At the close of the Middle Ages many houses
in the village, the homes of ordinary villagers, would have been poor affairs,
huts which could be built or demolished in a day. But not all, for those who could afford it
built in timber with an infilling of wattle and daub. Bell Farm has already been mentioned and
there were certainly others, though none has survived. It is difficult to be sure which modern houses
now stand on their sites. However, the Tudor-Stuart period from about 1550 to
1640 was a time of prosperity for a considerable portion of the population. In
the country this meant the landowners, the farmers and the more successful
cottagers. They left their mark on the countryside in the very pleasing shape of
many new or enlarged homes. Eton Wick shared in this building boom. Exactly how many houses were built or
improved is not known, but at least eight cottages were built in the years
immediately prior to 1605 when this was reported to the Crown
Commissioners. Unfortunately it has
not proved possible to identify these cottages, but ten timber-framed houses
survived into this century and five are still standing today.
Bell Farm was almost certainly enlarged by
the Bell family, who lived there in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. They were
undoubtedly responsible for the addition of the great chimney stack on the west,
and for the parlour on the north side with its own stack. The fireplace of the parlour,
with its lovely Tudor arch, was rediscovered in the 1950's. No longer was it necessary
for the smoke to swirl around the rafters before finding its way out through a
hole in the roof. The old hall could be ceiled over, giving another upstairs
room, and a new staircase was built. One can still see many of the old beams
and roof trusses in the bedrooms, and an original medieval window with two
delightful trefoil lights has survived, though it must have been blocked ever
since the parlour was built.
The Bell family was a large and prosperous one,
farmers and gentlemen as their wills and other records testify. Their names are frequently found in deeds and
parish records for over a hundred years until the second half of the
seventeenth century when all mention of them ceases in connection with Eton
Wick except in the past tense. At the
height of their importance locally they owned property in Eton town and were
the owners and not the tenants of Bell Farm. A Joan Bell leased 'a fishery in
the chapel waters at Boveney in 1578 and a Richard Bell was still in possession
of this some thirty years later. In 1605 Henry Bell was tenant of Saddocks Farm
and his brother Matthew of Mustians. About 1600 Henry Bell bought the manor house at Chalvey which he still
owned in 1612 though not when he died. In 1641 there was a Thomas Bell at
Chalvey and about the same time different members of the Bell family were
farming Bell, Saddocks and Mustians Farms. The farmhouse of the last stood on
the south side of Common Lane, but its land stretched into Eton Wick.
Of the five timber buildings only Little
Common Farmhouse still shows its timber frame. It must have been built in the
seventeenth century when, so it was thought, there was a shortage of timber
because of the increased use of charcoal (for iron-smelting) and for
shipbuilding. This meant that the house
wrights not only left wider spaces between the vertical posts but also made
greater use of odd shaped pieces of wood and re-used old timbers. In Little Common Farmhouse the curved timbers
on the front and back of the house have clearly been used before for each has
a series of narrow groves along its
length. Until the house was enlarged
this century it had probably remained little altered , with its two rooms up
and down and one large chimney. It was
probably never the home of a farmer until recent times, but that of a
husbandman or smallholder who rented his few acres in the common fields.
On the other side of the Little Common is the
house known as Long Close. It is now encased in bricks, its timber frame and
its beaten earth floor was not covered until after the First World War. Even
then in the living room red tiles were laid directly on to the earth until this
was altered in the 1970's. Beams can now only be seen in the ceilings, but many
more were exposed during those alterations; the thin red bricks of a chimney
breast suggested that it was built or enlarged during the Tudor period.
On the south side of the Great Common stands
Crown Farmhouse, probably the oldest house in the village still used as a
farmhouse. Despite the name its connections with the Crown Estates was quite
short, merely from 1864 to 1932. Its timber frame is visible only on the inside,
but the thick studs and beams, low ceilings and absence of jettying all
indicate it was built in the early seventeenth century. Since then, as the fortunes of its owners and
tenants prospered it was altered or enlarged and encased in a shell of plaster
and warm red bricks. Some of these alterations undoubtedly took place when it
was occupied by one of the Tarrant family. A Robert Tarrant first became tenant
about 1800 and one or more of the family have lived there for most of the years
since. They have lived in Eton Wick for over two hundred years, the earliest
discovered reference to them occurring in the parish registers for the year
1763. Today scores of old farming and household objects, maps and photographs
adorn the walls or are put away in cupboards, linking the present family with
its predecessors.
