Monument record 1597100000 - Ongar Hill Farm

Up to at least 1624, and possibly as late as 1637 there was no farmhouse on the land of Ongar Hill Farm, which had been the demesne arable of
the manor of Stockbury, now absorbed in the manor of Amersham. In 1640 William Drake granted a 40 year lease of the land — 115 acres (46.9 ha) — to William Ball, who was an Amersham draper, 68 years old and childless. It can be inferred that his taking the lease was purely an investment, and he certainly sub-let. He built a house, however (there was none in his lease), and we know what it looked like, for it acquired a certain fame as the home, from 1666, of Thomas Ellwood, the Quaker leader, and was recorded in a print of 1836 (see PIate IX).
It shows a house of two full storeys, with a cross wing and a clasped-purlin roof. The cross wing is approximately half as wide as the main range is long, and a total floor area of 42' x 14' (12.9 x 4.3 m) may be suggested. The entrance is in the traditional cross-passage position, but this seems to be the only feature that in any way looks back to the middle ages; in fact the layout seems to look forward to the last years of the century, when Pond Cottage at Coleshill was built, in brick, on exactly the same lines, though with a main range only half as long. At Ongar Hill there were windows above
the collar in both visible gables, and there is an external loft door to the first floor in the main gable. Servants quarters in the loft, and a first floor partly used for storage are indicated. Only one stack is visible, and this is in the back wall of the main range; the perspective is such that, had there been another attached to the cross wing, this would have been visible. All houses with two or more hearths appear in the Hearth Tax returns, and Ongar Hill Farm is not among them. It seems inescapable that the visible stack served only one hearth, and that this large farm had a farmhouse with only one heated room. The occupant is unknown. The house was rebuilt c. 1900 (B1).
This record includes National Record of the Historic Environment Information provided by Historic England on 4 June 2025 licensed under the Open Government Licence (B2).