landuse 1830-1865

Local historian Gavin Bowyer has researched archives, maps, records of the area and notes that:

“The descriptions that I have found of the farm fields are broad, mainly meadow and pasture with some arable.

The 1838 Tithe Map, has descriptions of the relevant fields, 2059, 2072 and 2089 as simply grass.

In the sale agreement of the land in 1865 by the Cartwright Family to British Land Company, there is also a map and a description of the fields 2, 4, and 18 as meadow and provides their field names. Field 2 is named as Plough Field but is described as meadow and Field 4, 14 Acres is also a meadow. Field 18 is described as part of Home Field, which elsewhere is described as meadow.  Some of the other fields, such as 5 and 8 were arable.  The 71 page abstract of the Sale Document is available in the Southwark History Library.

In terms of images, I am afraid that I haven't found any really useful ones. Unfortunately, the image titled Friern Manor Farm in John Beasley's book, East Dulwich, An Illustrated Guide, is actually of a house that was in Friern Barnet. The copy in the Southwark History Library was wrongly titled and was missing some important information. The only illustrations, that I have found are in the Illustrated London News article cited by Beasley and a sketch of a piggery. Even the Illustrated London News illustrations contain misleading detail as they show milkmaids when all the farm employees were men at the time.

Charles Dickens wrote a detailed description of the farm, which is worth reading. He mentions some of the root crops fed to the cows. These were presumably grown on the arable fields.

An idealised image appears in a contemporary advert, which like the piggery sketch are held in the London Metropolitan Archives.”