Hill Farm - Ipswich Road..

At the time of the Enclosure Award in 1818 Hill Farm was owned by Francis Gostling but according to the register of Listed Buildings the house is thought to be about 200 years older than that. According to the Manorial Court records, he had acquired the property in 1793 from Sir Abraham Hume, and as Francis Gostling was described as a Norwich distiller, the purchase would almost certainly have been as an investment to let, rather than for his own occupation. By 1840 it had been acquired by Alexander Campbell, from Little Plumstead, who was definitely a property investor and the largest landowner in Tasburgh at the time. The tenant of the farm extending to 169 acres was Adam Millett who the 1841 census records as a 31 year old farmer. Living in the house with him were his wife Susannah, their four young children and two servants, one employed in the house and one on the farm. Over the next ten years Adam and Susannah had a further three children but it appears that two of their earlier children had died, and then in 1859 Adam himself died and the family were forced to move. They were succeeded by Thomas Garrood from Tibenham, who was recorded in the 1861 census as a 48 year old farmer with his wife Elizabeth and four children, employing one man on the farm which by then had been reduced to 140 acres. Two years later Thomas died but Mr Campbell allowed his wife to take over the tenancy and she was still there farming the same 140 acres at the time of the 1871 census, which also shows their eldest son Thomas William at just 21 as the tenant of Cottage Farm on Low Road with his 19 year old wife Frances.

At some point in the next ten years Mrs Garrood either gave up the farm or was given notice to quit, because the 1881 census records the house as being occupied by a farm bailiff, Mr Read, perhaps employed by Alexander Campbell to look after his Tasburgh properties, but the following year Mr Campbell died and the farm was bought by Sir Charles Harvey as an addition to his Rainthorpe estate. It seems that his first farming tenant may have lived elsewhere because in 1891 the census shows the farmhouse was home to an agricultural labourer, Benjamin Briggs and his family. It is possible that the farmer was Arthur Betts whose father had rented Old Hall Farm for many years and been succeeded by Arthur's older brother, William, because the census return shows Arthur was living next door at Elms Farm. However in 1892 Arthur and William moved to Wroxham, and that year Kelly's Norfolk Directory records that Nicholas Buckingham was the farmer at Hill Farm. The 1901 census confirms that Mr Buckingham was still farming, aged 74, but he must either have retired or died not long afterwards, because when Sir Charles Harvey put the farm up for sale by auction in 1904 the tenant was named as Mr Reeve, who had been given notice to quit.

In the auction particulars, a copy of which is held at the Norfolk Record Office under reference DC 2/21/1, the property was described as a capital farm house with well-arranged agricultural premises and arable and old pasture land extending to about one hundred and thirty one and a half acres. On the ground floor there was a drawing room, dining room, large store room, kitchen, dairy and cellar, whilst upstairs there was a landing and four bedrooms with two staircases, one being for servants! As with most village houses at the time, there was no bathroom or lavatory, merely an external earth closet, and water came from a pump which was also outside. The full range of farm buildings indicated that there were stables for the farm's horses, bullock sheds, pig sties, a fowls'(hen)house and a cow house for milking, with a granary above. There was also a large barn with a dressing floor where the corn would have been beaten with flails to extract the grain, which would then have been tossed into the air to separate it from the chaff, before being stored in sacks in the granary.

The identity of the purchaser isn't known, but it seems the land and buildings may have been let separately from the house because in 1908 Kelly's Norfolk Directory records Stanley Bennett as living at Hill House, the name given to the house in the 1911 census when the occupants were Stanley and his Florence together with their son and a servant, and rather than being a farmer, he was described as having independent means. Kelly's Directory for the following year records a land or estate agent, Henry Godfrey Woolsey, as living at Hill House, so again almost certainly Hill Farmhouse, whilst Longwood House, off Church Road, was being built for him. The next known farmer and owner was Ernest Prior who is referred to in Kelly's directory for 1925 and who in 1927 was one of the initial trustees of Tasburgh United Charities. He was still at Hill Farm at the outbreak of WW2 but he died in 1941 and the farm was then acquired by Mr and Mrs Bleach, whose family are still running the farm as the last traditional family farm in the village with their milking herd of Jersey cows.