Preston’s Farms: Minsden Farm aka Ladygrove
This complex was designed by Lutyens for Mr H G Fenwick in 1913 as the new farm for Temple
Dinsley. It was known as Home Farm, then Minsden Farm but today it is called Ladygrove.
The following report about Ladygrove was written three years after it was built, during World War 1.
The farm consists of 500 acres of good soil lying on chalk. More than half is arable; the rest is grass.
The farm is especially well-equipped with labour-saving machinery and implements but what makes it
notable is the extent and architectural charm of its buildings. They were built for a definite purpose -
the breeding of pedigree stock, of which the owner, Mr Fenwick, has made a successful hobby. The
place is a good type of pedigree stock farm.
Until 1914 two splendid and well-known bulls and a herd of Aberdeen-Angus cows were kept. This
explains certain details which are not found in a farm of this size. After the outbreak of war it was
thought that wheat, meat and milk production would answer the needs of the country better. Mr
Fenwick sacrificed his hobby, sold off the pedigree stock, turned to the production of food and now
has a mixed herd of seventy animals, the majority being Shorthorns. Over 300 chickens are kept and
a score or so of sheep. Eight heavy Shire horses are kept for farm work.
The way this stock is housed is of interest. Mr Lutyens has been skillful in meeting the agricultural
problem as well as giving delightful shape to the farm buildings. Their features are of charming
simplicity and the whole effect has been won by proportion and line, harmony of colour and balance.
It is none the less reasonable to suggest that there are some small sacrifices to appearances and
some things which could have been better arranged.
The site was favourable. Its front to the north is about fifty yards from the School Lane and the
passer-by may see the farm and its courtyard without entering. St Albans Highway runs along the
east side and gives easy access to the field. The west side is protected by a wood. The stackyard is
remote from the danger of fire and on the south side the shed court opens directly onto pasture land.
St Albans Highway
School Lane
A private road off School Lane leading between two fine specimens of Acer campestris gives access
to the farm (see above). The approach to the farm buildings is flanked by a pair of cottages, one
occupied by the herdsman, the other by the farm foreman. These two men are thus living close to
their work and are on the spot in case of emergency. A lawn on which chickens roam is planted with
fruit trees and gives a quiet, rustic outlook to the cottages. From the road one gets a glimpse of the
farmyard through the archway.
The entrance arch separates the horse stables into two equal parts and gives access to a spacious
courtyard which is surrounded on three sides by sheds for carts and implements, food rooms and
granaries all of which are more or less in direct connection with horses, horse labour and food. Ample
turning space is provided for carts etc.
The main court
The main court, looking north
The main court, looking south
The south side of the main court, from the north-east
This plan although lavish of space, is good, and the aspect of the yard is one of perfect neatness and
order. A striking point here is that no machinery or implements are left lying about, exposed to the
weather - everything is carefully store in proper sheds.
The division of the stables by the arch is justified by its architectural value in a private farm, but it is
not acceptable from a business point of view. It makes the feeding of the horses more difficult and
makes necessary two food stores, two sets of implements, two manure tanks and a complicated
system of liquid evacuation.
The stables are well paved and just sufficiently lighted, but a plaster ceiling would have added much
to the neatness and light. They are ventilated and well kept. In each stable is an iron corn bin, and the
proximity of the food room is practical. The horse shoeing and blacksmith’s shop is close at hand. The
two manure pits do not seem to be in proportion to the number of horses kept. They are neither easily
filled or emptied and they do not prevent the breeding of flies. The liquid manure from the horses is
carried off through pipes provided with manholes into a cesspool situated at the west end of the farm
in a wood, and then lost.
At various points water is available for washing carts, cleaning implements etc. The rest of the
courtyard is exceptionally well planned, the sheds being adapted to the machinery they have to store.
Wider sheds would have been cheaper, providing more loft room, but would have required a different
arrangement of the other buildings.
Between the sheds and the central building is a gate leading to the road at the one end, and to the
pigsties and the stack-yard at the other.
N
The cow yard from the south
The central building is devoted to the requirements of both horses and cattle and to other purposes.
