Preston’s Farms: Offley Holes Farm
The first reference found that relates to Offley Holes Farm is by JEB Glover in Place Names of
Hertfordshire. He asserts that a document at Trinity College, Cambridge (dated 1650) which mentions
‘Offleyholes’ is a reference to the farm.
On 20 April 1664, there was a survey of the holdings of the Manor of Temple Dinsley. Included were
several of the fields and springs that were mentioned later in the early 1700s in connection with Offley
Holes Farm – Sutfield (sic) with two springs of wood (100 acres); Westwood (119 a); Westwood
Closes (32 a); Cherry Tree Closes (16 a), three springs lying near Cherry Tree Closes; Offley Holes
(260 a) and Lodge Close (6 a).
This property was included in the ‘anciently reputed parcel of the said Manor of Dinsley’. It was not
included in the list of copyholders – which indicates it was not leased out at the time but was part of
the Lord’s demesne.
The survey also noted John Hurst (who was living in Windmill Field in the parish of Kings Walden) as
renting forty-five acres at Offley Holes and Pitchley.
The existence of a farm at Offley Holes is confirmed by a run of documents from 1654 to 1701 when
Sir Edwin Sadleir, Lord of the Manor of Temple Dinsley, sought to confirm the title of the ‘capital
messuage (i.e. main dwelling) or farm house called Offley Holes’ and its associated land. Sadleir had
a crushing debt-mountain (which required a solution by Act of Parliament) and that resulted in the
sale of Temple Dinsley and Offley Holes Farm. The documents provide valuable information about
Offley Holes Farm.
At the turn of the 1700s, the farm was owned by Sir Edwin Sadleir. It’s lease was held by the
triumvirate of Richard Buckby, Benedict Ithell and Huntley Bigg. The farmers past and present
included John Hobbs (who paid an annual rent of £148 11/-) and the incumbent, John North (£170).
Sadleir had also raised a mortgage of £2,000 on part of this property from James Oades.
Sadleir urged the lessees to sell the property ‘for the best price’ and ‘with all convenient speed’. The
purchaser, for a price of £3,050, was Richard Petty of St Paul, Covent Garden, London.
Offley Holes Farm included barns, stables, out-houses, dove-houses, buildings, yards, orchards,
gardens etc. The holding comprised Offley Holes Grounds, Cherry Tree Closes, Lodge Close and
Scotts Close (these four closes had 300 fields); Suttfield (100 fields) and Westwood Closes (five
fields totaling fifty acres). In addition, several copses and springs were made up the holding –
Scotwick Spring, Suttfield Spring, Dell Spring in Suttfield, Round Spring (lying at the end of Pinnacle
Hill), the spring by Dearmers Ground (which fed Cherry Tree Close) and Long Spring ( which lay next
to Colliers Bank).
Even today some of these names appear on Ordnance Survey maps - Pinnacle Hill (north-west of the
farm); Scotswick Spring (west) and Sootfield Springs (south).
North Herts DC estimates that Offley Holes Farm was built in 1700. Today’s owner was told that the
present building was erected in around 1710. Yet, as shown above, there was a farm at Offley in the
1650s, so either it was pulled down and replaced or it was modified early in the eighteenth century.
Offley Holes Farm in the eighteenth century
The run of Hitchin Rates Books provides the names of four occupants of the Farm in the eighteenth
century:
1725 – 1732 Joseph Roberts
Joseph also leased Hunsden House (Castle Farm) with its land which he sold to Robert Hinde in
1723. Robert Sutherland (a previous resident of The Wilderness, Chequers Lane) mentions that his
family understood that The Wilderness and its associated land which lie beside Castle Farm, were
originally part of the Offley Holes Estate.
1733 – 1752 John Field
1751 – 1778 Edward Kitchener
There were links between the Kitchener family and Thomas Harwood and the Dartons of Temple
Dinsley. Edward Kitchener (described as a ‘yeoman’) married Mary Larkin at St Mary, Hitchin on 12
April 1752. He served as a churchwarden of Hitchin parish in 1759. In 1787, Thomas Harwood left a
total legacy of £200 to his ‘friend’ Edward Kitchener and £400 to his niece, Sarah Kitchener, ‘wife of
Benjamin’. Sarah’s maiden name was Darton and she married Benjamin, the eldest son of Edward
Kitchener (baptised in 1753; therefore likely born at Offley Holes) at Knebworth on 19 January 1782.
