Both Place Farm and Mothersoles were working farms until the middle of the 20th century so the flower arranger decided to use props and flowers to depict this.

Courtesy of Tony Stokes

Courtesy of Tony Stokes

Place Farmhouse

Located beside the road to Ixworth Thorpe. on old maps this is only a track which peters out past the buildings. Place Farm  is Grade II and was built in the early 17thC; it is timber framed with later brick facing from about 1850’s. The original thatch has been replaced with tiles and dormer windows in the roof. The back wing remains a traditional Suffolk design. It has also been known as Bardwell Place Farm, Jeffes Farm and Bobby’s Farm.

History

Early maps show the name of this farm as 'Bardwell Place Farm' so it was probably the home farm for Bardwell Place and in the ownership of the Lords of the Manor of Wykes. The Honourable Augustus Keppel of Elveden, the second son of the Earl of Albermarle was Lord of the Manor of Wykes when he died in 1786, as he had no children his heir was the fourth Earl of Albermarle. Some of the land and property in Bardwell was sold off following Augustus Keppel's death and the Jeffes family who had been long standing tenants probably purchased the farm at this time.

The Jeffes Family

John Jeffes would have been the tenant farmer who purchased the farm in 1786. He died in 1822 age 85 and charged his estate in Bardwell with a yearly payment of £3 to provide dinner on Christmas Day to 10 poor men and 10 poor women. You will find his memorial stone in the nave floor. The farm was inherited by a John Jeffes of Diss and continued in the ownership of the family until at least the mid 1870’s although they did not live in the house.

John Bobby was the tenant farmer of John Jeffes of Diss, probably from 1822 until at least 1851. It was during his tenure in 1824 that John Day's cottage (Place Farm Cottage) was certified for worship, and in 1835 a barn in the occupation of John Bobby, was certified for worship.

George and Martha Addison were tenants of the Jeffes family in 1861 and living in the house with their large family and a servant.

In 1881 the ownership is not known but the house had been divided in to three cottages for the farm workers, it remained so until about 1950. The names of the occupiers can be found in the census's.

In the early 1900’s Henry Middleditch was the owner and two of his sons farmed the land. It was in 1901 that the three families consisting of 14 persons were isolated because of a case of smallpox brought from London by the 20 year old son of Mr Ruddock.

Miss. Joan Edwards later Mrs Catchpole became the owner in about 1936. The farm workers were still housed here until the new council houses in the early 1950’s, the house was then sold to a retired merchant navy officer and his wife.

Ten years later in 1960 it was bought by Andrew Ray who taught chemistry at Thetford Grammar School and his wife who taught at Ixworth.

Hester and Christopher Pemberton bought the house in 1983. Hester, a many talented lady and Christopher a well known artist were for a considerable number of years the church wardens for the church and were heavily involved in the fundraising activities of the 1980’s and 1990’s when the fabric of the church was desperately in need of repair. Christopher also ran a local art group who met in his studio, he left the village in 2007 to be with his family.

Mothersoles

Located in Low Street, Mothersoles is a Grade II timber-framed house, originally built as a hall house in the 15th century, extended in the 16th, 17th and 20th centuries.

Courtesy of Tony Stokes

Occupants and/or owners

The Seffreys

Mothersoles is thought to have been built as a hall house in the fifteenth century by the Seffrey family. The will of John Seffrey in 1499 bequeathed this house to his wife for her life, and afterwards to his two sons. His other son, Simon, who is also mentioned in his will, was probably a monk at Bury Abbey, as a Simon Saffere of Bardwell was sub-prior there when Henry VIII dissolved the Abbey in 1539. Simon was awarded a pension, and went into retirement, dying in 1545.    

In 1522, Suffolk was the seventh wealthiest county in England; the rapidly expanding population led to an increased demand for food, which, together with low rents and wages, ensured rising profits for farmers and landowners. In Bardwell we can see this reflected in the building of new houses, many of which still stand today, and in the alterations made to existing ones. Extensions were built to create additional rooms, chimneys were inserted into the old hall houses, and the open halls boarded across to create upper floors, as the thriving class of yeoman farmers used their prosperity to improve the comfort of their homes. This is what happened with Mothersoles which of course was not known by that name until the 19th century. It may have been the sons of John Seffrey who in the sixteenth century were responsible for adding the chimney and boarding over the hall to create upper rooms. The Seffery family continued to live in the village, and to act as churchwardens and officials of the gild of St Peter and St Paul, for many years, but disappear from the record in the mid-sixteenth century.

John Hyll    

In his will of 1559, John Hyll leaves his 'house called Sefferies' to one of his sons, so he was the owner, though maybe not the occupier, at that time. We do not know when it came into his possession.

Robert Grimwood and Sarah Booty   

We know nothing more until the Tithe Apportionments of 1839 show Robert Grimwood as a farmer, and the owner and occupier. In the church registers there are Grimwoods in Bardwell in the mid 1700’s but we do not know where they lived although perhaps they were in Mothersoles. Robert was still living in the house in 1841, at the age of about 80 together with his housekeeper Sarah Booty, he died in 1849. Sarah Booty, aged 77, was still living in the house in 1851 with her unmarried sister, aged 70 but ten years later she is living with her sister in a house in Ixworth High Street. She died in 1867 age 93 years.

The Mothersoles     

The next recorded occupant was William Mothersole from whom the house takes its present name. William was born about 1800 in Honington; in 1841 he and his father were both farmers in Honington with 2 female servants, one of whom was called Susan Button. In 1851 William is recorded as living in Pakenham as a retired farmer age 48 with a housekeeper called Susan Button age 39. By 1855 they have both moved to Bardwell and in March 1861 William age 60 was farming 65 acres and employing 2 men and 2 boys while Susan Button was still his housekeeper. Susan died later in 1861 and in 1862 William was married for the first time to Louisa Ann Smith who had been born in Surrey. Louisa was 40 years his junior which is likely to have caused some surprise in the village. The Mothersoles continued to live at the house until 1891, when William Mothersole died, at the age of 91.

The Blakes

It has not been confirmed but it seems likely that the farm was sold to the Blakes and incorporated in the Manor Estate after William Mothersole died. In the 1901 census, Thomas Ruddock, a farm bailiff appears to be the occupant of at least part of the house. Mothersole’s Farm was auctioned as lot 16 when the Bardwell Manor Estate was auctioned in 1918. In the auction particulars below the house is clearly divided into two and having only 27 acres is called a “well placed small holding”.

The Middleditches

Henry Middleditch purchased both this property and Bardwell Hall at about this time, 1919. By 1925 Kelly’s directory says that he is one of the three major land owners in the parish. When he retired Mr Middleditch sold Bardwell Hall but Mothersoles was not sold by the Middleditch family until about 1938. During this time it probably remained divided in two.

The Catchpoles

Miss Alice Joan Edwards was the daughter of A. J. Edwards Esq. of Bardwell Manor. In 1937 she was farming the land belonging to Place Farm but did not live in the farm house.  When she married William Catchpole they moved into Mothersoles around 1938. William Catchpole was an engineer who developed one of the first mechanical sugar beet harvesters. Joan Catchpole as she was known continued to farm in Bardwell until her husband died, then in 1976 she retired from farming and moved to Stowlangtoft. Mothersoles was sold with “3½ acres of park like surroundings”. The farmland has now been incorporated into Manor Farm, Ixworth Thorpe. Mrs Catchpole was well known in the village, she was a church warden and a tireless fund raiser for Bardwell Church and the Bury St Edmunds Red Cross Association.