Besides one extra store for machinery, fitted with roll doors, there is an engine room, a tank for the
water supply, the mixing room containing a useful cleaning and cutting machine for roots, and a boiler
house for food, hot water etc. The loft of the whole of the central building is a large granary, to which
two stairways give access from the courtyard, and doors on the first floor level enable grain etc. to be
lowered directly into the carts.
A passage seen near the left staircase leads from the main court to a corridor which runes along the
central building. This corridor communicates with the different rooms of the central building, with the
pigsties and stack-yard, barns, court and cowshed.
At the back three important outbuildings look out on two courts. The barn seems dark and the poultry
houses cold and insufficiently lighted, but the bull and the breeding boxes are spacious and well
lighted and ventilated. Each breeding box contains two compartments. there is no feeding passage
for these boxes and each beast has to be supplied separately which necessitates the cowman
entering the box for feeding purposes, littering and cleaning. A passage enables the cattle to go from
one to the other court when required, and is also used for washing the cattle. The cowshed has
accommodation for twenty-two cows placed two by two in a stall. These stalls also separate the
trough. There vis a feeding passage in front and a service at the back of the animals. The feeding
passage is only about thirty-eight inches wide, which is too narrow to be comfortable. Moreover it is
situated lower than the top of the feeding troughs so that it is dark and not easily kept clean. The
feeding troughs are placed too lose to the stall so that the cattle waste their food and special
precautions have to be taken for preventing this waste. They should have been better. The cattle
stand with their fore-feet on a bed of chalk so that they may not hurt their knees when lying down.
Behind the cattle is a channel for the removal of the liquid droppings which are carried to the centre of
the courts. A good service passage permits easy cleaning of the shed. This shed is well ventilated
and lighted at the side of the court. The solid manure is removed into the courts. Long and inveterate
as is the custom of leaving manure accumulating in the yard, I cannot approve of it. It is certainly not
hygienic and its appearance is untidy. Moreover, its exposure to sun and rain deprives it of much of its
value.
Here again as in the stables, a gutter system carries the liquid to the court and from there it flows,
carrying with it through pipes the richness of the solid manure to a distant spot. Quite as much
expense has thus been incurred in losing the valuable liquid manure as would have covered making a
good manure tank, which would have saved it,
Entry to the main court, looking south
One of the cottages from the entry,
looking north, showing door and
window of the dairy
Each of the three buildings serves a different purpose, so that the uses of the one are not mixed up
with those of the others. This is a very good arrangement. The west wing contains the barn, situated
close to the boiling shed, the piggeries and the stockyard, also the hen-houses and the bull boxes.
The middle building, containing a double row of stalls was intended solely for the young and out-of-
milk stock, while the east wing is appropriated to cows and calves.
The dairy is too far from the cowshed, but its general arrangement is good. Here the two main objects
of farming: the production of crops and the breeding of stock have been separated so that one does
not interfere with the other. They have been arranged in such a way that they do not inconvenience
one another. If practical considerations alone had governed the design of the buildings, the same
accommodation could have been provided on a less extensive plan and at a lower cost; but it must be
remembered that Mr Fenwick wanted not merely farm buildings, but buildings which would accord in
charm with the distinguished design of Temple Dinsley and these Mr Lutyens has given him with his
accustomed mastery.
The east cottage
(The above has been distilled from an article in December 1916 by Henry Vedelmans, author of The
Manual of Manures (1916).
Two years after the article above was published, a news cutting dated May 1918 announced that
Douglas Vickers had taken over the newly-appointed Home Farm:
The 1921 census helpfully describes who of Preston’s work-force were employed at Home Farm.
They included Harry Darton and his sons, William and Charles; George Andrews; Arthur and Mary
White (Mary was working with poultry); Ernest Hammond; Ernest Jenkins together with Leonard
Peters and his son, William.
The land associated with Home Farm in 1945 (note that it includes Crunnells Green House):
Home Farm was sold by Douglas Vickers to the Dewars of Stagenhoe and Michael Dewar (Dorothy’s
husband) raised a herd of Ayrshire cattle here - the weather-vane cow at the farm was painted brown
and white. In 1937, The Dairy reported that Dewar was to sell TT milk directly to his customers.