The couple settled at Stevenage.
Edward Kitchener died at Stevenage aged 92 in February 1818.
Rose Beckford
The next name to appear at Offley Holes in the Rates Book is Rose Beckford in 1781. Rose was born
in 1750, probably in Jamaica. He was the illegitimate son of William Beckford (1709 –1770). His
mother was Hannah Maxwell, his father’s ‘favourite mistress’. William was a well-known political
figure in eighteenth century London who twice held the office of Lord Mayor. His vast wealth came
largely from his Jamaican sugar plantations. On his death, William left Rose a legacy.
In 1791, Rose added to his estate by purchasing ‘Crosswick’ (a house at Preston) and Pitchley Close
(a field of three acres in Kings Walden parish). In 1798, the Offley Holes estate included land in three
parishes - Hitchin, Ippollitts and Kings Walden.
It transpired that in 1791, while at Offley Holes, Rose fathered a daughter (later named as Rose
Hannah Beckford) who was secreted away ‘unprotected and unprovided for’ in a ‘remote
Bedfordshire village’.
In around 1795, Beckford transacted business that was to have lasting repercussions on the
ownership of Offley Holes Farm. He mortgaged the estate (which was valued at £7,000) to Robert
Curling (who also had interests in Jamaica).
A remarkable episode in 1799 adds to our knowledge of the estate (and the times!). At the Old Bailey,
a fourteen-year-old boy, Robert Walker, was found guilty of stealing nineteen wether sheep (valued at
£25) from Rose Beckford on 22 March and driving them to London! They were identified by
Beckford’s bailiff, William Willis from the brand, ‘R B’.
The following year, Beckford leased a plantation at Jamaica with its slaves for one year for £10,000.
The Preston census of 1801 shows Beckford at Offley Holes with one female also in residence, who
was possibly a housekeeper. Then, Beckford died on 28 August 1801 and was buried at St Mary,
Hitchin on 4 September.
Now arose the vexed question of how to administer his convoluted estate. These murky waters were
created by his illegitimacy, and his apparently being childless and intestate. However, it later became
evident that there was a daughter and that Beckford had made a will - dated 15 November 1770. In it,
he left £3,000 to his mother, Hannah Maxwell, and his full brother, Thomas Beckford and £2,000 to
his sister, Susanna. The residue was bequeathed to his mother. Three executors were appointed.
This will was not administered immediately because not only Hannah but also the three executors
had predeceased Beckford. It wasn’t until 13 January 1863, more than sixty years after his death,
that Beckford’s will was finally executed when the effects were less than £5,000. By this time, his
daughter, Rose, had died (in 1836) after marrying and producing five children.
Robert Curling - owner of Offley Holes Farm 1795c - 1809
There remained the matter of Beckford’s debt of £4,000 to Robert Curling from 1795. The legal
solution was that the estate became the property of the Curling family and with them it remained for
around 164 years when Major HME Harrison of Gosmore End acquired the property in 1959.
When Robert Curling (aged 69) died at Camberwell, Surrey in November 1809, there was an
obituary published in Gentleman’s Magazine. It mentioned that he, as mortgagee, had entered into
possession of ‘an estate worth £12,000 vesting in the mortgage of £4,000’.
What followed, reads like a Dickens’ novel. The assertion in the magazine so unsettled Robert’s son,
Edward Spencer Curling that he wrote to the magazine and also had his solicitors prepare a
statement. It might have appeared to the interested observer that the Curlings had acquired the
Offley Holes estate ‘on the cheap’. However, the correspondents went to great lengths to assert that
when Robert Curling discovered the existence of Beckford’s daughter, after a ‘diligent search’ he
found her, committed her to the care of a responsible person, sent her to a ‘respectable boarding
school’ and provided an umbrella of protection. Curling had also made some calculations - estimating
the current value of the estate less the mortgage (and interest) and ‘the expense incurred in the
improving of the Estate’ and invested the net figure of his reckonings into Public Funds to provide for
the girl’s future.
