Parker's Farm

 

Parker's Farm is not mentioned by name in any estate survey or census but a farm of that name was part of the bankruptcy sale on the death of Edward Clark in 1771. There is a plan of the lands of Parker's Farm in 1806, amounting to some 101 acres and overlaid on the photograph below. As was common at that time, the farm consisted of a number of contiguous fields, in this case around Mareridge Farm, and some other land spread over the wider area. Much of the land is outside the parish of Englefield: in Sulhamstead, Ufton and Tilehurst.

 

Thomas Parker was one of those listed as parishioners in 1695 and there was a "Farm House" at Parker's Corner in the 1861 census. In 1844 this was owned by John Welch and tenanted by Charlotte May; an adjoining seven acres was also owned by John Welch but let to James Harding. In 1861 the house was occupied by Abraham Parsons a "Farmer of 30 acres". Abraham Parsons was at Pipers in 1851 but had possibly moved by 1856 because it was he who accompanied John Harris of Mayridge Farm on his last and fatal journey home from Reading in that year. Ten years later he had acquired an extra 10 acres but by 1881 Lavinia Gold, widow of Edward Gold (or Gould) and formerly at the Fishery, was the tenant and the farm was reduced to a smallholding of 5 acres. In 1891 Mrs Gold gave up the tenancy and moved in with her daughter, at which point any sort of separate farm seems to have ceased to exist.

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