Old Houses

Among the jurors of 1495 were John Dolphin and Thomas Lowe. The site of the Lowe residence is now known, but it may have been Sparkhill Farm. The Dolphin home was Swanshurst Farm. There had been a family taking its name from that place in the C 13th. In 1392 John Swanshurst was schoolmaster and chantry priest at St. Edburgha's. The Dolphins succeeded them, and it may have been the 1495 John who built the main hall at Swanshurst which survived until 1917 - though it cannot be claimed that this stood on the same site as the original farmhouse.

To the C 15th hall, which was open to the roof, a first floor with dormer windows was added, and in 1600 a close-studded wing was built alongside. About that time Ashfield Hall and Little Sarehole were built or rebuilt, both in chequerboard timbering. Grove Farm was erected perhaps as early as the C 14th, being then called Fulford (foul ford ?) Hall. A parlour wing was added in about 1600, and a service wing a half-century later. Coldbath Cottage on the Greethurst estate was probably a Stuart hunting lodge; it has, or had before its drastic modernisation, a carved Jacobean fireplace. Oldhouse Farm and Longfield Hall were of the same period. Evidence about the other known buildings is lacking, but that they were all half-timbered with thatch or Yardley-tile roofs and moated may be guessed.