Whiteleaf & Cadsden Residents Association

Cadsden

List of properties with date or decade of construction and former names

The properties, shown in bold, are those for which we have information either on the property itself, the former residents or an old photo. To access this information, click on the house name below (note:- a link has not yet been set up for other properties), alternatively simply scroll down the page to see all entries.

In some cases there are links in this section to residents (a profile of whom is included in the Former Residents section), to access simply click on the name of the person if it is highlighted in bold. Click on a photo to enlarge it.

 

4.3.1 Upper Icknield Way

Sunnydale

Broomhill

Cobbers

Timbora

Briarden

4.3.2 CADSDEN ROAD (left up)

Goring Lodge

Bambers

Sandycote

The Dell

The Firs

Hillfield

Little Widmere

Long Gwely

Kemble Cottage

Kestrels

Tan Fan

Woodlands

Briar Bank

Cradlecombe

Cradledene

 

Haycroft

On 8^th February 1919 a conveyance was made between the Right Honourable Sidney Carr Hobart-Hampden- Mercer Henderson, 7^th Earl of Buckinghamshire, Mortimer Reginald Margesson and Claude Hope Morley (the Mortgagees) and Alfred Rufus, Herbert and William Pitcher (the Pitchers), transferring ownership of the land in question to the Pitchers.

On 10^th February 1919 the Mortgagees and the Pitchers entered into a mortgage agreement and a further mortgage agreement was entered into on the same day between the Pitchers and Alice Dickens Gunnell, Sarah Elizabeth Gunnell and Katherine Sophia Gunnell.

In April 1923 a contract was entered into under which Alfred Rufus, Herbert and William Pitcher, all farmers from Great Kimble, and Mortgagees sold the land (one acre, thirteen poles and six square yards) on which Haycroft now stands to Charles Alfred Spiller for £85. 5s.7p (see map right).

Haycroft was built as a weekend cottage in 1926 for Mr & Mrs Spiller and contains some beams which were said to have come from an old sailing ship. There is currently a summer house in the garden, which rumour has it, once stood on a hill behind Chequers and was used by Lloyd George.

Charles Spiller died in 1945 and in 1953 Mrs May Spiller sold Haycroft to Leonard Arthur Robinson, an engineer, for £3,600.

Access to what is now known as Grangelands used to be by way of a track which ran between Haycroft and Cradledene and was part owned by Bucks county Council and the two property owners. This access was changed to the current access to the right hand side of Haycroft in the 1974/5.

 

 

4.3.3 CADSDEN ROAD (right up)

Brambles

Longridge

In 1919 seven acres of undeveloped land were purchased by a syndicate in order to set up a Country Club for the University of London. The full prospectus can be found on this website with endorsements from a number of luminaries including H. G. Wells (click here to view). The high cost of building at the time delayed the start of the project until 1922 and it was opened in 1924. The property was constructed as basically a pair of houses, each with reception and bedrooms and one of the significant attractions was a pair of Victorian railway carriages dating from the 1880s and purchased by the university as changing rooms for the members.

In 1925 3 parcels of land were sold off to Henry H. Parsons upon which land Orchard Cross was built. It would appear that the Club did not survive for that long as in 1930 it was offered for sale as a single property. The auction was unsuccessful. The property, then known as The Old Country Club, was sold in 1963and the name changed to Longridge at some later point. It was extensively remodelled and refurbished between 1995 and 2005.

Middle Cadsden (also known as Cadsden or Catsden or Cadesdean Cottage)

Middle Cadsden is a Grade II listed buildings and is described in The Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Monuments as follows

“House. C17-early C18, altered and extended C20. 2 original bays have timber frame and whitewashed brick infill, the rear gable wall rebuilt in flint and brick. Half-hipped thatch roof, brick chimneys to centre and external to left of front gable. One storey and attic. Front gable has C20 oriel with leaded lights to attic and C20 projecting lobby below. Left side has C20 leaded bay windows and single leaded lights to left, centre and above left window. Lean-to and large thatched C20 wing to right. Interior shows diagonal braces, spindly wind braces and chamfered spine beams”

The property features in the Enclosure map of 1839 and was copyhold the Manor of Monks Risborough in 1869.

