OS 1899The Village Society’s Fieldwalking project found evidence that the deep loop of the Thames around Southlea was inhabited from about 6000 years ago and into the Roman period up to about 400 AD. This article takes a brief look at the history of Southlea since then.
While there is no archaeological evidence available from the site of Southlea Farmhouse itself, its site on a small ‘island’ of raised ground in the Thames floodplain suggests that the farm itself may have a continuous history going back a further 1000 years or so to the late Roman period. Southlea as a place name is found in documents from 1301, but until modern times the name was usually spelt ‘Southley’. This implies a parallel with other early settlements on high ground along the Thames such as Boveney and Dorney, where the ‘ey’ element is Old English (ie Anglo Saxon) for island.
OS 1899
The biggest change in the landscape in recent times was in 1850, when the old bridge at the foot of the High Street was finally demolished and the present road leading to the new Albert Bridge was built, all due to the arrival of the railway. The original road was the lane which now leads to the farm and down towards the river, but did not ever cross it. South of the farm and farmyard, down this old road, was Southlea House which burnt down in the late 19th century and was not rebuilt, although the early 1900s Monastery Cottages are near to its site. On this 1930s map, Grange (remains of) marks the walled enclosures which have been traditionally associated with St Helen’s nunnery at Bishopsgate in London, and described as the remains of a monastery or a monastic grange (ie farm). As will be seen, they are in fact the garden walls of the demolished Southlea House and apparently nothing to do with St Helen’s at all.
In 1263 St Helen’s nunnery had been endowed with a lot of property in Datchet, including the great meadow called Sundermeade or Sumptermead, now the golf course and nowhere near Southlea. A lot of other land and many houses were included in the endowment, which then came under the jurisdiction of the Manor of Datchet St Helen’s, rather than the Manor of Datchet. The possessions of these two manors were completely intermixed and scattered throughout the village and its fields. It has been assumed that Southlea farm was the administrative base for the Manor of Datchet St Helen’s, but instead it seems always to have come under the Manor of Datchet, although St Helen’s certainly did own some land at Southlea. One house in the village, St Helen’s Cottage in the High Street, does accurately declare its past connections, but the situation elsewhere is very confusing. At the dissolution of the monasteries in 1540, all of St Helen’s endowments were seized by Henry VIII and sold for profit, so St Helen's property ceased to have anything to do with the nunnery in London. From the 1580s, the Manor of Datchet and the Manor of Datchet St Helens were administered together as one, though the separate names proved very persistent.
The development of the Southlea estate really starts with Christopher Barker who bought property here in the 1580s. He and his son Robert are well known to us in Datchet as printers to Queen Elizabeth I and King James I, and for the Barker Bridge House Trust. Of course the printing business remained in London, at St Paul’s; Southlea was to be the country retreat of a successful businessman who wished to demonstrate and enjoy his status. During the 1580s and 90s Christopher Barker seems to have bought up all the property that became available in the village, a policy continued by his son Robert. However, Robert overreached himself financially and by 1620 (long before his death in 1645) all his estates were mortgaged to his business partner, also one of his sons-in-law. The Barker property was sold outright in 1631 and then changed hands several more times until 1706, when it was inherited by the Lascelles family of Leeds, later to become the Earls of Harewood.
map 1813, Harewood Estate
From that time onwards there are very good records, including a detailed map of 1813 which, for the first time, shows the extent and location of the estates. Most of the land is centred on Southlea farm, but there are also fields east of the High Street and north of Horton Road. Some of the houses along these roads were also part of the Barker property, some belonging to Datchet Manor and some to St Helen’s, Cedar House being one of the few that survive. Altogether, the Harewood estate was only slightly smaller than that of the Lords of the Manor, the Buccleuch and Montagu family. The Harewood farms were run by tenant farmers, supervised by a land agent; there is no suggestion that any of the Lascelles ever lived here.
'Monastery' walls & gateway
Southlea House was also rented out, though quite separately from the farm. In 1815 the tenant, John Taylor, wrote to Lord Harewood:
I trust your Lordship will so far contribute to protect us from the robberies we have already experienced by causing that part of the garden wall that is destroyed (and which leaves the premises extremely exposed) to be rebuilt.