In 1939, Dewar was described as a managing director of a farm ‘of vital national importance’. The
Register of that year listed firstly William (head herdsman) and Jeannie Baird and then William A (farm
labourer) and Emily Darton as residing at 1 & 2 Home Farm. Significantly, Gladys White (48,
housekeeper) and Vera Coleman (18, land girl) were occupying Crunnells Green House. This was to
be home for many of the the land girls who toiled at Home Farm, including my mother from 1941.
Land girls at Home Farm, Preston in the early 1940’s
Dorothy Dewar of Stagenhoe Park died at North Herts Hospital 1943, leaving an estate of £242,175.
A newspaper of the time ran this story:
Two years later, the Minsden Estate was auctioned. It occupied 1,103 acres and consisted of Minsden
Dairy Farm (as Home Farm was now known), Castle Farm, Little Almshoe Farm, Vicars Grove Farm
and approximately 200 acres of woods. Minsden Farm had cow houses for seventy-two, covered
implement sheds, a grain-drying plant and eight cottages. It included Crunnells Green House.
The Pigott family bought Minsden Farm. A newspaper article from 1955 well describes their family
history:
It was Alec Pigott who managed Minsden Farm, winning several prizes for cows from his Friesian
herd (the weather-vane cow at the farm was now black and white) between 1949 and 1956. In 1951
there was a small fire on the farm:
Then, in 1973, once again Minsden Farm was on the market:
By 1984, the farm had evolved into a stud-farm owned by Ian Southcott and the make-over was
completed by a name change to Ladygrove. The following year, the property was again offered to the
market.
The ‘about £1 million’ was optimistic:
October 1985,
Country Life
January 1987,
Country Life
Mr Hayhurst was later living in Preston in 2001.
I took these photographs of Ladygrove in 2010:
The buildings have solid walls (with no cavity) in English bond, with alternate rows of ‘headers’ and
‘stretchers’. The brickwork is dark red with dressing of a lighter red. The roofs are steep and are of
hand-made red tiles.
The farm is compactly laid out with single and 1½ storey buildings (B and C) arranged around a
courtyard and dairy complex. This is open-ended to the south. There are two cottages (A) to the
north. Access to the courtyard was originally between these cottages, through an archway. This is
part of a two-storey, red-roofed cross range and perched on top of the archway is a wind-vane
featuring a cow.
The view towards the two cottages from School Lane is symmetrical. The identical, detached homes
are 1½ storeys high with steeply pitched mansard roofs of hand-made red tiles. At the eaves are
hipped dormers. At ground level are flush, wooden, two-lights casement windows beneath arches.
Each cottage has a typical Lutyens tall-slab central chimney with his trademark waisted top and
clasping corner pilasters. To the south and north, the chimneys have projecting panels.
In 1945, the cottages had two living rooms, kitchen, scullery, bathroom, three bedrooms and an
outside barn/wash-house. To the east of the courtyard are now stables. In 1945, there were nine calf
pens, five calving boxes and a seven-bay hovel.
Today, on the west side of the courtyard there are more stables but sixty years ago there were four
calving boxes, an office, two stores and a garage. In the centre of the courtyard is Dairy Cottage
which is surrounded by stables. In 1945, the building comprised a dairy, washing room, butter room,
sterilizing room with a Hallmark automatic refrigerator and boiler house. By 1970, the dairy had fallen
derelict, but then it was renovated, re-roofed and converted following the design of the other cottages.
A wall was built across the archway blocking off the approach between the two cottages. To the south
of the courtyard is a cattle yard with three lower-pitched roofs. In 1945, these were made up by two
cow-houses with 72 ties, a washing and a grinding room, seven bull boxes, an insemination room and
stores.
By 2023, Lutyens’ barns had been converted into residential homes.
The National Farm Survey of Home Farm recorded these observations:
It’s tenant was Mr M B U Dewar and its manager was Mr W K Hubble.
There was no infestation of rabbits or moles, nor any heavy infestation with weeds. Water supply to
the farmhouse, farm buildings and fields was by well and pipe. The farm’s management was rated as
‘A’ (out of A B or C). The condition of the arable land and pasture was ‘Fair’ and fertilizer was used ‘to
some extent’ on arable and grassland.
The farm was looking neglected in around 1976 when the TV series, The Peacemaker, was filmed
there:
