East End Farm

East End Farm is now awaiting redevelopment but it may have been the site of the original home of the Hippisley family in the East End of Chewton Mendip. The senior branch of the Hippisley family were originally based in Emborough before they moved to Ston Easton and East End is a close to Emborough as it is to the centre of Chewton Mendip. Terry Green was the last person to farm at East End Farm by which time it was already part of the Waldegrave estate.

This extract from the 1794 maps shows the site of what is now East End Farm. The T shaped building on the far left is probably the house shown above and what looks like orchard is now a farmyard. The L shaped building may be the  large barn that is still standing but looks completely different and appears to be facing the wrong way. It may have been built in 1802 as a tithe barn.  There are buildings shown on the other side of the road that are no longer standing but may have been another farm or cottages for the workers. They way have been Yorks Farm in East End.

There is another farm called Hippisley Farm about 100 metres away which was called East End farm on the 1902 map and there is also a Lower East End farm although both are now private houses. There may have been a farm or barn at the end of Honeywell Lane which is now just a ruin. There may have been a an (unnamed) farm based on what is now a row of cottages. Mannings may have been another farm.<

The detail of the front door shows that the farm house was designed to be reasonably impressive. The most probable explanation is that a member of the Hippisley family decided to build a new house but there are other possibilities so dating the architectural feature may help to identify who built the house.  The general style is Georgian and  18th century churchwardens accounts and poor book record a number of families paying rates for holdings in East End.

Some of the families may have been living in Ston Easton or Emborough and paying rates for land they rented and farmed in East End. It is believed some of the people were absentee landlords for at least some of the time so they can be discounted. Some of the people only appear on a few occasions or it is possible that some of the names are transcription errors. However there are a relatively small number of people who are believed to have lived in East End who would have had the money to build a house of this kind.

Culliford,  Curtis,  Taswell  and York[e] are the most likely people to have built themselves a house of this stature in the middle to late 18th century in East End. The Curtis and Yorke families were both represented in West End as well and it may not be coincidence that Rookery Farm has a similar front door.

The list of people paying rates inlcudes Adams , Anstee, Attwood, Bath, Beach, Board, Broadribb, Brown, Buck, Bull, Burge, Burk, Burrows, Chelves, Chester, Clark[e], Cole, Cramphoine, Culliford, Curtis, Dawes, Dory, Dudden, Fforshan, Fiiler/Fillis, Frapell,  Green (no relation to Terry!), Hart, two or three members of the Hippisley family at any one time, Hole, House, Kingsmill, Lasper/Lasbury, Mogg, Moor[e], Newman, Olddames, Pain/Payne, Palmer, Phelps, Phillips (this may have been an alternative spelling for Filer/Fillis), Plaister, Plenty, Salvidge/Savage, Scutt/Scott, Secombe, Sevier, Sheppard/Shippard, Smith, Taswell, Thistle/Thisoll/Thrisell, Thiery, Tucker, Turner, Waldegrave, Walker, Wallis, Webb, West, Woodborne, Wright and York[e].

What is now called East End Lane connects East End to Nedge and continues down to the Bathway cross roads.The 1794 map shos Jenks Lane (pronounced Jinks Lane) which was probably derived from the Jenkins family name.  Acridge Lane  leads from Cutlers Green to Bathway.

George Miles was the tenant in the 1890s and James Watts too over in 1901. Ted James took over in the 1930s. The Candy family were evacuated to Chewton Mendip in WW2 and stayed at East End Farm.