West Barnes/Moat Farm since 1800

mhs-wjr-77-10 Carters Seeds (1968)
mhs-wjr-77-12 Carters Seeds panoramic view (1968)
mhs-wjr-77-11 Carters Seeds statue (1968)

West Barnes/Moat Farm since 1800

Land Tax records list James Steele as tenant from 1805 to 1821.

In 1815 James Steele was recorded as having a 7-year lease of West Barnes.¹

In 1816 the freehold of West Barnes was sold to John Holmes in trust for William Holmes, paying an annuity to Margaret Bond. It was described as:¹

All that capital messuage, tenement or farmhouse commonly called or known by the name of West Barnes situated and being in the Parish of Merton otherwise Marton in Surrey together with all and singular outhouses, barns, stables, erections, buildings, yards, gardens, orchards, etc. and all those several closes, pieces or parcels containing 171 acres 1 rood 1 perch as follows:

Homestead yard and garden 3a 0r 35p

Saw Pit Meadow 3a 3r 37p

Horse Pasture 7a 1r 37p

Great Floody Field 4 3 14

Little Floody Field 3 2 16

Great Meadow 13a 1r 35p

Slip 8a 1r 13p

Great Cow Pightle 9a 3r 27p

Little Cow Pightle 3a 2r 8p

Twelve Acre Meadow 11a 3r 29p

Eleven Acre Lane Field 12a 1r 6p

Twelve Acre Lane Field 13a 0r 16p

Fourteen Acre Field 14a 1r 9 or5p

Nine Acre Field 9a 2r 30p

Seven Acre Field 8a 0r 29p

Fourteen Acre Field 15a 0r 30p

Nine Acre Blackground 9a 2r 29p

Eight Acre Blackground 9a 2r 7p

Six Acre Blackground 7a 0r 23p

West Barns Lane 1a 3r 36p

and all tithes

In 1811 John Middleton, owner of the eastern section of West Barnes, wrote to Surrey historian William Bray about some possibly Roman bricks ‘dug out of the ruins of an ancient arch that had crossed a small rivulet or common sewer at West Barns in Merton, in the land of C. F. Bond Esq. about a hundred yards on the East side of a very old farm house, moatedround, which formerly belonged to the Abbat and Monks of Merton’.²

Middleton’s nephew, Edward Rayne, whose name was appropriated for the station and development at Raynes Park, referred to the western farm as ‘Moat Farm’ in family correspondence in 1837,³ and the Merton tithe apportionment of 1844 gives the name ‘Moat Meadow’ to plot 25, south of the farmhouse in plot 27. This meadow lay on the southern bank of the Pyl Brook which flows to its confluence with the Beverley Brook at the western edge of the estate.

In the 1844 Tithe Apportionment, the estate is described as:

25 Moat Meadow (meadow) 15a 1r 21p

26 Home Meadow (meadow) 13a 1r 16p

27 Farmhouse, etc 2a 3r 4p

28 Cottage & Garden 0a 0r 21p

29 Thorofare Meadow (pasture) 3a 1r 33p

30 The Slipe (meadow) 7a 1r 10p

31 Lane Field (arable) 20a 3r 32p

32 Nine Acres (arable) 9a 2r 8p

33 Hilly Field (arable) 10a 0r 28p

34 Black Meadow (meadow) 6a 1r 21p

35 Black Grounds (meadow) 9a 1r 30p

36 Eight Acres (arable) 9a 2r 7p

37 Fourteen Acres (arable) 10a 1r 36p

38 Part of Eleven Acres (meadow) 7a 3r 18p

39 Long Field (arable) 5a 2r 30p

42 Little Pickle (meadow) 2a 3r 21p

43 Great Pickle (meadow) 8a 2r 5p

44 Further Pickle (meadow) 8a 2r 9p

45 Part of Further Pickle (meadow) 2a 0r 0p

Part of the farm had been sold to the South Western Railway Company:

40 Waste Ground 1a 2a 0p

41 Part of line of railway 9a 1r 25p

Because the ownership of the property included the right to the tithes, the tenant, Henry Hills, paid the rent-charge, which had replaced the tithe, to the owner of the estate, William Holmes, and not to the Rector.

West Barnes Farm was divided first by the London and Southampton Railway, opened in 1838, and then by the Kingston Bypass (A3) and the Merton Spur, opened in 1927. Raynes Park Station was built on the very corner of the Pitles, adjoining Poors Wood, in 1871.

Remnants of the moat survived into the 20th century, and are shown on Ordnance Survey maps of 1913 and 1935. The site is now covered by the 1985-built gymnasium of Raynes Park High School.⁴

The site of the old moated farm house, demolished around 1900, is now part of the school, and Bushey First and Middle Schools each occupy part of the former farmlands. In addition to the school fields, the meadowlands alongside the Beverley Brook are sports grounds, as is the land north of the railway line.

In 1909, 19 acres were sold to Carters Tested Seeds, replaced in 1968 by the Carters estate. Bradbury Wilkinson bought the closes south of the Pyl Brook in 1921, occupied since 1987 by Tesco.

Dickson’s Cottages were built in West Barnes Lane around 1864/66 for farm labourers, but very little of the old farm is occupied by housing - some blocks of flats along the northern arm of West Barnes Lane, and houses along the A3, and in Aboyne Drive and Firstway.

¹ British Railways Property Board (transcribed by John Wallace)

² O Manning & W Bray The History and Antiquities of the County of Surrey III (1814) p.cli

³ E M Jowett Raynes Park: A Social History (Merton Historical Society 1987) p.65

⁴ Janette Henderson In Search of Merton Priory’s Granges (Merton Historical Society 2014) p.15