Parker's Corner

 

The 1829 plan accompanying the Enclosure Act, shows a new building, Parker's Corner Lodge, just inside the park and this is also shown on the plan for the new Pangbourne Road in 1822 but there are still no other houses at that point. A little further up the hill, just before where the first sharp double bend has been straightened are only two houses where Ballard shows four. Still further up the hill, just before the junction with the road leading to Blyth's Cottage is now only one building and after the junction are now just two. The single isolated building shown by Ballard further up the slope is is also still shown.

 

By 1844 the old lodge inside the park seems to have gone again, replaced by a new Parker's Corner Lodge (181), opposite and outside the park, occupied by Daniel Bushell and Thomas Painter. This is in the lodge style believed to be typical of around that time. The other two houses shown a little further up the hill in 1829 are still in evidence. One (178 and probably the old Parker's Farm) is owned by John Welch and occupied by Charlotte May. The other (179) is two houses, occupied by Solomon Allen and John Quelch. The estate survey of the same year, however, has it as four tenements with the additional occupants Mary Fisher and Richard Horn. Further up the hill, the houses at the junction with the track leading off Common Hill have disappeared and only Blyth's Cottage (173) at the end of that track remains, now two dwellings and occupied by James Cox and John Knight.

 

By 1871 Parker's Corner Lodge has been joined by a new pair of cottages just along Bostock Lane, one occupied by a blacksmith with the Smithy opposite, and up Common Hill is only a single house which must be Parker's Farm, occupied by Abraham Parsons, a farmer, with 40 acres. He had also been the farmer there in 1861, though then with only 30 acres. One of the two Blyth's Cottages was occupied by George Buckland, the head keeper but before the end of the decade "Daintylands", the new head gamekeeper’s house, had been built in the park at the top of the hill on the south side and George Buckland moved there. The large tenement was probably demolished in the 1860s because in the 1871 census there are only four dwellings  at Parker's Corner in addition to Abraham Parsons's farmhouse and only the farm is shown on the 1878 map.

 

In 1881 one of Blyth's Cottages has acquired an alternative name of "Guyatt's Cottage". Mary Guyatt lived here in 1851 and perhaps there is some connection with Henry Guyatt who kept the Crown Inn near Malthouse Farm in 1871. Parker's farm, as such, no longer exists and the land is reduced to 5 acres, tenanted by Mrs Lavinia Gold who was the widow of Edward Gold and formerly at the Fishery. In November 1891 the Rector reports that "Mrs. Gold, at the ripe age of 82, has given up her land and cows but keeps her house, and will we hope live yet many years to enjoy a pension kindly given her by Mr. Benyon.". She must have left Englefield not long after that however, for in December the following year we learn that "Mrs. Gold did not long live with her daughter after leaving". Between the OS survey in 1878 and the 1881 census a new pair of houses must have been built for in the census the number at Parker's Corner is back to seven, although only five are shown on the map. These were next to the former farm where the large tenement had been. After Mrs Gold left, the old farm was pulled down and a third house added to the two new ones. A further pair of houses were also built in Bostock Lane on the other side of the road leading to Mayridge Farm.