This is the first reference to the walls and one which makes it quite clear that they enclosed the gardens of Southlea House. A contribution was made to their rebuilding as requested, and it is likely that as we see them today the walls are of about 1815 or later; no early bricks have been identified there. In fact, the suggestion that the enclosures might have anything to do with St Helen’s nunnery (or a monastery) does not appear anywhere at all until the late 19th century. Dr Samuel Osborne was Datchet’s first historian and he explained the current thinking in 1887:
The nunnery of St Helen’s Bishopsgate held land here called Soudermeade, meaning South Meadow. This place is called Southlea, the name having undergone little alteration.
Osborne drew a completely false conclusion here; Soudermeade / Sundermeade / Sumptermead are all names for the great meadow owned by St Helen’s in 1263, now the golf course. That name cannot be equated with Southlea because both were used in the 1300s for different places; one cannot turn into the other. This incorrect assumption may actually be the only tenuous link that exists between St Helen’s and Southlea. He went on:
The projected nunnery was, it is believed, never erected, with the exception of some of the walls to enclose the property, on account of the property being confiscated by Henry VIII.
But Osborne’s timing is wrong, since no one in the years leading up to Henry’s dissolution of the monasteries in 1540 would have been planning to build a new one. He concludes:
Southlea House, which used to stand close by, was said to have been built out of the remains of the nunnery, but probably only out of some of the old walls already alluded to.
Clearly there is some sort of a tradition here, but no evidence exists at all to support Osborne’s theory. However, he did go to print, and to a second edition, which meant that the story became a widely accepted fact. The present author did not reject it until recently and only after a lot of new documentary research. The Ordnance Survey maps relied to some extent on local information for place names and features, and on the 1876 large-scale map (when Southlea House was still standing) the walls were labelled St Helen’s Monastery (remains of). Variations on this theme, each a little less confident, continued through to the 1960s but the modern compromise is to just name the Monastery Cottages.
The usual sorts of legends have become attached to this place, such as a tunnel leading under the Thames to Windsor Castle, women in white seen at night, ghostly singing, and a well with thousands of bottles of wine, ‘placed there by the monks’. And in living memory there have also been visits by (real) nuns to bless the scene, particularly the pond in the furthest enclosure. It does seem that even the most tenuous link to a monastic past evokes an intense interest, but this strange and isolated place does also have a romantic atmosphere which might well encourage storytelling.
In 1899, after Southlea House had burnt down, Sir Henry Simpson (veterinary surgeon to Queen Victoria) bought the farm from the Harewoods and converted the farm buildings to stabling for 67 horses. But the whole area was about to change hands again, and to an unlikely new owner. Once the bridge across the Thames in the village centre had gone, the castle grounds on the other side could be made private for the first time. The Crown Estate then set about buying land along the Datchet river banks to gain control and prevent any development which might threaten the privacy of the castle. By this time Sumptermead had changed hands and belonged to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners, but in 1865 the Crown estate bought Sumptermead Ait and in 1875 Sumptermead itself, which within a few years was leased to Datchet Golf Club. When the respective owners of Rosineau (later Poulsen’s Club, now Woolacombe) and Sandlea Court died (1866 and 1897), the houses and land were bought from their executors to be leased out by the Crown. Southlea Farm itself was one of the last to be acquired, the land west of the new road before 1897 and the farm, with the site of Southlea House, in 1901. This all seems to have been deliberate protectionism by Crown Estates, preventing the development which would inevitably have taken place during this peak time of house and villa building in Datchet, especially on the highly desirable riverfront. And although the archaeological site was unsuspected at the time, Crown Estate’s actions ensured that it too was, and remains, protected from future development.
One big question remains unanswered: which was the Barker family’s house, and was it even at Southlea, since they owned so much else in Datchet? Four houses are known to have existed here from late medieval times: Rosenau (Woolacombe), Sandlea, Southlea House and Southlea Farm (none of which are now pre-20th century), but Southlea House seems on current evidence to be the most likely for the Barkers. For the old farmhouse, demolished in the 1970s, there are at least photographs and memories which confirm that it was a timber framed house from the 1600s, though one half of it was probably much later. Many Datchet residents will know its tenants, the Berryman family, who arrived here in 1951 and still farm this fascinating and ancient place, though now from their modern bungalow.
Farmhouse, now demolished