History

In 1997 we purchased Bodenham farmhouse and it’s immediate farm buildings, in all about five acres. This made us only the third family to own it in over two hundred years. The house was completely renovated in the mid-eighties and at this time the dairy was converted into the kitchen, the old kitchen becoming an additional sitting room. This room overlooks a small courtyard where the old pump sits above a 30’ well and the location of the bread oven is still evident.

Bodenham Farm originally formed part of the Homme House Estate, the ancestral home of the Money-Kyrle family. The farm consisting of some 314 acres was sold at auction on 3 July 1922 for what is believed to have been £4,000.

The main farmhouse and buildings, being only a few hundred yards from Homme House, is believed to have been the ‘home farm’, to the house. The ‘Avenue’, the drive from the house to the old top road still runs through the property.

The farmhouse was originally built with the local stone, there being two small quarries nearby. The exterior is now rendered and there is a theory that this took place in Georgian times to match the major renovations that took place to Homme House. At this time the rough stone exterior of Homme House was faced with brick and the windows and roof altered to give a ‘Georgian’ appearance, the house originally being of Elizabethan times. The main façade and windows of Bodenham Farm farmhouse could well have received the same treatment, as the two main supporting timbers in two of the front main rooms indicate that they would have originally been set into supporting walls, not above large Georgian style oak window frames, as they now are.

The outbuildings are also of interest. There is a cider mill with granary above and a tullet room connects the mill to a stone and timber barn in which some sections of wattling can still be seen.

The whole of the property is Grade Two Listed and is set within a conservation area.