EASTON HOUSE

Easton House is architecturally the finest house in the village, reputedly built in 1783 as a grand farmhouse for Giles Herne, a well-to-do estate tenant, although some of the original fabric is of the sixteenth century.

In the house there is a fireplace with a stone Tudor arch, ceiling beams with chamfer stops and a linenfold panel cupboard door, all of the earlier period. The attic was used as a dormitory for domestic staff, girls slept on the left and boys to the right. Wooden pegs where they hung their clothes still exist.

Stonework in the garden has been dated as probably removed from the derelict medieval priory building. The façade of the house is of fine proportions in red brick with blue brick mid-storey banding. The south chimney stack is quite a massive structure rising as a landmark above the lower end of the village. Between the gable chimneys the mansard roof incorporates dormer attic windows, with hipped roofs all covered in clay tiles.

A Year in the Life of Easton Farm – (dramatised from an account book discovered by the Pearce family)

October 1852 – “My name is John Thomas Powell. I am thirty years old and farm 850 acres at Easton under a tenancy from the Savernake estate.  My wife Jane and I have lived in Easton Farmhouse for the last four years.

This farming year has been pretty much the same as any other. First came the vital preparation of the land before drilling – dung carting and spreading of phosphate-rich wood ash collected from Burbage church. Dairy cows are brought in during bad weather so there is plenty of farmyard manure. We also buy South American guano which is brought up on the canal to the wharf at Wootton Rivers.

We currently employ 13 men and 6 boys to help run the farm. The normal working week is six ten-hour days, extra hours are paid at time and a half. From Lady Day (25th March) to Michaelmas (29th September) the men receive six shillings a week, but after that they have to manage on five shillings. Wages are paid monthly in arrears but can be advanced for men with a particular need. Absenteeism is not tolerated or paid for.

William Sloper, the Carter, is in charge of all the wagons and horses, an important job for which I pay a fixed wage of 8s per week. He is a versatile and able man and has three boys working with him.

David Spanswick, the Shepherd, has the same weekly wage and is paid a bonus of 1/6d for every lamb saved in spring. This year his bonus was £1 14s representing 454 lambs. He has two boys to help him look after the sheep with assistance from his own sheepdogs.

We have young lads, some still at school, whose starting wages range from 2d to 4d per day depending on their size and strength. Odd jobs round the farm include help with the milking, cleaning buckets and boots, bringing in wood and coal, feeding the pigs and calves. For bird scaring, boys can earn 8d a day which is equal to the rate paid to women taken on for seasonal work. 

The harvest started this year on 10th August with 30 acres of wheat up near the Burbage road. At 5.00 a.m., the men were in the fields whetstoning their blades ready for the first cut. The reapers moved off in line abreast, their scythes swishing as the corn fell in orderly swathes. The women followed on behind, making up and tying the sheaves with the ancient straw knot. Then came the boys erecting air-drying stooks. After working from dawn to dark each day, the field was finished by the end of the first week.

The reapers moved on, leaving the stooks to dry out for William Sloper and his men to load the wagons and drive the horses home ready for the rick builders back at the farm. The ricks are thatched and left until it is time for threshing which is a noisy and dusty business. But the sight of a barn full of sacks of grain is worth all the sweat and toil.

Oats and barley followed, then finally after 46 days - 8 of them wet – on 25th September the harvest was finished to the relief of us all. Now I have made calculations to pay the Harvest Bounty which is not bad this year. Some men earned a bonus of the equivalent to several months’ pay, each boy was given an extra 4 weeks’ wages and William Sloper received a bonus of 5 weeks’ pay.

Farmers are talked about like they are gods – but I suppose we are treated that way as we could turn men out of their houses with just a week’s notice. The threat of the Pewsey workhouse is enough to scare anyone. Farming is a hard life but when things go well, I wouldn’t change it for any other.”

Jacob Cooper took over management of Easton Farm in 1894 and although the land and farm buildings came to be owned by generations of the Cooper family, the farmhouse was sold off separately in 1976.

Easton House