Browns Farm is a family-owned farmhouse used here as an in-house example. It demonstrates the research process without drawing upon a client’s property or publishing somebody else’s commissioned history.
Historic building
The Grade II listed farmhouse incorporates fabric dating from the seventeenth century.
Former Ship Inn
Documentary and property evidence connects the premises with the former Ship Inn at Coleford.
Family occupation
An 1872 tenancy agreement provides an important dated point in the Enderson family story.
Changing livelihoods
Directories and family evidence reveal farming, butchery and milk retailing associated with the premises.
The building is part of the evidence
A property history begins with the place itself. The listed farmhouse at Browns Farm incorporates seventeenth-century fabric, while surviving associated structures reflect later working uses. These include a former stable and hayloft, an implement room, a butcher’s shop or slaughterhouse and a barn. A listed cob wall is attributed to the eighteenth century.
Such physical evidence does not tell the whole story on its own. It becomes more useful when compared with maps, written descriptions, occupations and the chronology of the people known to have used the site.
From inn to farm and family business
The premises were formerly associated with the Ship Inn in Coleford. Their later history reflects a pattern familiar in rural Devon: one property accommodating several livelihoods over time rather than serving a single unchanging purpose.
The Ship Inn association
Evidence for the former inn supplies an earlier layer of use and helps explain the property’s position within village life.
A documented tenancy
An agreement dated 14 February 1872 records John Enderson, described as a butcher, taking premises at Coleford from Lady Day as a year-to-year tenant at an annual rent of £27.
Farmer and butcher
Kelly’s directories record Albert “Bertie” Enderson as a farmer and butcher, adding independently published evidence to the family and property chronology.
A business at the farmhouse
A family photograph records milk retailing at the farmhouse doorway. Used carefully, privately held photographs can preserve details that formal records omit.
Archive anchor: Kresen Kernow, CY/5928, agreement dated 14 February 1872.
The agreement is a firm primary-source fact. The wider identification and story are built by testing it against later property, family and occupational evidence rather than relying on one document alone.
How the history is reconstructed
No single source produces a complete property history. Names can change, census enumerators may record only a hamlet, and a family memory may preserve an important truth without supplying its date. The work lies in reconciling those fragments and marking the difference between documentation, strong inference and an open question.
The result is more than a list of names. It is an account of how a Devon building moved through different uses, how work and family life overlapped, and how surviving evidence can preserve that history for another generation.
This public case study is deliberately selective. It demonstrates the research method without publishing current household details, private financial information or the complete family report.
What could your property reveal?
Begin with a £30 Property History Check to establish whether your Devon house, cottage or farm can be identified in historical records and what useful evidence may survive.
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