Bowden

Formerly in parish of Cheriton Bishop, now in (the modern parish) Drewsteignton. Manor of Lampford.

by

Sophia Lambert (August 2005)

   The earliest spelling traced is Bogheton (1333). Later it was also spelt Bowdon, Bowrton and Bewdon. 

    Bowden is a common farm name in Devon. The second part of the name comes from the Anglo-Saxon –tun or farm; the first part may refer to a nearby geographical feature that was curved like a bow; this could well be the curved hill that shelters the back of the house. Bowden was part of the Manor of Lampford that belonged to the Fulford family of Great Fulford in Dunsford. The house may partly date from the 15th century when it would have been a small hall house with a central open fire-place. It was one of the many tenant farms on which the Fulfords depended for their income, and they may have built the house for a 15th century tenant to replace a decrepit earlier building.

    Historically, the farm was in Cheriton Bishop, whose boundary with Drewsteignton ran along the old A30 through the middle of Crockernwell. However, after the A30 dual carriageway was built, the boundary was moved north to align with the new road and Bowden is now in Drewsteignton.

The following are the main mentions of Bowden in the records.

•    1431: a deed in the Devon Record Office records that in 1431 John Borne and John Eggbeare granted “Thorn, East Pittyn, South Bowden, North Bowden, Wotton, Heah’, Yeo by Westwater, Wade and land in Crideton” to Thomas Kyngwill at Thorn. There is no mention of manor or parish, apart from the reference to Crediton, but it seems possible that the Bowdens referred to are those in Cheriton Bishop, especially as there are farms called Thorne and Pitton nearby. The witness to this property transaction was one John Gorven (an early spelling of the name Gorwyn), who was probably a neighbouring landowner from the farm now called Gorwyn. The deed seems to indicate that at that time the property was held by a “freeholder”, probably owing services such as a few days’ labour to the Lord of the Manor.
 
•    1651: Bowden is mentioned in the will of John Gorwyn or Gorwin of Cheriton Bishop, husbandman. He bequeathed the “chattel lease of Bowden” to his son Richard.  This lease was probably a traditional 99-year lease granted by the Fulfords and “determinable” on a number of lives – i.e. the lease was terminated or “determined” when the last of up to three specified people had died. So it seems that by the mid-17th century the property had been absorbed or reabsorbed into the Fulford estate and John Gorwyn was their tenant. There is no record of how big the farm was at that time, but it was probably a relatively small farm of some 50-70 acres. John Gorwyn had substantial property and left other farms to other sons. In particular, he appears also to have been the owner of the rather grander farm of Lambert, which was next door to Bowden, so he probably did not live at Bowden. Bowden was to remain in the hands of the Gorwyn family for the next 240 years, no doubt with regular renegotiations of the lease with the Fulfords to ensure that the farm was kept in the family. For the Gorwyns, who were an extended family of rich yeoman farmers, Bowden was probably a small property held mainly for investment purposes, and was only used as a family home when there was a younger son for whom a spare farm was needed.

•    1656:  the John’s widow, Alice, is recorded as paying the church rate for both Bowden and Lambert (possibly because Richard was still a minor when his father died), but again it is not clear where she lived. 

•    1673: Cheriton Bishop parish records show the church rate for Bowden being paid by “occupants”, indicating that at that time the Gorwyns were subletting the farm.

•    1707: the will of John Gorwyn of London, cooper, refers to his cousin “John Gorwyn of Bowden”. So by then one branch of the Gorwyn family had definitely taken up residence there. The house had an addition made to it in the second half of the 17th century, and this may well have been done by John Gorwyn when he moved in. 

•    1726-1742: Richard Gorwyn, probably the son of John Gorwyn, seems to have inherited the leasehold as he was paying church rate for Bowden between 1726 and 1742.