Offley Holes Farm in the nineteenth century
Offley Holes Farm and outbuildings circa 1811. Note that The Lodge at the junction of the
roads to the north had not been built
After Rose Beckford’s tenure, Offley Holes Farm was owned and occupied by John Curling - in 1807,
the farm had 8 inhabitants. In 1821, there were fourteen people living there, ten males and four
females as the newly-born Curling children were now included.
The story of the first two decades of the nineteenth century is that John Curling remained at the farm
which gradually increased in size: 1812 - 390 acres arable, 10a sward; 1814 - 446 acres of ‘land,
down arable and pasture’; 1825 - 22a pasture, 18a plantation and wood, 422 arable. However, by
1832, there was a new occupier of the farm - Thomas Hailey. John had moved to Gosmore House
(aka Gosmore End)
The Tithe Map and Award of 1844 provide a snapshot of the farm and its lands in the parish of Hitchin
which was now occupied by J Popplewell. It comprised around 320 acres:
Offley Holes Farm House
Three Acres
Two Acres
Various plantations
Five Acres
Four Acres
Kingwood Hill
The Down
Lodge Close
Home Close
Pinnace Hill
Hither and Middle Cotton Close
Collins Bank
Eighteen Acres
Hither and Middle Cherry Tree Close
Scotswick Spring
Westwood Close
The Curling family around Preston in the nineteenth century
Robert Curling
(1741 - 1809)
Ann
(1748c - 1833)
This Curling family tree is not intended to be definitive. Rather, it features those members of the
family who were associated with Offley Holes, Preston and Gosmore. The marriage of Kate Curling to
John Harrison in 1839 should be noted.
When Robert Curling died in 1809, he bequeathed Offley Holes (the freehold farm with timber,
houses, barns, land and implements of husbandry) to his son John Curling (1783 - 1863). In
consideration of this, John was to pay his mother, Ann, £100 each year. The copy of the will held in
the National Archives states that Offley Holes was at Hetthen (sic) in the county of Kent, which I
assume to be a transcription error.
John lived, and farmed, at Offley Holes until around 1830 - Thomas Hailey is noted as the occupier of
the farm in 1832 and 1835. As John’s daughter, Kate, once told a census enumerator that she was
born at Offley, probably all his children who were baptised at Hitchin were born at Offley Holes Farm.
John and his family had moved to Gosmore (between Hitchin and Preston) by 1840. He was
described in censuses as a Magistrate and a Commissioner of the Peace and regularly sat at
Hitchin. John and Jobina were still living at Gosmore in 1861.
Reginald Hine planned to include John in his book, Hitchin Worthies, but he was excluded from the
final edition.
On 12 February 1842, there was the following newspaper report : “Mr (John) Curling of Hitchin was
recently shooting near Preston and observed the remains of a rabbit which his gamekeeper
suggested might have been killed by a dog belonging to the shepherd of Mr Wright of Preston. Mr
Curling without making further inquiry proceeded to the field where the man was attending his
master’s sheep and in spite of his remonstrances shot the poor man’s dog on the spot – and not
satisfied with this summary act of vengeance commanded Mr Wright, who is one of his tenants, to
dismiss the man from his service. The poor man called upon Mr Curling to endeavour to obtain some
compensation for the loss of his faithful and valuable dog but after waiting two hours was refused an
interview.”
In 1853, the Hertfordshire Mercury received a hoax letter
announcing the sudden and lamentable death of John
Curling. Four days later, the editor was astounded to hear
that he was presiding as usual at Hitchin Petty Sessions. As
a result, the editor called for all announcements coming from
Hitchin to be checked.
John’s daughters, Harriet and Mary Forbes Curling,
remained at Gosmore after their father’s death. Harriet died
at Hindesmount (right) on 5 November 1885 and Mary at
The White House on 13 March 1895. It was Mary who
penned the article in MacMillan’s Magazine, “Traditions of
Sterne and Bunyan” (Link: Traditions) which demonstrated
her knowledge of the history of Preston.
