History

The Farm belonged to the Fernhill estate, the manor house being built around the mid 18th Century, which was situated at the top of the hill just off what is now Station road. Unfortunately, this was destroyed by fire in 1938 whilst being converted into smaller dwellings.

Close by is the old Ice house (restored in 1998) where ice from the lake was stored underground in straw and then taken up the hill by the servants and used in the Summer by the gentry of Fernhill manor house.

The Barns themselves were constructed in 1830 - we can be accurate on this since there is a carving in one of the bricks over the middle of one of the arches in Oak Barn which reads Oct 1 1830 with the initials I.A. who was presumably the bricklayer. Originally it was one large U-shape with the current house as a cart/storage shed, Willow was the dairy, Oak the piggery and Lacewood another storage cart shed. The white cottages opposite (which we don't own) were split into 4 small cottages (you can still see the outline of two of the original doors which have long since been bricked up) where the farm workers used to dwell.

The Farm was a working farm up to about the 1970's where it was sold off with a small amount of land and had various uses including as a Kennels. We converted Oak and Lacewood barns in 2011/12 and set up the business and followed these two barns with Willow and Ash in 2014/15. The barns are all named after trees you can see in the gardens of the buildings (Lacewood is the name given to wood that has been sawn from a London Plane tree due to its speckled effect).