Farms, Farmers & Small Holders

Farmers and Farms Names

Table of Farmers

Click on a name to find out more information.

Charles Hood

Had a farm on New Road, later to become Rannochs

Oscar Durrant

Before the war Oscar Durrant ran a poultry business from Hillcroft on Wetherden Road; there was also saddlery and harness-making here (Eustace Durrant?).

George Cartwright

The farmstead was sited along the Ashfield Road opposite to Grove Lane, where Lyle Court is now. In about 1935 George Cartwright went into poultry, producing eggs for the John Rannoch’s egg packing station in New Road. Previously there had been a willow cricket bat workshop here, then a joinery, and later the site was used by Tate & Lyle.

Harry Pearl

Poultry smallholder in Hawk End Lane

Arthur Robinson

Poultry smallholder at Apple Tree Cottage in Hawk End Lane.

Kemp & Sons

12 acres between Oak Lane and White House Farm were used as holding meadows by Kemp & Sons, the cattle breeders. The cattle arrived in Elmswell by railway,were weighed at Baker’s weighbridge before being herded up the Ashfield Road to these meadows, where they were looked after by Kemps’ local manager [who lived in Rose Lane?]. When prices were good at the livestock markets (Bury, Stowmarket, Diss, Ipswich, Colchester), they were herded to the cattle pens by the railway to await railway transport to market.

Reuben King

He had about 4 acres along Ashfield Road, where Berisford Drive now is, and raised poultry on a part-time basis, working in Stowmarket in the daytime.

Eric Seaman

recorded in 1937 as a smallholder raising poultry.

Reed family

(The Grange)

Buggs Farm

Mentioned in the 1871 census, John and Hannah Lusher, somewhere out along the Ashfield Road; in 1891 George and Harriett Hammond (“farm steward”); in 1901 “Boggs Farm”, Horace and Helen Thompkin. Nobody called Buggs appears in these censuses, though the occupiers may have been renting from a landowner living elsewhere – was this why in the 1911 census a Fred & Emily Buggs were recorded as farmers in “The Street”, having come from Earl Stonham, maybe, to farm land owned in the family?

Cubbits Hall Farm

This farm lay off Eastwood Lane, near the present water tower and former airfield. In 1937 it was being farmed by Archie Reis,but when the US bomber base was built he had to give up much of his land, and the farmhouse was demolished as it was too close to the runway. Reis moved over to Willow Wood farmhouse, but continued to farm the few acres of Cubbits Hall which had not been requisitioned. [Mention re 1921 drought.] In the 1901 census it was Cubits Hall, apparently a laundry run by the Crick family. Charles and Mary Coe farmed here in 1871 and probably until his death in April 1882, renting the farm from a Mr Stebbings, of Bury. However the Coes appear in the 1882 census as being at “Eastwood Lane Farm House”, surely the same place? No mention in 1911: Willam Bennett farms East Wood Farm, but then he was there in 1901 too.