Manor Farm
The farmhouse in Town Green Road is still home to descendants of George Peters who took the tenancy of Manor farm in 1898, but they have retained only twenty- seven of the farm’s former 446 acres and these are cultivated by farmers from neighbouring parishes. Most of the 18th century barns survive, but in 2012 the farm yard, once occupied by livestock and farm machinery, is grassed over and features a trampoline rather than tractors.
Dating back to the 17th century
The white brick late 19th century front of the farmhouse hides a much older timber framed building that would have fronted onto the Town Green when it was first built. The date 1697 is carved into an interior wall, but there is evidence that a farmhouse stood here well before that time. The Chicheley Estate map, drawn in 1686 when Thomas Chicheley owned Orwell manor, shows that a member of the well-to-do Butler family was the tenant farmer here.
Details of the tenants and their acreage from that time to the mid 19th century are still to be traced, but we know that Henry Sworder was the farmer who had the brick garden wall built in 1865, separating his property from what was left of the Green. You can see his initials HS and the date 1865 cut into one of the bricks.
The 20th century history of this and the other Orwell farms is traceable thanks to Government records held at the Public Record office. A nation-wide property survey in 1910 shows that George Peters was farming 446 acres 3 roods 37 perches, making Manor Farm second only to Malton in size. The farm account book for 1898 to 1908 shows George to have been an industrious farmer, trading in beef cattle and pigs, and growing wheat, barley, oats and fodder crops such as mangolds and beans. Sainfoin, lucerne and clover were sown, either to be fed to livestock, or to be harvested as seed, which usually fetched a good price.
George bought new work horses in most years and items of harness appear regularly in the account book. Wheat and barley were cut with a horse-drawn binder and the sheaves were set up in ‘shocks’ in the fields until they were dry enough to build into stacks. The local steam engine contractor, George Flack, was hired to carry out the heavier cultivation on the farm, as well as the threshing of the stacked corn.
On George Peter’s death in 1924 the tenancy of Manor Farm was taken over by his son, H.G. Peters, who bought the farm from the Barrington Estate in 1926. The wartime National Farm survey of 1941 shows that H.G. was making good use of fertilisers and machinery, including four tractors, but still had five working horses. The Big Meadow, on Fishers Lane, was ploughed up on Government orders for the growing of wheat. The farm employed eleven full-time workers, with three women coming in on a casual basis at busy times.
Image: The extent of Manor farm in 1910 & 1941, from government surveys
The Big Meadow, on Fishers Lane, was ploughed up on Government orders for the growing of wheat.H.G. Peter’s son-in-law, Alan Miller, gradually took over the running of Manor Farm after he returned from military service in 1947. Pigs, cattle and poultry were still kept, but working horses had all but disappeared and a combine harvester was in use. Local threshing contractor S.E. Flack visited Manor Farm with his steam engine and threshing drum for the last time in 1955. A note in the farm diary, recording the use of a horse for pulling a roller over a new crop, is the last mention of the use of horsepower here.
In the mid 1950s clover and sainfoin, to feed the livestock, were still an important part of the crop rotation and the farm still grew potatoes, as it had been required to do by the Ministry of Agriculture during the war, but the traditional corn harvest tasks of stack building and corn threshing had been made redundant by the combine harvester. Alan and his father-in-law foresaw that grain would be handled in bulk in future, and in 1954 they built a bulk grain store, with fans and heaters to dry the grain.
In 1965 Alan formed a partnership with his cousin Trevor Miller, of Grove Farm with a view to cutting costs by sharing equipment and labour and to building up White Arch Fruit Farm, established by Trevor’s father in 1935. The 1960s were very successful years for Manor Farm, but poor harvests due to bad weather in the 1970s, together with the need to sell land to meet death duties, led to a gradual decline in the farm’s profitability. Alan Miller’s son in law and successor took only one crop in 2000, harvesting 178 acres of barley and leaving 21 acres uncultivated as set-aside land. As agriculture in general went through hard times in the following years more land was sold and centuries of farming at Manor Farm came to an end.
