Home Farm

For Sale by Public Auction.... Saturday 10th July 1948....

The HOME FARM HOUSE built of brick and roughcast and tiled and containing:
Entrance Hall - oak studwork and rafters.       Hall & staircase.
Dining Room - stove, tiled sides, cupboard.
Drawing Room - stove
Kitchen - ideal Independent Boiler; sink (H&C); electric pump; cupboards.   Pantry with shelving.
Conservatory.
2 Double Bedrooms; 3/4 Bedroom; Bathroom; Lavatory.    There are 2 attics.

Outside: Bin House; Coal House; Copper House; Store

Farm Premises: Brick; Tile; Clay-lump; & Timber:
Barn; Cart-horse stabling for 3; Harness Room; Horse yard; 2 Loose Boxes & Shed. Pony boxes.
Piggeries; Riding Stable & Implement shed

In 1948 Home Farm was up for sale as part of the Mergate Hall Estate, along with Mergate Hall, 3 farms, various cottages and 880 acres of land. It was bought by Thomas William Betts who was already working the land along with Mergate Farm where he lived. Soon afterwards, his son - another Tom Betts - moved into Home Farm with his family. It remained in the hands of the Betts family until it was sold to the present owners.

Home Farm had not always been a tenant farm. In 1842, it was both owned and occupied by Eleanor Smith in 1842, but it seems to have taken [back?} into ownership by the Kemps and incorporated into the Mergate estate. By the 1860s it was rented out to the Dye family who hailed from Tasburgh but had been farming in Newton Florman. Samuel Dye snr was a carpenter and wheelwright and owned the Horseshoes at Tasburgh. Two of his sons became carpenters or wheelwrights - Samuel jnr pursued that trade in Mulbarton whilst running the Tradesman's Arms, and his other son, Alfred, became a Baptist Minister and itinerant preacher, but wrote of his happy childhood at Home Farm, Bracon Ash until his father died in 1866.

Perhaps the most colourful resident was William Henry Hardingham (1819 - 1914). He is listed as a farmer in the 1891 census and was certainly living there in 1898 when an interview with him appeared in The Mercury, a paper published in Hobart, Tasmania! Born in North Norfolk, he went to sea in 1829 at the age of 11 and served on various ships in the Baltic and Mediterranean. In 1857-59 he was a member of the McClintock Expedition that set out to seek the fate of Sir John Franklin, who had discovered the North-West Passage. His father had served under Lord Nelson, once a neighbour of the family, and was on his ship in the battles of Copenhagen and Trafalgar. After an adventurous life at sea Mr Hardingham became a steward to Sir Kenneth H Kemp of Mergate Hall and was housed with his wife, Amelia, at Home Farm. He was widowed in 1897, shortly before the interview, but William lived to the ripe old age of 95 and is buried with his wife in Bracon Ash churchyard. 

As the 20th century opens, Allen Charles Westgate is at Home Farm - in the 1901 census with his brother Ernest. Both are cattle dealers and employ Walter Kedge as a drover. The farm is listed as 'Dairy Farm, near Common' which indicates cattle. In 1905 Allen Westgate seems to have moved across the Common to Mergate Farm.  He sold his stock in 1925 and moved to Unthank Road, Norwich, but in 1929 he is back in Bracon Ash, at Home Farm with his wife Janet.