William Curling snr (1773 - 1842) purchased Castle Farm in
1820 (Link: Castle Farm). Its ownership was passed down
to his son, William Curling jnr and his daughter in law, Flora
Jones Curling, and thence to their son Edward Spencer
Curling. Edward was living at 3 Chiltern Road, Hitchin in
1911. When he died on 1 July 1927, he was resident at The
White House, Gosmore.
Kate Harrison’s (nee Curling) (1819 - 1888) grandson, Major
Hubert English Harrison and his wife Nellie were living at
Gosmore End (right) when they died on 21 February 1958
and 26 December 1957 respectively.
Occupants of Offley Holes Farm 1832 - 1911
1832 - Thomas Hailey
1844 - J Popplewell
1851 - William Ward Asplen (born 1817 at Willingham) who farmed 475 acres employing 15
labourers
1855 - Thomas Postlethwaite who farmed 530 acres and had three children born at the farm
1871 - Arthur Davis (born 1843 at Offley) who farmed 519 acres employing 16 men and 5 boys
1881 - Charles Davis (Arthur’s brother, bn 1849 at Offley) farming 547 acres with 15 men and 5
boys.
1891 - Nicholas Stick (born 1839, Cornwall)
1901 - Frederick Kirkby, farm bailiff (born 1860, Steveage)
1911 - Charles Cooper, farm bailiff ( born 1841, Stotfield, Beds)
Occupants of Offley Holes Lodge 1832 - 1911
The first mention of the Lodge was in the 1861 census, which perhaps indicates that it was built
during the preceding decade. However, there was field known as Lodge Close as early as 1664 which
may indicate that there was a lodge standing in the seventeenth century. In 1911, the Lodge was
reported to have three rooms.
1861 - George Shephard, a farm bailiff born Hitchin in around 1830 and wife, Jane.
1871 - John Barker an agricultural labourer born at Kings Walden circa 1828 and wife, Mary.
1881 - Joseph Brown, a farm worker born around 1828 at Kings Walden and wife, Sarah.
1891 - Samuel E Collins, an agricultural labourer from Watton, Herts and his wife, Mary Ann.
1901 - Walter Cryer a gardener from Warwickshire and his wife Annie.
1911 - Thomas Whittenbury, a game keeper born at Burnham Green, Herts in 1851 and his wife,
Sarah Ann.
Owners of Offley Holes Farm in the twentieth century
During part of the twentieth century, Offley Holes Farm was owned by the Harrison family who
descended from Kate Curling. In 1950, Hubert English Harrison adopted the surname of Curling by
Royal Licence. His son, Major ME Harrison of Gosmore End owned the farm in 1959.
It was later purchased by the Pilkington Estate and sold on in 1987 when it was in ‘a dilapidated
state’. The new owner carried out refurbishments and the farm was last sold in 2006.
Occupants of Offley Holes Farm 1900 - 1980s
This information has been distilled from several sources, some of which
also mention where the occupants were living. (Map right c1970)
The families living at the Coach House, which was to the south of Offley
Holes Farm and originally associated with the mansion are also
included. It appears that there was a (Perse) hostel (run by Mr West) for
children at the Coach House during World War II. In the 1950s, two
semi-detached houses were built beside the Lodge.
Offley Holes Farm
1906 Alfred Charles Ralph
1912 Thomas Willmington
(Left for New Farm, Preston (sic) in
1913)
1932 Frederick Burr
1951 George and Doris Bowden
and Frederick and Phyllis Furness
1958 – 87 Neville and Margaret
Browning
1991 Peter and Julia Webber
Other homes at Offley Holes
1901 Charles Lawrence, coachman (Stables)
1907 William Lowery
1907 Francis Moore
1909 - 1916 Harry Barrett (aka George Henry)
(Coachman/ Chauffeur in 3 rooms over the Stables)
1911 Percy Alan Shepherd (Gamekeeper)
1914 Edmund Lake
1914 Albert and Gladys Whitten
1916 Frederick Charles Cole (The Bungalow ?)
1916 Frederick George Clarke
1919 John William Plain
1919 William Thurlow Farr
1920 Frederick and Rose Perry
1920 Charles Thomas Cherry (Stables)
1940 Frank Bowden
1940 Stanley Whybrow
1949 Eric Hedley (The Coach House)
1952 The Burr family were at the Coach House and the
Lodge.
