Corner Farm - Low Road

Corner farmhouse is a 17th century timber-framed building which stands at the junction of Low Road and Station Road in Forncett St. Peter. The deeds of the farmhouse allow us to trace its history back to 3rd July 1738 when John Burroughs, a wine merchant living in Norwich, purchased "a messuage and lands in Forncett St. Peter" from Jane Barker, a spinster from Lowestoft. At this time, the farmhouse had already probably been standing for nearly a hundred years.

Nine years later, on 24th October 1747, Mrs. Mary Burroughs, the widow of John, leased the farm for a year to William Goodwin. We have no further information about the ownership of the farm until the 1813 map of Forncett (below) in which Corner Farm was owned by a lady called Elizabeth Coleman. We know little about her, but she was probably the Elizabeth Coleman who died aged 61 and was buried at St. Peter's church in December 1828.

The 1839 tithe map records that Corner Farm was then owned by Thomas Hardy. Thomas was born in Forncett in 1792, and he married Ann Betts, also from Forncett, in 1826. Ann was the daughter of Edward Betts (1764-1803) who came from Tibenham and who bought Church Farm in Low Road in 1795. When Edward Betts snr. died in 1803 his estate passed to his son, Edward Wiseman Betts.

A comparison of Thomas Hardy's land holdings in 1839 with those of Elizabeth Coleman in 1813 suggests that Thomas had bought all of Elizabeth's estate, possibly after her death in 1828. The farm comprised a total of 95 acres and, as well as Corner farmhouse, it included the cottage and blacksmith's shop near to Church farm and the mill and associated cottage at the top of Mill Lane. On the 1841 census, Thomas and Ann Hardy were living in Heigham near Norwich but Thomas still appears on the Electoral Register as owning a house and land (presumably Corner Farm) in lower Forncett. Edward Wiseman Betts was living with his sister, Sarah, just along Low Road at Bishop's House.

In the next few years, two major events affected Corner Farm. In 1845 Thomas Hardy died, aged only 53. Then in 1848 Edward Wiseman Betts died and his large estate was sold off (see Church Farm for details). The widowed Ann Hardy moved to live with her sister, Sarah Betts, at Bishop's House, and Corner Farm was bought by a man called Spooner Nash from Aylsham.

So, in 1851 Spooner Nash, age 45, and his family were living at Corner Farm where he was farming 98 acres and employing 5 men. Spooner Nash didn't stay in Forncett and by 1861 he was farming in Scole, but he retained ownership of Corner Farm. It's not possible to say with certainty who was running Corner Farm in 1861 but ten years later, in 1871, Robert Hewitt aged 49, from Old Buckenham, was there and he was farming 115 acres and employing 4 men and 1 boy. Robert Hewitt died in 1876 and so in 1881 the occupant of Corner Farm was his widow, Elizabeth. It would seem that Elizabeth Hewitt left soon after 1881 and the new tenant (listed in the 1883 Trade Directory) was Henry Dunthorne, whose family were to remain at Corner Farm for the next 130 years!

The Dunthorne family

Henry Dunthorne was born in Mattishall in 1839 and in 1865 he married Ellen Mallet Tooley from North Tuddenham. Her uncle, Samuel Tooley, had taken over Church Farm in Low Road, Forncett in 1862. Henry Dunthorne's early life is complex and obscure. He's not to be found on the 1861 census and neither he nor his wife appears on the 1871 census. Nevertheless, he had two sons; Henry (b. 1867) and Norton (b.1872). Both were born in London, Henry in Newington St. Mary and Norton in Southwark but in neither case is the mother's name given on the birth registration! So, where were Henry and Ellen between 1865 and 1872 and who was the boys' mother? In December 1878 the family reappears in the records when both boys, then aged 6 and 11, were baptised in North Tuddenham with their parents' names given as Henry and Ellen. Henry Dunthorne was farming 40 acres at North Tuddenham, but then in July 1881 Ellen died, aged only 43. This may well have prompted Henry to move, and he presumably came to Forncett with both his sons, by then aged around 10 and 15.

