as"lands previously called Rolls otherwise Faggotters formerly Russell's and Christmas'." The very next year the Tithe Apportionment records the owner as being James Windebank and the occupier John Matthews, so the property seemed to have changed hands yet again. It totalled just over 9 acres and appeared to correspond closely to that described in the lease of 1592. However, confusingly, the census of the same year does not mention John Matthews and records James Windybank just as the head of one of 19 households at Stringers Common.

On 15th June 1858 it was noted in the Minute Book of the Manor of Burgham that James Windebank had died and "Faggotters late Pisburys" was now held by Richard Greening and his wife. This property had acquired yet another alternative name, while Greencroft was now known as Crooked Field.

Queen Ann Farm. This name appears for the first time in 1861 when we discover that the owner's full name was James Richard Greening, a farmer of 10 acres, and his wife's name was Eliza. Although the 1871 census enumerator seems to have got rather muddled between Queen Hythe and Queen Ann farms, Kelly's Directory for Surrey for 1874 confirms James Richard Greening as still farming Queen Ann Farm. A gravestone in Stoke Churchyard is engraved:-

James Richard Greening (of Worplesdon)
died 15th September 1880 aged 62 years
also Eliza Greening, his wife,
died 9th February 1881 aged 61 years

By the census of 11th April 1881 the occupier was Emily Rose Greening, an unmarried Independent Lady aged 40, whose relationship to the previous occupiers we have been unable to trace. It seems possible that William Burt, then living at Queen Hythe across the road, was managing both farms. By 1891 the only occupant was Thomas Williams, a farm manager.

This takes us up to the period when the first expansion of Jacobs Well began to occur so we shall leave the further story of Queen Ann Farm to another chapter.

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© Jim Miller November 2002