•    1737: Francis Fulford granted a lease of “North Bowden” to Richard Gorwyn of Drewsteignton. So it seems that by then Richard had moved to Drewsteignton, where the Gorwyns also owned property. The lease would have been a renegotiation of an earlier lease. The rent was 7s.6d a year, and the lessee had to pay a “heriot”  or charge of £4 to the Fulfords each time one of the “lives” died. Again, Richard probably never lived at Bowden (from the 1740s he appears to have lived at Lambert). It seems that, after the John Bowden mentioned in the 1707 will, they never again lived there. 

•    1763:  on the death of Richard, ownership of the leasehold seems to have passed to his son John Lambert Gorwyn (1719-1765), who also lived at Lambert, and no doubt continued to sublet Bowden.

•    1765: on the death of John Lambert Gorwyn, the leasehold passed to his widow Mary Lambert Gorwyn.

•    1767: Mary negotiated another 99-year lease with the Fulfords, determinable on the lives of Elizabeth Pitts (probably the tenant, as in 1776 she was recorded as the occupant of Bowden) and of Mary’s own two sons John and George Lambert Gorwyn. 

•    1771: Mary paid the Fulfords £430 for the freehold of “North Bowden” and a number of cottages in Cheriton Bishop. The Fulfords had got heavily into debt and Bowden was one of several farms that were sold to their tenants around this time.  Under the sale agreement Mary and her successors were required to pay a small 1s. annual “reserved” rent in perpetuity to the Fulfords as Lords of the Manor. 

•    1797: on Mary’s death, ownership of Bowden passed to her eldest son John, a rich bachelor who lived at Lambert and appears to have farmed Bowden alongside Lambert, as he is recorded in land tax records as being both the owner and the “occupier” of Bowden (an “occupier” did not necessarily live at the farm, but merely that he had it in hand and had not let it out). John seems to have put farm labourers in the farmhouse and/or any cottages belonging to the farm (most farms had a cottage or two to accommodate their agricultural labourers).

•    1812: John took a 9-year-old apprentice called William Chudley for Bowden – i.e. to work on the farm. He probably stayed with one of the agricultural labourers living there.

•    1821: according to the census record (which uses the spelling “Bewdon”), two agricultural labourers were living at Bowden with their families. They were John Beer, age 45, with his wife Ann; and James Rogers, age 27, with his wife and his two very young children John and James, together with another 7-year old child called Elizabeth Pillar. So it seems that the house had been converted into two separate residences. Both men were no doubt working for John Lambert Gorwyn of Lambert.

•    1823: John Lambert Gorwyn died, bequeathing the farm (along with most of the rest of his extensive property) to his nephew William Lambert Gorwyn of Wallon in Drewsteignton. William appears to have let the farm to tenants, probably neighbouring farmers who wanted extra land, as the dwelling on the property continued to be occupied by agricultural labourers.

•    1841: the census records that “Bowdon Cottage” was still inhabited by two agricultural labourers and their families: William Hill, age 35, with his wife Mary and five children ranging in age from 15 down to 2; and William Mudge, age 45, with his wife Esther and six children, ranging in age from 15 down to 3 months. 

•    1842: farm was part let to Richard Bolt.  

•    1851: the census again records two separate dwellings at Bowden, both described as Bowdon Cottage. One of the dwellings was still occupied by William Hill and his family. His wife is described as a handloom weaver of serge. Crediton was a big centre for the woollen trade and it was common for wives in nearby villages to supplement the family income by weaving cloth for the market. His eldest daughter, by this time 22, was still living at home but was described as a house servant, so she probably worked for a nearby farmer’s wife. His 21-year old son had followed his father by becoming an agricultural labourer, very probably working for the farmer who had leased Bowden from the Lambert Gorwyns. The other cottage was occupied by another agricultural labourer, John Tancock age 31, with his wife Susan and three young daughters.

