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the centre of Messrs Willmot ‘s extensive business
of agricultural contractors and merchants. Those who resort at
seasonable times to the fine strawberry field behind the house will see
the farmyard pond, which may or may not have been the pond in which
Samuel Tiesdell was drowned.
The other major West Yoke farm and, also, Turner’s Farm
we left in the tenure of Francis Andrus, to whom both had passed from
the Middletons by the year 1816. Three or four years later, when the
freeholds of these farms were acquired by a Mr Wood, Andrus
retained Turner’s Farm, but the West Yoke farm was let to one Daniel
Colleson. He did not stay very long and, by 1827, another of the Andrus
family, William, had taken over both farms; they were then jointly
assessed for the Land Tax at £53.
Two years, later, the landlords were ‘Messrs Wood',
who may well have been the Edward and Constantine Wood who appear as
proprietors in the 1839 tithe agreement. At that time, William
Andrus |
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was still the tenant, but by now he was getting on in
years. The 1841 census, which shows him as a farmer and living at West
Yoke, was successful in concealing his exact age, but he was into his
seventies.
In 1847, Constantine Wood, whose home was at Mottingham,
near Eltham, laid claim, in company with James Fletcher junior, George
Munyard and John Slaughter, to a parliamentary vote on the Ash register;
he did so by virtue of ownership of freehold property in the occupation
of ‘Mr Andrus’ and known ‘by the name of Man’s farm or
Turner’s farm'.
Although the house at West Yoke called Mann’s Farmhouse
evidently now served as the farmhouse for Turner’ s Farm as well as
for the second of the West Yoke farms, there had once been two separate
houses which, in 1620, were called respectively Turners Place and
Mann’s tenement.19 The family of Mann does not
figure in the ancient registers, but some |