Society Farm

A Memory of Assington.

In 2001 my husband Derek and I visited Assington. We had been researching Derek's family history, and had discovered that his great-great-grandfather John Crisell was the bailiff, in the middle of the 19th century, at Society Farm, Assington. We were unable to find the farm, but called at a farm shop in the middle of the village, and were told that this had been Society Farm, but had changed its name to Willow Tree Farm. The reason it had been called Society Farm was that Sir John Gurdon, of Assington Hall, had set up a co-operative agricultural experiment on the farm in the 1830s in an effort to help the villagers. Some years later, John Crisell was appointed bailiff, and had lived in the farmhouse with his family, including his daughter Sarah who would become Derek's great-grandmother.