Uxmore Farm Ipsden

A Memory of Ipsden.

Uxmore Farm is part of Ipsden and is on an old Roman site, and my dad said when they put a tennis court in, they found Roman gold coins there. Uxmore Farm was owned by the Read family for hundred of years, till around the late 1890s when it was rented /purchased by Robert and Frances Hayward (nee Cotterell). Frances's parents were bakers in Reading. Robert's parents were John and Mary Hayward (nee Kitchen of English Farm, Englefield). John came from Loders in Dorset and his parents were Thomas and Mary Hayward (nee Dodge) married in Sherborne church in November 1808 and were farmers in the Loders area of Dorset.

Robert died in 1925 and Frances died in 1914. Uxmore was a mortgaged security for several properties in the Hayward family. Kate, John, Robert, Mary, Edith, Edna and George were some of Roberts children.

Robert paid about 80 pounds for Ipsden Heath Farm for his oldest son John.  Robert junior had Timbers Farm at Nuffield. No doubt money was paid as the children left home and got married. George remained home and ran the farm with his father who died in 1925 when George was made manager, then bought the farm by continuing the mortgage, instead of getting a new mortgage and paying the interested parties, who then foreclosed on George, forcing a farm sale. The sold farm paid out all its debts and some capital was left over, but George got nothing, except 20 pounds in his father's will for staying to work on Uxmore Farm and keep it going. George's inlaw business partner backed out and bought Stagg Farm instead. So George, born 1897, worked till 1925 for keep and 20 pounds when his father died and got no help or inheritance like his sblings did.

George volunteered in the army and was honourably discharged then migrated to Canada twice and returned to England in 1939 just before the war started. June 1939 George married Gladys Simons in Oxford, daughter an army officer Arthur and Alice Simons (nee Cheer), and had 6 children, George, Richard. Raymond, Evelyn, Mary and Rowena. George died in Suffolk after a very travelled eventful life and succeeded where many others failed. Today Uxmore Farm has been sold and split up into bits and peices and would be worth millions had it been kept in the family.

The Wells family were closely associated with Uxmore Farm and I would like to hear from them with their history. I may have met one of the Wells family at Berkshire Institute of Agriculture in 1964/65.

yogag -prakash saraswati-lunarorange2002@yahoo.com.au

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