Manor Farm - Saxlingham Lane

Although the more recent history of Manor Farm is linked to Rainthorpe Hall, it belonged before that to the Lord of the Manor of Tasburgh Uphall with Boyland and Hunts. Whether the current house was ever home to the Lord of the Manor seems doubtful but if it was, then that would have been prior to 1700 when the Lordship passed into the ownership of the Jermy and Preston families who didn't live in Tasburgh. The English Heritage index of Listed Buildings suggests that the house was built in the early 1600s, which in terms of date ties in with many of the other larger timber framed houses along Saxlingham Lane and Low Road, such as White Horse Farm, and Rookery House. It is thought that the brick facing was added in about 1770. However, work carried out on the house around 2000 uncovered large flint footings on the northern side which were possibly the remains of an earlier medieval house or building, perhaps even an earlier Manor house, of which there was more than one in Tasburgh.

The 1818 Enclosure Award and Map for Tasburgh confirms that the house and fields opposite were owned by the Lord of the Manor, The Rev. George Preston, who was also the rector of Tasburgh between 1834 and 1837, when he was followed by a distant relative, The Rev. Henry Preston. George Preston lived at Stanfield Hall, between Hethel and Wymondham, and in order to comply with the terms of the Will under which he was entitled to the Lordship of Tasburgh, he changed his name to Jermy. After his death it was his son, Isaac Jermy who took over the Lordship and was named in the 1840 Tithe Apportionment Award for the village as the owner of Manor Farm when the tenant farmer was Robert Gore. The 1841 Census return records him as living there with his wife Eliza, five children and a 12 year-old servant called William Tann, but in 1848 Isaac Jermy and his son were sensationally murdered at Stanfield Hall in a dispute which attracted a lot of publicity at the time, and the farm then passed to Isaac's executors in trust for his only remaining child, an infant daughter Sophia.

Whether as a result of the change of ownership or just coincidence, the tenancy changed around that time, and the 1851 Census records the farmer as being John Rix who was living in the house with his wife Eliza and their four sons, all of whom had been born in Ashwellthorpe, where presumably John Rix had been farming previously. The farm at that time comprised 53 acres and employed two labourers but ten years later, John Rix had taken on the tenancy of another 25 acres and increased his workforce to three labourers and a boy. By the time of the 1871 Census the four sons had all left home but living in the house with John Rix and his wife were a granddaughter Julia Alliban and her younger brother George. Both were recorded as being employed by their grandparents, Julia as a general servant and George, aged just 13, as an agricultural servant, so perhaps they had been orphaned. One of the sons, Henry, was by then renting and farming the adjoining White Horse Farm.

The 1881 census shows that the tenancy of Manor Farm had passed to one of the sons, George Rix, and although he had lost the extra 25 acres his father held, he had increased the workforce to six men and three boys, but not his own three boys who were still at school. Living with the family at the time were a niece, Edith Alliban, probably a sister of Julia and George, and Mary Hunt, a 15 year-old general servant. However ten years later, the farm was in the hands of his elder brother, John Rix junior and he and his wife Fanny had three sons, Frank, John and Thomas. Frank became a schoolteacher and moved to Sunbury on Thames and John became a carpenter and emigrated to Canada whilst Thomas became the third generation of the family to work on the farm with his father, who died in 1914, just after WW1 had started. John had served on the Parish Council for many years, and the minutes at the time reflected the esteem in which he had been held. All three sons fought in the War, John having returned with the Canadian troops, but only Thomas survived. The names of Frank and John are to be found on the village War Memorial.

At some point after the murder of Isaac Jermy and his son, his executors had sold Manor Farm. The plan attached to the auction particulars of the adjoining Rainthorpe estate in 1878 suggests that a Mr T Beevor was then the owner of the farm. The purchaser of the Rainthorpe estate was Sir Charles Harvey who embarked on a series of local acquisitions which included Manor Farm. After Thomas Rix's mother died, he moved to a farm in Saxlingham, and the farm was let to Horace Harrison who was still the tenant in 1929 when the Rainthorpe estate was again put up for sale by auction following the death of Sir Charles Harvey. Manor Farm with 60 acres of land comprised Lot 6, but as with the Hall and park, White Horse Farm and various cottages along Saxlingham Lane, it failed to sell. It wasn't until 1934 that Rainthorpe and the remaining properties were bought by J Maurice Hastings, and Manor Farm was then let to Billy Fairhead whose wife, Cissie, was the district nurse. They remained there until the beginning of 1970s but following his wife's death he negotiated a surrender of his tenancy of the farm on terms which allowed him to remain living in the farmhouse. However, the loss of his wife and the farm proved too much and sadly one morning he went out into the yard and shot himself.

Rosemary Hastings, who had taken over the Rainthorpe estate from her late husband, then agreed to let the farm to Keith Read whose parents had the tenancy of White Horse Farm. When he and his wife Gillie moved in during 1972, the house was in need of a lot of work, as in the Fairhead's time nothing much had been done for over thirty years. For a while there were even buckets upstairs to catch the drips from the leaks in the roof! Rosemary Hastings died in 1983 and was succeeded as owner by her son George, and then after 20 years in residence Keith Read negotiated the surrender of his tenancy and that of White Horse Farm on the retirement of his parents, before acquiring and converting one of the barns on the farm to his residence, now Thornley Barn. George Hastings sold off the land, and the house continued to be let to a succession of tenants, even after his death in 1993, but eventually the other barns were sold for conversion and it was perhaps appropriate that the first occupants of Manor Farm Barn in 2003 were a family by the name of Rix. The farmhouse itself was bought by Mr and Mrs Buxton who carried out a major program of restoration and refurbishment, including the addition of the front porch and new windows. The house was sold again in 2021 to the current owners, Andrew Quaile, a consultant orthopaedic surgeon and his wife, Deborah.