Barretts Lane Farm, aka Dockers in the Hole, aka Old Farm

This Grade II listed farmhouse and its Grade II listed barn stand amid fields at the far, largely undeveloped end of one of Berkswell’s oldest roads, Barretts Lane. Once owned by the Bishop family of Nailcot Hall, it was bequeathed by them to Berkswell Charities and the rents from its fields were used to fund apprenticeships for poor local children. Those fields are soon to disappear beneath one of the region’s largest proposed housing developments.

Barretts Lane Farm (2022). Original farmhouse to the right

Early Years: the Bishop-Whitehead Family

In June 1658, the wealthy Berkswell yeoman Richard Bishop wrote his will. He left his own home, Nailcot Farm (now Nailcote Hall), to his grandson John Whitehead, but to his eldest son Edmund he bequeathed my messuage or tenement … in Oldnall Ende in Barkswell … now in the tenure … of Richard Phillips my undertenant.1 This was the farmhouse known today as Barretts Lane Farm.

Edmund Bishop predeceased his father, and his own will of January 1667, he bequeathed my house in Oldnolle End wherein Richard Phillips now dwelleth … to William Milles my nephew and his heirs, with the stipulation that they were to pay 40s of the rent to the churchwardens of Berkswell for the use of the poor of the said parish.2 However, as his father was still alive, the farmhouse was not yet Edmund’s to bequeath, and was disposed of according to Richard’s will, which left it to his daughters, Edmund’s sisters.

The Bishop daughters all lived in Bedworth and had no need of the house, so in June 1671, they sold it to their nephew, Richard’s grandson John Whitehead, who had inherited Nailcot Farm on Richard’s death in 1669.3 The sale document records that John paid ‘four score pounds’ for a messuage or tenement and commons thereunto belonging, including five closes or pasture grounds thereunto adjoining called Geshyngtons and Burchfeilds.4

When John Whitehead wrote his own will in March 1693, he left my … messuage or tenement … and alsoe all & every the lands closes pastures & grounds thereto belonging … in Oldnall End to the Churchwardens of Berkswell, with the stipulation that:

They … shall yearly & every yeare forever hereafter layout … one poore child an inhabitant of Barkswell … Male or Female An apprentice the sum of foure pounds & tenn shilleing of lawfull English money yearly & every yeare out of the rents profits of the said last above mentioned messuage or tenement.5

When John died in May 1701, the Churchwardens put the bequest into practice. The first child to benefit, in September 1702, was Edward Boston or Bostin, whose carpenter father William had died two years earlier. Edward, now 14, was apprenticed to a Coventry weaver and clothier called John Palmer.6

Tenants: the Phillips-Hunt Family

The farm’s tenants at the time of Richard Bishop’s will in 1658 were Richard and Ephrah (or Afree) Phillips and their family. A year later, their daughter, also Afree, married Robert Hunt at Berkswell Church.7 The young couple likely moved in with Afree’s parents, as the hearth tax for 1663 and 1671 doesn’t mention Robert Hunt, but records Richard Phillips senior occupying a home with one taxable fireplace. By 1673, Afree Hunt and her parents had all died, and the tenancy had passed to Afree’s husband Robert. The probate inventory taken by his neighbours, (including John Brooke of Sunnyside Farm) after his death in 1704 gives us a glimpse of life in the farmhouse at this time.8

The Hunt family home was a two up, two down cottage, with an adjoining buttery. The ground floor contained the hall, parlour and buttery, while the two upstairs rooms were recorded as Far Chamber and Heather (Hither?) Chamber. The Hall was the primary living space, with a table, two forms (benches), three chairs, and the family’s pewter and brass. The other three main rooms, including the ground-floor Parlour, were used for a combination of sleeping and storage. The Parlour, for example, contained a bedstead and blankets, a chest, a box, and both ‘raw’ and ‘white’ yarn. Altogether, the Hunts had five bedsteads, including three in a single upstairs room, which suggests a large, perhaps multigenerational household.

