White Horse Farm - Saxlingham Lane

The name White Horse Farm doesn't seem to have been in use until around the time of WW1 and so is almost certainly derived from The White Horse Inn which stood opposite and was in operation from about 1850 until it was destroyed by a fire in the 1920s, but the house itself is thought to be about 400 years old. The English Heritage index of Listed Buildings suggests that it was built in the early 17th century and it has long been associated with Rainthorpe Hall. There is no way of establishing that it was built by one of the owners of Rainthorpe but clearly from its size and construction it was a house of some importance, and was almost certainly the farm included in a Settlement of Rainthorpe Hall and its estate in 1712 by the owner of Rainthorpe, Richard Carter, on the marriage of his son, Richard Carter the younger to Amy Topcliffe, when it was described as " all that messuage or tenement with the barns, stables, outhouses, lands, meadows, pastures and marsh grounds in the use of John Reeve in Rainthorpe, Tasburgh, Newton and Saxlingham".

The original of that Settlement deed is held in the Norfolk Record Office under reference MS 18045, 76X6, as is the documentation for the sale of what is almost certainly the same farm in 1803 by Richard and Amy's great grandson Francis Charles Parry of Donnington, Berkshire, to John Gay of Rainthorpe Hall as it contains reference to the earlier title back to the 1712 Settlement. The sale documentation is held under NRO ref. ETN 1/4/38 in a bundle which also includes deeds relating to what is known for certain to be the property which became The White Horse Inn, and describes the farm as having 74 acres and being in the occupation of John Hudson, with a sale price of £2,400. John Gay died in 1824 and was succeeded at Rainthorpe by his daughter Mary Girdlestone who in 1852 put the whole estate up for sale by auction.

Again, the NRO have a copy the auction particulars (ref. WLP 14/12) in which the farm comprised Lot 1 and was described as a farmhouse and buildings with 64 acres of arable land and 29 acres of pasture let to John Balls for £138.50 pa. Like the Hall itself, the farm didn't reach its reserve but was included in the purchase of Rainthorpe Hall the following year by The Hon. Frederick Walpole MP. The 1851 census return shows Mr Balls as a widower but his daughter Elizabeth was living with him as was his widowed sister and there were also three servants in the house. He is described as employing two labourers and farming 110 acres some of which were included in other Lots in the 1852 auction but there seems to have been quite a high turnover of tenants because ten years earlier the farmer in occupation had been John Elgar and his family and by 1871 the occupant was John Rix junior, the son of the tenant of Manor Farm, with his wife Mary Ann and his brother Robert, a carpenter. Also in the house was his widowed niece Ellen Mary Alliban who he employed as a general servant and her 5 year old daughter, and he is described as farming 91 acres with the help of two farm boys.

Frederick Walpole died in 1876 and Rainthorpe was again put up for auction by his executors but the auction didn't include White Horse Farm because not long before he died, he had transferred the property to the trustees of a family settlement as security for a loan which was then still outstanding. Instead the farm was sold separately by the trustees to the purchaser of Rainthorpe Hall, Sir Charles Harvey in 1878. By 1881 the occupation of the farmhouse had changed again with part being lived in by John Bignold, farming 99 acres and employing three men and a boy, but the main part of the house was occupied by Sir Charles' farm bailiff, William Wales with his wife Emma and their 8 year-old daughter Elizabeth. However, the pattern of frequent changes in occupation continued with William Harrison as the farmer in 1891, Thomas Arnes in 1901 and Mary Fish in 1911. Although described as a farmer she was also a widow so maybe her husband had been the tenant after Thomas Arnes, but the Fish family had moved around locally because their daughter, May who was referred to as working in the dairy, had been born at Wreningham, and their son, Frederick who was also working on the farm, was born in Hapton.

After Sir Charles Harvey died in 1928, the Rainthorpe estate was inherited by his son Oliver, and the following year the whole estate was put up for sale by auction in 35 Lots with White House Farm and 70 acres being Lot 3, and the tenant at the time was a Mr G W Russell although the particulars refer to him as having given notice to quit at Michaelmas (NRO ref. MC 14/322). However, as in 1852, the farm together with Rainthorpe Hall and a number of other Lots didn't reach their reserve, and it wasn't until 1934 that they were all bought by Maurice Hastings who took up residence at the Hall and continued letting out the other properties. The occupants of White Horse Farm at the end of the 1930s were John and George Everson who in 1944 bought Old Hall Farm on Church Road. They were followed by Mr Prior and he was succeeded in 1950 by Kenneth Read who continued the tenancy until he retired in 1991. By then ownership of the Rainthorpe estate was in the hands of George Hastings, the son of Maurice Hastings and his widow Rosemary who had died in 1983. Although most of the land at White Horse Farm was sold to Redwings Horse Sanctuary, the house was let to a series of tenants until following the death of George Hastings in 1993, the family eventually sold off the farm buildings for conversion and in 2003 the house was bought by Richard and Jayne Mann who restored and modernised the property, later adding an extension onto the back of the house.