The fifth of the timber-framed houses is Saddocks
Farm. A great deal is known about this farm and house. The name is first
associated with Eton Wick in a deed of 1539 when a Robert Sadocke , yeoman, of
New Windsor occupied a messuage (house, outbuildings, garden, etc) and lands in
the Wick. At this date the property seems to have been owned by Eton College,
but in the reigns of Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, Robert was leasing the
farm from the Crown. In the archives of Eton College there is a draft of a
grant from the College to King Henry VIII of property including several acres of
land, four messuages and a cottage. One
of these was the Christopher Inn in Eton, two were in Windsor, another in the
tenure of John Butler in *le Weke' and the fourth was occupied by Robert
Saddock. The grant is dated 1546. In 1584 a deed was drawn up concerning a
messuage and garden in le Wyk' described as a 'parcel of Eton (Royal) Manor,
lately bought of Eton College and annexed to the Honour of Windsor'. None of these properties has
positively been identified as Saddocks,
but it is certain that the College was selling to the Crown and it seems likely
that the land and house soon to be known as Saddocks Farm was included. It was undeniably Crown property from the
seventeenth century on wards until it was sold in about 1940.
As Crown property it was subject to a number
of surveys, but in spite of, or maybe because of these, the house presents a tantalising
mystery. Three surveys of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries suggest that
the whole layout of the farmyard and garden was changed about the turn of the
century and the house rebuilt in a new position; yet within the present
farmhouse, so clearly built in Georgian times, is a much smaller cottage. It consists of two rooms up and down with a downstairs
room height of only 6 ft 4 in. The mystery deepens when attention is paid to
the earlier survey of the estates of the late King Charles I under the
direction of Oliver Cromwell. At this date the Royal Manor consisted of three
tenanted farms, Saddocks, Mustians and the Christopher though it is not clear
whether the innkeeper was also the farmer.
There were three houses and a cottage belonging to Saddocks and the
detailed description of them suggests that they had been built at different
periods. The first two, with their timber and earthen walls, and each with a
hall, kitchen and buttery and three chambers above, may well have already been
at least two hundred years old in 1650.
The third house appears to be larger and newer, for its walls were of
timber and brick and there were six rooms downstairs, including a parlour, very
much a status symbol for the small farmer.
But, most intriguing, the small cottage was described as 'built with
timber and flemish walls'; if this meant
flemish bond, the construction of
this cottage was very much 'avant garde'
for this method of laying bricks did not come into general use until the second
half of the seventeenth century.
Where
were these buildings? It is frustrating that none can be identified with
certainty. It is possible that the cottage is Little Common Farmhouse for it is
thought that this was once part of the Crown Estate, or Saddocks Farmhouse
itself.
Of the five houses that have been
demolished this century much less is known and no photographs or plans of them
have been found. Three of them formed one building and may originally have been
one substantial cottage that was subdivided to form three tiny cottages, each
with only one room upstairs and one room down.
When this might have happened has not been discovered, but various deeds
and maps suggest it had occurred before the end of the eighteenth century. To the east of Crown Farm once stood a pair
of cottages, though only one survived into the twentieth century. According to the Royal Commissioners on
Historical Monuments this was built early in the seventeenth century. Whether
it was ever a farmhouse before Mr. Bunce owned it in the 1920's seems doubtful;
in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was part of Crown Farm and
was sometimes occupied by a farm worker. Even less has been discovered about the
last of the known timber-framed houses. It stood just west of the Greyhound Inn
on a plot of land which stretched from the common to Eton Wick Road. It once
belonged to Bell Farm, but in the nineteenth century it was sold and became
known as Hardings Cottage, a name it shared with several others owned by the same Eton family.