•    1853: William Lambert (as he had begun to call himself) died. It seems that none of his children were interested in farming; his surviving son William had become a solicitor in Exeter. William senior obviously hoped that the next generation would return to the land, as he left his property to his solicitor son but entailed it so that it could not be sold in his lifetime, and also decreed that William junior was not to give leases on any of the property lasting more than 21 years. Bowden, like the other properties, therefore continued to be let out. The names of the tenants are not known, but the 1890 sale document described below says that the property had by then been for many years in the hands of John Strong, who farmed in Drewsteignton and for whom the land at Bowden was probably a useful addition to his holdings.

•    1861: the census (describing the property as “Bewdon Farm”) records that William Hill and his wife are still there with two of their children and a grandchild. There had been yet another change of occupant in the other dwelling: Samuel Beer, a 41-year-old agricultural labourer with his wife Harriett and four children ranging from 14 down to two.

•    1871: the census still shows two families living at Bowden. Samuel Beer was still there with his family, but William Hill had obviously retired or died by this time, as the census shows the other dwelling occupied by an agricultural labourer called Samuel Ponsford, age 28, with his wife Ann and four children ranging from 9 down to 1 year old.

•    1881: the Beer and Ponsford families are still living at Bowden.

•    1890:  William Lambert senior’s hopes that the younger generation would come back to farming were not realised. William junior’s two sons, Charles James and John Speare Lambert, became respectively a solicitor and a ship’s surgeon. In 1890, shortly after their father’s death (which brought the end of the entail), the two young men and their mother sold Bowden to Albert James Hamlin (also spelt Hamlyn). It remained in the Hamlin family for almost 30 years.

•    1891: Samuel Beer and his family were recorded by the census as the only occupants of the property.

•    1901: George Carthew, a carter working on a farm was living there with his family.

•    1919: The Hamlins had mortgaged the property and finally sold it in 1919 for £700, probably to pay off the mortgage. The purchaser was George Ponsford, from a well known local farming family. George Ponsford does seem to have farmed the property himself, and it probably continued to be let to a neighbouring farmer.

•    1934: George Ponsford seems to have had money problems and taken out mortgages on the property. In 1934 he sold the house and 7 acres to the Norrish family of Spreyton for £600 (George Ponsford may have hung onto the rest of the land). In what was presumably a family transaction, Elizabeth Norrish transferred Bowden in the same year to William Norrish of Rydon farm for £900 (the difference in price may be something to do with the complicated mortgage arrangements). William Norrish also acquired another 7 acres a few days later. Rydon is not far from Bowden, and he presumably farmed Bowden along with Rydon, again using the house for his farmworkers. 

•    1937:  Bowden house, by now with only 14 acres attached to it, were sold for £1,150 to Agnes Michell of Moretonhampstead. 

•    1951: Agnes Michell sold Bowden, possibly with some extra land, to Rosina Esther Segust of Sussex  for £5000.

•    1957:  Rosina Segust in turn sold it to Joan Mary Cutler and Hilda Mabel Dinsmore. All these owners probably treated the property as an investment, leasing it out.

   The house at Bowden was a typical cob and thatch Devon long-house. The 1890 sale document describes Bowden as a six-roomed farmhouse, “at present used as two dwellings”, with garden and outbuildings, consisting of piggery, stable, shippen and linhays. The land was described as about 75 acres of useful arable, pasture and meadow-land and coppice in a ring fence (see map below). The document recorded that the occupant had been for many years paying a rent of £41 per annum.

Plan of Bowden farm in 1890 sale document.

FIELDS BELONGING TO BOWDEN FARM IN 1890

Sources: 

The Place-Names of Devon, ed. .A Mawer and F. M. Stenton, pub. 1932, Cambridge University Press.

Deeds and wills in the Devon Record Office and in a private Devon collection.

John Gorwyn’s will of 1651 in the National Archives.

Cheriton Bishop parish records.

Census records.

Deeds in the possession of the current owners (for the late 19th and 20th century owners).