Chartridge

A large number of prehistoric artefacts have been found in fieldwalking surveys at Brick Kiln and Weedon Hill Farms. Much of this was flint and ranged from Palaeolithic handaxes and Mesolithic picks to Neolithic flint flakes, cores, scrapers and blades. A Neolithic polished flint axe-head was found by schoolchildren in Great Malne Field. A Late Iron Age to Roman ditch with associated pottery was found in a garden on Chartridge Lane.

Medieval remains in Chartridge include the pentagonal moat at Little Pednor Farm, which was the site of a farmstead from the twelfth century onwards, as known from historic records. Great Hundridge Farm was the site of a medieval manor and the house there dates to the seventeenth century. There are records of medieval chapel in 1199 and again in the thirteenth century but by the sixteenth century it was ruinous. It was converted to a barn and brew house in the seventeenth century. There are also records of a medieval manor called Chesham Wooburn.

The oldest building in the parish does date back to the medieval period, just. Asheridge Farm is a timber-framed fifteenth century hall-house but has been altered in later centuries. Most of the listed buildings in the parish date to the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries, such as Hill Top Cottage, Bloomfield Farm and Little Grange. The seventeenth century houses called Bellingdon Farm Cottages are known to have been the home of D H Lawrence for a short time.

In later centuries the area became more industrial, with several brickworks being established. There was a brick kiln at Fuller’s Hill Farm in the eighteenth century. Bellingdon Brickworks was set up in the nineteenth century, as were brickworks at Bloomfield Farm. Twentieth century brickworks are known on Gyles Road and Oak Lane. There are lots of chalk, clay and gravel pits in the area, for instance at White’s Wood, near Cogdell’s Farm and on Hyde Heath Common, as shown on nineteenth and twentieth century maps.

The most recent development recorded in the Historic Environment Record is the Royal Observation Corps post at Little Hundridge Farm, which was running from 1961 to 1991.