The Pheasantries, Church Road

The Listed Buildings register describes the property as an early 19th century house but it must be later than that as it wasn't shown on the Tithe Apportionment map of 1840. It seems more likely that the current house was built in the 1870s or early 80s and it is clearly shown on the first large scale OS Map published in 1882, though it is possible that the road frontage wall which is also listed may be older as the brickwork shows at least three stages of construction. It was part of a small farm which at the beginning of the century had been owned by Henry Dunt, and it seems likely that he was the occupier as well because in 1816 his daughter Elizabeth was married in Tasburgh church to Jonathan Girling from Newton Flotman. The Manorial Court records for the previous year refers to Henry paying a fee of one shilling in respect of his four acres and a dwelling by the name of Green House but he died at the beginning of June 1818 and the property was inherited by his widow, also called Elizabeth. She was shown as the owner in the Enclosure Award published later that year when she was given ownership of a piece of the Common waste which took her four acre strip of land all the way down to Marl Pit Lane, but curiously although the Award's map clearly showed the farm's barn at the junction of Church Road and the main road, now Barn Lodge, all residential buildings were marked in red on the map but there is no such building shown on the land. One possible explanation is that the house had by then been destroyed perhaps in a fire, which was not uncommon in those days, and this may be supported by the fact that Henry Dunt wasn't buried in Tasburgh but in Long Stratton, suggesting that he may have been living there at the time.

In any event, by the time of the Tithe Apportionment Award in 1840 the accompanying Map clearly shows a residential building on the site, standing end on to Church Road and just to the left of the current house. By then Elizabeth Dunt had died and the property was owned by her daughter, Elizabeth Girling. The tenant was named as Thomas Walne, described in the census the following year as a forty six year old farmer, living there with his wife and two servants. It seems that by the time of the next census in 1851 Thomas's wife had died because his sister had come to live with him and the two of them were still in residence in 1861. That same year the owner Elizabeth Girling died and it seems Thomas Walne was able to buy the farm because by the time of the next census in 1871 he was referred to as a land owner, and the land was being farmed by his next door neighbour Benjamin Sayer. Later that same year Thomas Walne also died, and it was probably the next owner who replaced the previous farmhouse with the current building.

The occupier of the house in 1881 was Thomas Garrood with his wife, four children, his widowed mother, one of his sisters and a servant. The fact that the census that year names the property as Hill House, the only known time that name appears, might suggest it had recently been built and was Thomas' way of acknowledging the fact that his parents had farmed at Hill Farm on the other side of the main road. Thomas and his family were still all there in 1891 when he was described as a sanitary and school attendance officer but the following year Thomas died and Kelly's Norfolk Directory for 1892 not only names the property as The Pheasantries, the earliest known use of the name, but records it as his mother's address, presumably as head of the household with precedence over her daughter in law. Mrs Garrood senior was still there in Kelly's 1896 directory but she died that year, and the next recorded occupant was Walter Nichalls in 1900, although the census return the following year shows William Nichalls living there as a caretaker. There is no record of a Walter Nichalls having died locally, but a Walter Nicholls is recorded as having died that year in the west of the county. The alternative spelling may simply have been a mis-translation of the Norfolk dialect, and William was probably his son who was looking after the house until it was sold.

Whatever the circumstances, it seems the next owner of The Pheasantries was William Pratt as the 1911 census signed by him returns the occupants as himself, a 49 year old man of independent means, his wife Mary and their 25 year old son William Thomas, described as a farmer. They had clearly been there a few years because the Manorial Court records show that in 1908 William Thomas Pratt had bought from Mrs Emelia Gowing's executors the forge and five cottages opposite, facing on to the main road, plus a barn and one and a half acres of land.

The house and land next door to the Pheasantries had been owned in 1818 by Thomas Goward and on his death in 1838 it had been inherited by a nephew, John Elmer, a Norwich merchant's clerk. He continued to let the property, as did his successor Edmund Joseph Elmer, until Edmund died in 1920 when the Manorial Court records show that his son Victor Elmer sold the house, then known as Cocks, and its four and a half acres to William Thomas Pratt for £230. Although both of his parents had died he was still living at The Pheasantries at the time of the 1939 Registration with his wife, Eva, and his seventy year old mother in law. The property was subsequently acquired by the Coe family, and it was Miss F C Coe who sold the land behind what was Cocks and the Pheasantries for residential development in the 1990s.