In November 1869 Harry Gem of Wolverley nr. Kidderminster sold the property to Steven & Leonard Pauling, both farmers, for £235. The property was described as Middle Catsden, and comprising Enclosure plots 544 (allotment of 2rood and 13 perches) and 545 (Picked Close 1 acre and seven perches) both in occupation of John East as well as 548, the last having five cottages, occupied by George Lovett, Thomas Crocket, John Daveney (or Devening), William Briars and ? White. See also the next entry.

Steven & Leonard Pauling then sold the property in March 1900 to Thomas Parsons, gentleman, for £200. Property still as described above with 5 cottages. Parsons was admitted to the copyhold in July 1900.

In November 1903 an indenture was made between Sidney Carr Hobart-Hampden-Mercer-Henderson, Earl of Buckinghamshire of the first part (“The Earl”), Richard Pennington and Mortimer Reginald Margesson (“The General Trustees”) of the second part   and Thomas Parsons, “gentleman of no fixed abode”. Under the will of Reverend Augustus Edward Hobart-Hampden, 6^th Earl of Buckinghamshire, who died on 31^st October 1877 and whose will was proven on 24^thMarch 1886, the Earl in exercise of the power given to a tenant for life by the Settled Land Acts 1882 to 1890, agreed with Thomas Parsons to enfranchise the copyhold land for the sum of £78. 6s. 6d. The property remains as described above, still with 5 cottages but is referred to as Middle Catsdean.

Later in November 1903 Thomas Parsons sold to Joseph Baker Fletcher, a miller, for the sum of £285, “the site of those five cottages or tenements situate at Middle Cadsden with the garden grounds thereto respectively belonging late in the several occupations of George Lovett, Thomas Crocket, John Daverney (or Devening), William Briars and Richard White, together with the two cottages and premises now standing thereon”. This is the first document with a map. Also note that at this time Cadsden House is marked as Cadsden Cottage.

 

In July 1915 Mr. J. B. Fletcher sold the property (still known at that time as Middle Cadesden) to Mary Louisa Barrow Darby, spinster, (also owner of Cadsden Cottage or Cadsden house as it is now) for £450.

In January 1960 George Hugh Frederick Barrow Darby, Ion David Aulay and Mary Edytha Louisa Kater (as executors of the will of Mary Darby) sold Cadesden Cottage for £3,190 to Edwin John Hammond of Wanstead London. Edwin Hammond extended the cottage in 1963.

In January 1967 E. J. Hammond sold the property now known as Cadsden Cottage to Robert Ebsworth Snow for £12,500 and he sold the Cottage to John Parker of Wendover for £15,250.

In August 1980 John Parker sold the property now known as Middle Cadsden to John Eric Peiser and Victor Augustus Calverley for £100,000, who purchased the property as an investment for the estate of Mr. Nethercott and for the beneficiaries, (his wife for life and the current owner). Upon the death of Mrs. Ethel Patterson Nethercott on 20^th October 1980 the decision was made not to sell the property and it was eventually transferred to Miss Ainge in October 1984.

Cadsden House

Cadsden House has been a rural retreat, a boarding house and a “health farm” before reverting to a family home. In the course of studying the letters of Thomas and Henry Hookham, Sandy Macfarlane produced a note of the transactions relating to Cadsden House from 1832 to 1949 and The Chiltern Hills Healtheries Company. Set out below is a short resume, and the full document can be accessed by clicking here.

 

The first reference we have is to a Frith Esq. who appeared to own the property in 1813, whilst it was occupied by John Gill.

Thomas Hookham, born September 1786, first appears as owner of Cadsden Cottage (now Cadsden House in 1815. There is no description of the property at that date, but the occupant remains John Gill. The Hookham family, who were booksellers and who lived in Old Bond Street, London seemed to have used the cottage initially as a rural retreat. It is not until 1820 that Thomas Hookham is listed as the proprietor and occupier. There was also a gardener’s cottage in the grounds, which can be seen on the 1839 Enclosure map.

Thomas Hookham and his family lived there until they returned to London, shortly before his death in 1867. The property was rented out but the abrupt departure of a tenant, Captain Kelson, in 1873 persuaded Thomas’s widow to sell.

