Location Now

Pre-New Town Location

Click image to Enlarge

Information about this Farm:

JEFFRIES FARM, Coalash Lane, lies just within the parish, the lane being part of the parish boundary. It takes its name from the Jeffries family, which in the 15th and 16th centuries owned land in Bentley Paunccfoot. It was part of the Bentley Estate until purchased by the tenant Harold Fernihough in 1971/2. In the early 1900s, through WW1 and until 1936, the tenant farmer was William Albutt. He also worked at Stoke Prior Salt Works. Some of the timbers used in the construction of one of the barns were originally part of old wooden brine pipes from the works. Coalash Lane was surfaced with coal ash from the salt works, before the use of tarmac, hence its name.

The present farmhouse, which was built in mock timbered style by the father of Harold Coombes around 1900, incorporates at the north end part of an older farm cottage. There used to be a timber-built barn and cowsheds beside the lane, but they were destroyed by a great fire in the hot dry summer of 1949. It took about a year for the Bentley Estate to get round to replacing the cowshed with a brick-built one. Meanwhile the cows had to be walked along the highway to be milked at Beasley Farm, the journey each way taking half-an-hour and causing great frustration to other road traffic. The cowshed building has latterly been converted into a dwelling "The Byre".

Source: A Hundred Years In Tardebigge – The Revd Alan White