Volume I - Little Baddow History Centre

acres. The names given for the fields include “Kitchine Croft”, “Home Pytell”,
“Doppers”, “Nerogate Field” and “Hawkins Piece”. In the eighteenth century
Hammonds, with 75 acres of land, was sold by John Sadd and Gamaliel Keys to
William Hart, who on his death in 1795 left it to his dead son’s son, Evan Hart, when
he reached the age of 30 years. Until then Evan’s mother was to occupy the farm rent
free (while she remained a widow) together with the 24 acres of “Priestlands”
(Prislands). During the next century Hammonds was the principal home of the
Pledger family, who probably built the present house on the site of the old one. In
fact the site may well have been Saxon in origin.
Sometime before 1841 Phillips dairy had been built, for in that year Prudence Tween,
dairywoman, was living there with her husband, an agricultural labourer. It was near
Kings well, on the boundary with Danbury, first mentioned in a document of 1560.
The beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign saw most of the old houses still standing
(however many times rebuilt and altered) and still retaining their ancient names; the
Victorian age and the twentieth century were to demolish some and to change the
names of others, as well as to build many more houses on both new and old sites. The
twentieth century was also to end the already diminished powers and privileges which
had belonged through so many centuries to the lords of the manors.
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