Docker’s in the Hole

After Robert Hunt’s death in 1704, the cottage’s history goes quiet until almost a century later, when it re-emerges under the new name of Docker’s in the Hole. This is the name it has on the 1802 Enclosure Map, when the tenant was James Docker, who is recorded on 1790s land tax registers as ‘James Docker in the Hole’.

James Docker was a member of the large local family who gave their name to Dockers Lane (today’s Station Road), although his precise connection with other Dockers isn’t clear. He was a weaver and farmer, who had two children with his wife Elizabeth, including a son, also James, who ran the village stores on the corner of Sunnyside Lane for more than 25 years. His grandson George Docker was briefly the tenant of neighbouring Sunnyside Farm. James senior died in 1815, and Elizabeth in 1821.

Later History: from Old Farm to Barretts Lane

In 1835, a charity commission report describes the the property as ‘a farmhouse and outbuildings, and 13A 3R 14P of land, called the Old or Hole Farm, now let to William Rymell, as yearly tenant, at the rent of 18L per annum’.9 William was originally from Ettington; he and his wife Elizabeth Arch may have come to Berkswell through a family connection, as Elizabeth was a member of the Arch family of Barford, an 18th-century offshoot of the ancient Arch family of Berkswell. The Rymells stayed at the farm until William’s death in 1862, when Elizabeth moved to Berkswell Almshouses.

Known for much of the 19th century as ‘The Old Farm,’ by 1894, the farm had acquired the name we know it by today.10 Barratts Lane Farm has been home to many tenants throughout the years, including the Barnwells (1871-1888), the Arches (1891-1894), and the Preeces. The longest-serving tenants during the 20th century were the Cotons, who took on the farm in 1935. They were still in residence in 1990, when a devasting barn fire spread to overhead power lines, which according to one local newspaper, ‘plunged Balsall Common into darkness’.11

Today, the original farmhouse, newly and sympathetically renovated, sits at the centre of a small development, with several farm buildings already converted and planning permission granted in July 2024 to convert the dilapidated Grade II-listed barn. Once the development of the surrounding fields goes ahead, the isolated position that led 18th-century villagers to describe the homestead as ‘in the hole’ will be a distant memory.

Notes

  1. 19 June 1658. Will of Richard Bishop of Berkswell, yeoman. Probate 19 October 1669, Coventry. ↩︎
  2. Undated. Will of Edmund Bishopp of Berkswell. Probate 1 January 1667, Consistory Court of Lichfield and Coventry. ↩︎
  3. 30 June 1671. Feoffment from John Greaves of Bedworth, gent, and others to John Whitehead of Berkswell, yeoman. Warwick Record Office, DR 0613/228/1. ↩︎
  4. 30 June 1671. Feoffment from John Greaves of Bedworth, gent, and others to John Whitehead of Berkswell, yeoman. Warwick Record Office, DR 0613/228/1. ↩︎
  5. 8 March 1693. Will of John Whitehead of Berkswell, Gent. Probate 13 Sep. 1701, Lichfield. ↩︎
  6. 29 September 1702. Apprenticeship Indenture. Edward BOSTON to John PALMER. Warwick Record Officer, DR 0613/228/2. ↩︎
  7. 17 December 1659. St John’s Berkswell. Marriage of Robert HUNT and Afree PHILLIPS. ↩︎
  8. 6 March 1704. Inventory of the goods of Robert HUNT, labourer. Probate 3 May 1704, Coleshill. ↩︎
  9. ‘Further Report of the Commissioners (County of Warwick)’, in Reports from Commissioners Vol. XXI, Part II (19 Feb-10 Sep 1835): 1104. ↩︎
  10. ‘Barratt’s-Lane Farm,’ Coventry Herald, 12 Jan. 1894: 4. ↩︎
  11. ‘Homes Blacked Out,’ Coventry Evening Telegraph, 11 Jul. 1990: 2. ↩︎