Poynders End

Preston, Hertfordshire
in the Nineteenth Century

To Preston

Hitchwood

Cottages

Poynders End

Cottages

Poynders End Farm

To Hill End

To Little Almshoe

Ippollitts

parish

Hitchin

parish

Map of Poynders End Farm and Cottages in nineteenth century

parish boundary

* *

Well

Detailed map of Poynders End Cottages and well

Hill Cottage

Tudor Cottage, Poynders End in 2006

Poynders End is named after the Poydres family who owned land and property in the area at the turn of the fourteenth century. There is a memorial brass in the north aisle of St Ippollitts Church which reads, ‘Here lies Robert Poydres and Alicia his wife’.

The place name has been variously spelt - Pointers, Poynters, Poyters and the modern spelling - Poynders End.

Poynders End is nearer Preston than Langley or St Pauls Walden and its inhabitants invariably described themselves as being from ‘Poynders End, Preston’.

Although sharing the same place name, Poynders End farm and Poynders End cottages were in different parishes and were also part of different estates in the nineteenth century.

Poynders End Farm was in Ippollitts parish. This ancient dwelling was extensively renovated in the middle of the seventeenth century, after which it looked much as it does today. In 1703 Poynders End was sold to John Joyner and four generations of his family farmed there. It was then purchased for Hester Thrall - ‘the place I earliest attached my silly heart to’. She was a ‘dazzling hostess’ and counted Dr Samuel Johnson among her social circle. When she decided to build a new home at Denbigh in 1792, she sold Poynders End to Joseph Darton and thereafter it was included in the Temple Dinsley estate.

When Temple Dinsley was sold in 1873, the sale particulars stated that Poynders End Farm included a bailiff’s house, a spacious homestead and 90 acres of ‘sound productive stock land’, 71 acres of which were in Ippollitts parish. The annual rent was £137 10/-. Incidentally, the farm had a well which was 329 feet deep. The present-day house at Poynders End is called ‘Tudor Cottage’ (see above).

The four Poynders End cottages (aka Jacks Hill) were in the parish of Hitchin and were part of the Hill End farm estate. They were semi-detached, built of red brick and tiles and were the homes of farm labourers. The cottages had three rooms and a scullery and ‘good gardens’. The residents even had their own well, which was 180 feet deep. Because the well was in the possession of another landowner, the tenants of the two western cottages had to pay five shillings a year for the right to be able to draw water.

Residents of Poynders End in the nineteenth century

1799,

SAUNDERS, Joseph

MERRITT, Widow

1821

BROWN, George

BROWN, William

ANDREWS, Thomas

HATTON, Elizabeth

ROBOTTOM, Thomas

LAWRENCE, Thomas

1841