The Dunthorne Family Tree

Seven years after Ellen's death Henry Dunthorne also died, aged only 49, on the 19th July 1888. He left an estate valued at £429 9s. and his executor was his son, Henry. His father, Stephen Dunthorne, had died, aged 82, in Mattishall just a month previously. It would appear that Henry Dunthorne jnr. (age 21) then took over Corner Farm. Henry's younger brother, Norton, emigrated to South Africa and died there in 1896, aged just 24.

Norfolk News 29th August 1896

On 21st April 1889 Henry Dunthorne jnr. married Edith Cannell at St. Peter's church. Edith was born in Forncett to George and Eliza Cannell who farmed on Station Road (possibly at Nivelle Farm?). Henry and Edith subsequently had two daughters, Mabel (b. 1891) and Eveline (b. 1892). In 1911 both daughters (aged 20 and 19) were living on the farm and assisting with the dairy work. So, we can conclude that the family was running a dairy herd.

In 1917 Mabel Dunthorne married Robert Charles Barnes whose family lived at Hall Farm in Stratton St. Mary. After their marriage, Robert and Mabel moved to live at Mill Farm, Tharston. 

Two years later, in 1919, Eveline Dunthorne married Bertram Peter Dunthorne from Ashwellthorpe. Bertram was the son of Eveline's great uncle, Norton Dunthorne. Eveline (usually called Eva) and Bertram went to farm at Manor Farm in Silfield and they had two children, Peter and Mary. In later life Peter married and inherited Manor farm but Mary Dunthorne never married.

On 30th July 1920 Henry Dunthorne finally bought Corner Farm, from Spooner Nash's daughter, Emma, for the sum of £2000 (equivalent to about £115,000 today). The farm's 101 acres mapped almost exactly on to the land owned by Elizabeth Coleman back in 1813! The farm still included the smithy in Low Road, although that had closed about 15 years earlier.

In the 1921 census Henry and Edith were living at Corner Farm together with their grandson, Henry Charles Barnes (age 3) and their niece, Hilda Davey (age 15), daughter of Ruth Cannell, Edith's sister. Henry Barnes had moved to live with his grandparents at a very early age and lived with them right up to when he married in 1941 (age 22). 

O.S. map 1926 showing Corner farmhouse (left) and George Nudds' cottage (centre)

We rarely know much about the labourers who worked on Forncett's farms, but the 1921 census required people to identify their employers and George Nudds (age 67) was a farm labourer working for Henry Dunthorne. George lived in a cottage at the bottom of Station Road. The cottage no longer stands but the Nudds family had lived there since 1871 and may have always worked at Corner Farm. It isn't clear how the farm was managed in later years, given that back in 1881 the farm employed three or four men.

Corner farmhouse – circa 1930

The next record of Corner Farm is the 1939 register in which Henry and Edith Dunthorne were being helped on the farm by their grandson, Henry Barnes, who was now 21. Two years later, in January 1941, Henry married Phyllis Olive Wilby whose father was a farmer in Great Moulton. Henry and Phyllis moved to live at Nivelle Farm, where they had four children, Doreen, Pauline, David and Michael Barnes. Tragically Doreen died at the age of just two.

Henry Dunthorne died, age 85, at Corner Farm on 30th March 1952 and his wife Edith passed away eight years later, on 23rd December 1960: she was 93. The farm was inherited jointly by Edith's grandchildren Peter and Mary Dunthorne but it was Mary, who had been working as a midwife in London, who then moved into Corner farmhouse. In the early 1970s Henry Barnes' daughter, Pauline, who was in her late 20s and unmarried, moved to Corner Farm to live with Mary Dunthorne.

In 1981 and 1982, Peter and Mary Dunthorne sold off some of the farmland to local farmers. Then in May 1983 Peter Dunthorne passed away, leaving the farm to his sister Mary. Shortly afterwards, in October 1983, Mary sold off the majority of the remaining farmland, retaining only the land immediately surrounding the farmhouse and two fields opposite.

Mary Dunthorne and Pauline Barnes lived together at Corner farmhouse until Pauline's death in 2012. Mary Dunthorne died two years later, aged 88, on 15th August 2014, bringing to a close over 130 years of Dunthorne stewardship of Corner Farm.

The farmhouse was sold in 2015 and underwent extensive renovation by the new owners.

With particular thanks to Trish Fuller and Sandy Barnes for their invaluable help in researching this page.