Pool Orchard, Barretts Lane

The Grade II-listed house known today as Pool Orchard is now the largest of the four historic dwellings on Barratts Lane, but it started life as one of two cottages built alongside the footpath from the common at Balsall to Berkswell village. A working farm until at least the 1950s, its documentary history can be traced to 1703, although it was probably built rather earlier.

Pool Orchard on a frosty winter morning (2023)

Sharps Farm (18th century)

The first record we can confidently identify with today’s Pool Orchard is from 1703, when its owner William George, a yeoman farmer, took out a mortgage for

a messuage, tenement or cottage and four closes or enclosed grounds of arable meadow and pasture ground called … Poole Orchard or Poole feild containing … 11 Acres … in Oldnall End, and now occupied by the said William George.1

After William’s death, Richard George – perhaps his son – sold the farm to a wealthy Berkswell weaver called Thomas Docker, who was buying up property in Oldnall End. In 1779, Docker wrote his will, distributing his many local properties among his many sons. To his fourth son John, he left:

a house and lands I bought of Richard George and it goes by the name of Sharps Farm.2

Richard George was from the neighbouring hamlet of Balsall and he had died in 1770, so that is the latest possible date of Thomas’s purchase.3 The name Sharps Farm gives us a clue as to possible previous owners or tenants. Sharp isn’t a common local name, but John and Ann Sharp may have lived locally; Ann’s daughter Mary lived just across the fields at Emscote after her own marriage in 1718.4 Could they have been the tenants? While the Sharps have left few traces, their name survived in the field below the house, still known as Sharp Close at the time of the 1839 Tithe Apportionment.

Thomas Docker died in 1783 and his sons quickly sold off his estate, including the former Sharps Farm:

Lot IV: A freehold Estate in the Parish of Berkswell near to Balsall Common, consisting of a House, Barn and other Out-Buildings, Yard, Garden, and four Pieces of Land, containing about twelve Acres, in the Tenure of Mr Job Findall [sic; Job Findon was a busy local grazier who held tenancies at Manor Cottage and Meeting House Lane, among others].5

William & Mary Watson (1784-1811)

The purchaser was another investor, William Elliott Esquire of Coventry. He let the former Sharps farm to William and Mary Watson, part of the large local family whose home is today’s Brickmaker’s Arms. William Watson, or perhaps his younger nephew and namesake, also farmed Sunnyside Farm next door from 1781 to 1801. Elliott died in December 1797,6 leaving the farm to his wife, who quickly sold it off:

Lot 6. All that MESSUAGE or TENEMENT, with the several CLOSES or Inclosed GROUNDS thereto belonging, containing together, by Estimation, nine Acres or thereabouts (more or less), situate and lying within the Parish of BERKESWELL … and now in the Tenure of William Watson and others, under a Lease with proper Covenants, which will expire on the 29th of September, 1811.

William Watson died in 1809, but Mary saw out the lease. Three days before it was due to end, on 23 September 1811, she auctioned off all her belongings, including household furniture, ‘a fat pig,’ ‘an incalved heifer,’ and ‘a variety of good and clean kitchen requisites’.7 Mary relocated to Coventry, where she lived out her final years.8

The Lowe-Gilbert Family, 1798-1872

The farm’s new owner was a widow called Hannah Lowe or Loe from Wootton Green, just over the parish boundary with Balsall. Born Hannah Clarke in Berkswell, she had lost her husband, Edward Loe, in 1791, leaving her with a seven-year-old daughter, also Hannah.9 The Enclosure Map of 1802 marks the farm as ‘Hannah Loe’s Land‘; it and the Tithe Apportionment (1839) show us the exact scope of the estate Hannah purchased, which at nine or ten acres was one of Berkswell’s smallest.

The map below shows Hannah Loe’s property marked in orange (Sharp Close is in the top left corner, alongside Barratts Lane). The field marked in yellow was in separate ownership, and was known as ‘Burnt [Cot] Close’ after the neighbouring cottage, which had burnt down before 1686. The red arrow shows us the approximate position from which the postcard view was taken in 1908, looking northeast along the lane to Berkswell village.

Hannah did not live at the farm, but at her family home in Wootton Green, along with her daughter Hannah, son in law Joseph Gilbert, and their six children. After Mary Watson left in 1811, the Loe-Gilberts farmed the land, while letting out the farmhouse. The 1839 Tithe Apportionment shows Joseph Gilbert as owner-occupier of the five closes, while William Riley was living in the farmhouse.