It was sold in 1876 and again in 1880, when William Henry Herbert sold the property to John Whittingham Margetts. There is also a further conveyance between the same parties in 1881. Around this time the house was considerably enlarged possibly by Margetts, who ran it as a boarding house, before he sold it on in 1884 to The Chiltern Hills Healtheries Company.

The December 1884 agreement between the said John Whittingham Margetts (the Vendor) and Thomas Samuel Cogdon of 9, Portland Road, Finsbury Park, chronometer maker, as Trustee and Agent for the Company to be known as The Chiltern Hills Healtheries Company Limited and having for its objects among other things the acquisition of the business and goodwill of a Boarding House carried on by said [JWM] at Cadesdean House and all or any of the real and personal property belonging to said [JWM] in connection with the said business. For more details of the Healtheries Company see the Sandy Macfarlane document mentionned above.

There were a number of amendments to the 1884 agreement, presumably as the Company did not prosper, since it was put into voluntary liquidation and the assets sold in March 1887. The sale notice, which can be seen in the Sandy Macfarlane document refers to “Catsden” in the wording.

In August 1889 Thomas Parsons, the vendor and his mortgagees Frederick Broad White of No. 98 Portsdown Road, Paddington, Middlesex, surgeon, Julian Macfarquhar James of Aylesbury, Gentleman, sold the property to Frederick William Darby, Esq.

In July 1929 Hugh James Barrow Darby Esq. transferred the five acres or thereabouts known as Cadesdean House to Miss Mary Louisa Darby, spinster, ‘in consideration of his natural love and affection’.

In June 1938 Cdr George Hugh Frederick Barrow Darby of Cadesdene House, Jon David Aulay of 41 Gloucester Place, London, Esq. and Mary Edytha Louisa Darby of Flat 6, 18 Westbourne Street, London, as Trustees of the estate of Mary Louisa Barrow Darby, “all that messuage, etc formerly known as Cadesdean House but now known as Cadesdene House, being Nos 107 and 108 and part of Nos 98 and 106 on the 1921 Ordnance Survey, containing 4.671 acres or thereabouts, bounded on the North East by the road leading from Askett to Great Missenden to Constance Sarah Tighe for £2,800.

Plan attached to 1938 Indenture, giving areas.

Thomas Hookham’s Cottage is now Cadesdean House. It is not to be confused with what the plan calls Cadesdean Cottage. The 1922 O.S. calls this latter property Middle Cadsdean, as it is still known in 2004.

In September 1938 Charlie Green of Grymsdyke Farm, Lacey Green sold to Constance Sarah Tighe a parcel of land at Cadesdene being part of Field No 106 on the 1921 Ordnance” for £100, which piece of land Mr. Green had purchased from Mr. George Field of Woodend, Medmenham, Bucks, farmer in August 1897 for £20.

In August 1949 Roger Bousfield Tighe of 29 Gloucester Avenue Regents Park London Accountant sold firstly all that messuage, etc now known as Cadsden House and secondly all that parcel being part of Field 106, to Elsie May Barratt of 1 Alexander Place London SW 7 the wife of Harry Barratt the Purchaser for £6,300.

 

Plough Farm

 

Plough Cottage

 

The Plough PH

The County Archive in relation to Wellers Brewery of Amersham, (D/X 1458) and “The Plough” at Cadsden, contains the following account:-

Also that messuage or tenement, lately erected and built by John Smith Cook upon certain land or ground purchased by him from James Loosley situate and being at Catsdean in the parish of Monks Risborough.

With yard and garden adjoining the same, was then mounded and fenced off from the other premises of the said John Smith Cook and containing one rood be the same more or less, bounded on the East by the land then or late of the Earl of Bucks, on the South and West by premises of John Smith Cook, and the North by the highway from Princes Risborough to Great Missenden.

The said messuage or tenement, in the occupation of John Conquest and kept open as a retail beer shop and known by the sign of the Plough, was purchased by the said John and William Weller from the said John Smith Cook and conveyed 21st March 1836.

The licence as a public house seems to have been granted in 1840.

 

 

 

Longdown Farm

 

Longdown Farm Cottage