Yeovil's Virtual Museum

Lower Five Acres

Of Stone Farm, a detached part of Preston Plucknett

 

Lower Five Acres was a field at the northern end of Stone Farm to the east side of Stone Lane.

This area is actually a detached part of the parish of Preston Plucknett, known as Preston in Stone, and the Preston Plucknett Tithe Map of 1849 shows Lower Five Acres as Parcel 155. It was bounded on the east by Lower Ground (Parcel 156), on the south by Middle Ground (Parcel 166), on the west by Stone Lane and to the north by fields in the parish of Mudford.

The Preston Plucknett Tithe Apportionment of 1848 notes that Lower Five Acres was in the ownership of Henry Goodford Esq. of Chilton Cantello and occupied by Mrs Phillis Coles, as indeed was the whole of Stone Farm at this time. The Tithe Apportionment reckoned the area of Lower Five Acres as 5a 2r 5p.

Other known owners / occupiers had been James Harris (1800), Mr Pester (1810), Mr Spear (1818), Stephen Coles (c1821-1827). Phillis Coles, in her later years assisted by her sons, ran Stone Farm after the death of her husband Stephen until her own death in 1877. Her son Edmund ran the farm after her death until his death in 1885.  By 1889 a Mr Russell was farming Stone Farm but his widow sold up and retired in February 1900. In 1901 the tenant farmer was John Sawtell.

Lower Five Acres and Lower Ground have very recently been combined to form one very large arable field - see photo below - but Google Earth still shows them as two separate fields.

 

The Stone area reproduced from the 1849 Tithe Map. Lower Five Acres is towards top left.

 

The 1946 aerial photograph showing Lower Five Acres at centre to the right of Stone Lane which runs vertically just right of centre with the lane to Yeovil Marsh running off to the left.

 

The 1849 Tithe Map superimposed over the current Google Earth image. Although the field boundaries do not align precisely, remember that the 1849 survey was undertaken by hand using primitive surveying equipment. Lower Five Acres is towards top left.

 

Lower Five Acres is today combined with Lower Ground to form this large field of some 17 acres. Lower Five Acres was roughly the third of this field left of centre. Photographed in 2015.