When Hannah Loe died in 1823, she made arrangements for her daughter to retain the estate as tenant for life.10 The Gilberts moved away to Stretton on Dunsmore, but continued to let out the property, although it seems to have been unoccupied at the time of the 1841 census. In 1851 it was home to two elderly farm labourers, John Thorneycroft and his boarder John Elvins, and by 1861, the tenants were William and Ann Hadland, who also farmed its (now) 11 acres.11

Hannah Gilbert died in 1873 at the age of 87 and her heirs quickly put the farm up for auction:

Small Compact Freehold and Copyhold Estate. Four closes of freehold old turf land, situate close to the Berkeswell station, together with good DWELLING HOUSE, barn, cow pen, hovel, piggeries, and other Outbuildings, the whole containing 10a … together with a piece of rich ARABLE COPYHOLD LAND, situate near to the above, containing 3R 26P, the whole now in the occupation of Mr William Hadland at the Annual Rental of £30.12

Later Years

We don’t yet know who bought the property in 1873, but the Hadland family stayed for almost half a century, from 1861 (or earlier) until William Hadland’s death in 1903.13 With the Hadlands’ departure it seems that the land was again let out separately from the farmhouse. Charles and Hannah Satchwell were the tenants from at least 1911 until 1925; Charles Satchwell was not a farmer, but a well-known local carrier, transporting people and goods between Berkswell and Coventry. It may have been the Satchwells who restored the historic name Pool Orchard; the first census to use the name is the 1921 census.

The farm was put up for sale again in May 1954, when the cottage was tenanted but the farmland was not:

Sale by private treaty. The Attractive Small PASTURE HOLDING, Pool Orchard, Barrett’s Lane. Having an area of 9 acres 0 roods 25 perches and comprising cottage let on weekly tenancy producing £33 16s per annum gross. Farm buildings include 2-stall stable. loose pen, 4-tie cowshed, four good pigsties, hay pen and wagon hovel. Farm buildings and land are offered with Vacant Possession. The cottage is subject to existing tenancy.14

Today Pool Orchard is the grandest of the four historic properties on Barratt’s Lane, but if you look closely, you can still glimpse the core of the little cottage built alongside the footpath more than 300 years ago.

Burnt Close, the site of Pool Orchard’s long-lost neighbour cottage

Notes

  1. Mortgage of Messuage and closes at Oldnall End. 7 Sep. 1703. Warks County Record Office, CR 0373/1. ↩︎
  2. Will of Thomas Docker of Berkswell, weaver. 15 Feb. 1779. Lichfield Consistory Court. ↩︎
  3. Burial of Richard George of Balsall. 17 May 1770. Hampton in Arden, Warwickshire. ↩︎
  4. Marriage of Ralph Byfield and Mary Chatway. 2 Feb. 1718. St John the Baptist, Berkswell. ↩︎
  5. ‘Lot IV’. Aris’s Birmingham Gazette, 1 Mar. 1784: 4. ↩︎
  6. Burial of William Elliott, Esq., of Coventry. 7 Dec. 1797. Barford, Warwickshire; Will of William Elliott, Esq., of Coventry. 28 Nov. 1797. PCC London. ↩︎
  7. ‘To be Sold by Auction,’ Coventry Standard, 16 Sep. 1811: 2. ↩︎
  8. Burial of William Watson of Berkswell. 18 January 1809. St John the Baptist, Berkswell; Burial of Mary, widow of William Watson, of Coventry, age 69. 6 Feb. 1814. St John the Baptist, Berkswell. ↩︎
  9. Burial of Edward Loe of Wootton Green, Balsall. 28 June 1791. St John the Baptist, Berkswell. ↩︎
  10. Burial of Hannah Lowe of Balsall. 30 Apr. 1823. St John the Baptist, Berkswell; ‘Reversionary Freehold,’ Leamington Spa Courier, 8 Nov. 1851: 3. ↩︎
  11. Ann, nee Parker, was the daughter of John and niece of Joseph Parker who lived on Meeting House Lane. ↩︎
  12. ‘Small Compact Freehold and Copyhold Estate,’ Leamington Spa Courier, 14 Jun. 1873: 1. ↩︎
  13. Burial of William Hadland of Berkswell, age 76. 25 February 1903. St John the Baptist, Berkswell. ↩︎
  14. ‘Sale by Private Treaty.’ Coventry Evening Telegraph, 29 May 1954: 8. ↩︎