1952 John and Joan Sell (caravan at the Lodge)
1952 Dennis W West (another caravan)
1958 Eric and Lillian Burr (The Coach House)
1958 Jack and Evelyn Welch (Offley Holes Farm Cottages)
1961 - 1971 Cyril and Gladys Freeman (The Lodge)
1961 Sidney and Joan Grey (1 Offley Holes Cottages)
1961 John and Joan Wake (caravan)
1963 Howard Roberts
1966 John Scarborough
1966 - 1974 Edward, Florence and Rodney Fountain
(Coach House)
1966 Norman and Jean White (1 Offley Holes Cottages)
1966 Fred and Joan West (2 Offley Holes Cottages)
1974 Geoffrey Frank Beck (Keepers Cottage)
1981 - 1991 Clive Taylor ( The Lodge)
1981 David and Maria Jarvis ( The Coach House)
1987 John and Jeremy Mansell (The Coach House)
1987 Leslie and Avril Dixon (2 Offley Holes Cottages)
1987 - 1991 Michael, Ralph and Moira Dunn (1 Offley
Holes Cotts)
1991 Thomas Hailworth and Denise Gwilt (The Coach
House)
In 2013, there were five homes occupied at Offley Holes - the Farm; the Lodge; 1 & 2 Offley Holes
Farm Cottages and the Old Coach House.
Offley Holes Farm in 2013
Offley Holes Farmhouse in 2013 - photograph kindly provided by Howard Trinder
The Farmhouse was altered and a north-west wing was added in the early nineteenth century to give
the impression of a double-fronted house as viewed from the drive to Offley Holes House. The front
elevation is red brick in Flemish-bond - which is painted. The roof is comprised of steep old red tile
and the wing has a slate roof. The window pattern has been changed with several blocked or altered
openings. The present pattern has three windows to both floors: flush box sash windows with six by
six panes; two gabled dormers on the roof-slope with three-lights leaded casements. The main
entrance is between the first and second windows with a projecting Tuscan porch on 2 columns with a
triangular pediment.
The Lodge
The Lodge and 1 & 2 Offley Holes Farm Cottages
In the early hours of Sunday morning, 18 October 2015, a fire swept through Offley Holes Farm
Cottages. A family of four were made homeless and a woman’s body was found in the neighbouring
house.
Three views of the Pump House that supplied Offley Holes House
Approaching Offley Holes Farm from the north
Beside the lane are two barns. The nearest one is an open barn; the larger one is known as Kestrels
Barn. Both barns are listed buildings. Kestrels Barn dates from the seventeenth century and was
thatched until 1928. Its roof is now corrugated sheeting. The smaller barn is an open-fronted cart shed
built in the early nineteenth century.
To the right of the road-side barns are two more barns. These were built in the seventeenth century
according to North Herts DC. All the barns are constructed of timber frames on brick sills with dark
weatherboarding. The steep roof of the barn on the right was altered in the early nineteenth century
and is of old red tiles while the barn on the left has a roof of corrugated iron. One was a milking
parlour.
Between the two sets of barns, the brick-built stable area can be glimpsed - part of which is given over
to a one-bed-roomed annex
The Curling family and Kent
LucyAnn Curling has been researching the connections between the Curlings of Hertfordshire and
Kent. She has kindly supplied the following information and photographs that feature some of the
Curlings in this article.
In the mid-nineteenth century, William Curling, the brother of John who owned Offley Holes Farm
was living at Kingsdown, near Deal in Kent. William was a London-based whalebone merchant. He
generously paid for the construction of a local church, St John the Evangelist (shown below), which
was completed in 1853. Three Curling brothers, William, John and Edward Spencer Curling were
buried beneath the church which features memorial plaques and stained glass windows devoted to
the brothers.
John Curling’s memorial plaque (which was created by Warren and Son of Hitchin)
A view of fields at Offley Holes circa 1940s
