The New Village

All the houses further up the hill and the houses at the junction with the track leading off Common Hill have now disappeared and only Blyth’s Cottage (173) at the end of that track remains, now two dwellings and occupied by James Cox and John Knight.

By 1871 Parker’s Corner Lodge had been joined by a new pair of cottages just along Bostock Lane, one occupied by a blacksmith with the Smithy on the opposite side of the road.  On the other side of the lodge a little way up Common Hill was then only a single house, probably the old Parker’s Farm, occupied by Abraham Parsons, a farmer, with 40 acres.  He had also been the farmer there in 1861, though then with only 30 acres.  Along the track off Common Hill was still Blyth’s Cottages, one of which was occupied by George Buckland, the head keeper, although before the end of the decade the new head gamekeeper’s house had been built at “Daintyland” on the opposite side of the road up the hill and George Buckland moved there.  The large tenement at the old double bend (the real Parker’s Corner) was probably demolished in the 1860s.

In 1881 one of Blyth’s Cottages has acquired an alternative name of “Guyatt’s Cottage”.  Mary Guyatt had lived there in 1851 and perhaps there is some connection with Henry Guyatt who kept the Crown Inn near Malthouse Farm in 1871.  Parker’s Farm, as such, no longer exists and the land is reduced to 5 acres, tenanted by Mrs Lavinia Gold who was the widow of Edward Gold and formerly at the Fishery.  In November 1891 the Rector reports that “Mrs. Gold, at the ripe age of 82, has given up her land and cows but keeps her house, and will we hope live yet many years to enjoy a pension kindly given her by Mr. Benyon.”.  She must have left Englefield not long after that, however, for in December the following year we learn that “Mrs. Gold did not long live with her daughter after leaving”.  Between the OS survey in 1878 and the 1881 census a new pair of houses must have been built for in the census the number at Parker’s Corner is back to seven, although only five are shown on the map.  These were next to the former farm where the large tenement had been.  After Mrs Gold left, the old farm was pulled down and a third house added to the two new ones.

A further pair of houses were also built in Bostock Lane on the other side of the road leading to Mayridge Farm.

The boundary between Englefield and Sulhamstead ran from the Bath Road along Bostock Lane (at one time this part of it was called Sulhamstead Lane) so that while the northeast side of road, including Bostock Lodges, was in Englefield, to the west and southwest lay Sulhamstead.  The 1861 census shows a new house at the farm (the present one) occupied then by the land agent with the old farmhouse still in existence and lived in by George King, a farmer whose tenancy had ceased at Michaelmas - some six months earlier.  The new house became the farmhouse by 1881 after the Agency was built in the Englefield Road and the old one was used to house farm workers but was demolished before the end of the century.  A little down the road leading to the farm, the two pairs of Mayridge Farm Cottages  were built in the 1860s.

Along Bostock Lane from Mayridge Farm towards the Bath Road just after the road to Parker’s Corner was a block of three houses.  These remained inhabited in 1891, but by 1901 they were empty and were known to Miss Winchcomb as “Bostock Castle” and a place to be dreaded at night.  By 1913 they had been demolished.