The London and Southampton Railway was first proposed in 1831 and the bill approved by Parliament in 1834 at a cost of £900,000. The section between Basingstoke and Winchester opened on 11 May 1840 – and was the final part of the London and Southampton Railway to be completed. Prior to its construction, all of the traffic between London and Southampton was carried by eight stage coaches, four wagons per week, and one barge weekly on the Basingstoke Canal!
The London and Southampton Railway was first proposed in 1831 and the bill approved by Parliament in 1834 at a cost of £900,000. The section between Basingstoke and Winchester opened on 11 May 1840 – and was the final part of the London and Southampton Railway to be completed. Prior to its construction, all of the traffic between London and Southampton was carried by eight stage coaches, four wagons per week, and one barge weekly on the Basingstoke Canal!
The London and Southampton Railway was first proposed in 1831 and the bill approved by Parliament in 1834 at a cost of £900,000. The section between Basingstoke and Winchester opened on 11 May 1840 – and was the final part of the London and Southampton Railway to be completed. Prior to its construction, all of the traffic between London and Southampton was carried by eight stage coaches, four wagons per week, and one barge weekly on the Basingstoke Canal!
Fardels and Farthings
Fardels and Farthings 2013
The following construction details are taken from a report by Edward Roberts in 2004. Our thanks to Craig Eales & Katy Toms for providing this information.
Fardels is an unusually well preserved and interesting timber-framed house. It is set back some 20 metres from the village street in which there are several other timber-framed houses.
A large, well-preserved house of four, approximately equal, bays built in the sixteenth century with a ‘half-floored hall’: that is a floored-over hall of one bay that was heated by a smoke bay, in this case of the same size as the hall, except for the baffle entry. A bay is the space between two cross frames. Cross frames are formed between two principal posts (see plan).
Felling dates of the trees were Spring 1570 and Spring 1572, from a dendrochronology report (tree rings).
The dendro date of 1572 is important as few houses from the second half of the 16th century have been identified in the county. Showy, curved braces were reserved for the road elevation with straight braces in internal walls.
In the seventeenth century a chimney was inserted in the smoke bay of the hall and changes occurred in the service bay (see plan).
The status of the original occupant is unknown but he is likely to have been a prosperous tenant farmer with perhaps one or two virgates (30 – 60 acres) of arable land with rights of pasture in the common. What is certain is that the house was built for single occupancy. The evidence of blocked doorways shows that the house was later adapted to form a row of 4 labourers' cottages (three on the site of Fardels and the single cottage Farthings on the side ). This re-modelling is likely to have taken place in the late-eighteenth or nineteenth centuries when the population increased dramatically and small tenant farmers were bought out and reduced to labourer status.
The three cottages on the left hand side were then converted into a single building in the mid twentieth century (see below).
In the 1920 sale of the village, the left hand cottage of Fardels was let to Mr James Whatmore, the centre cottage of Fardels to Mr W Hillary and the right hand cottage to Messrs F A & A Wilks. Farthings was let to Mr C North.
A review of the old deeds to the property (formerly 104, 105, 106, 107 Duke Street), kindly lent by owners Craig Eales & Katy Toms, revealed the following information about the owners after 1920.
Of 106 & 107
1922 Mr W C Parsons
1925 Mr J Southwell
1927 Miss B King
1947 Mrs M R Huish (107 tenanted by Mr C Parker)
1951 Mr C K R Bond (in 1956 Mr C K R Bond bought 107 from Mrs S W Bond)
Of 104 & 105
1922 Mr W Hillary
1945 Mrs J Macartney
1947? Mrs M R Huish
1952 Mr C K R Bond
So from these records it appears that by 1952 Mr C K R Bond owned all 4 properties, as do the current owners.
Incidentally, Mrs Olga Bond was the school 'nit nurse' in the 1980s. She was still living at Fardels at the time
HFC Summer 2014 Newsletter - Historic buildings mentions Fardels - read full aritcle HERE
Witches mark burned into the inglenook lintel to stop the witches down the chimney!
Fardels Ingenook 2018
2020
Witches mark burned into the inglenook lintel to stop the witches down the chimney!