Woodfalls Farm (now Squirrels Holt)

A Whiteparish local history page from younsmere-frustfield.org.uk


Squirrels Holt is at the bottom of this map section (OS 1:25000 out of copyright)

Woodfalls Farm was built between 1842 and 1896 and was recorded on all maps from 1896 to 1926. By 1967 it had become Squirrels Holt. [Pin down the date more precisely.]


Woodfalls Farm on the 1896 1:2500 OS map (Old-maps.co.uk)


Woodfalls Farm on the 1901 1:2500 OS map (Old-maps.co.uk)


Woodfalls Farm on the 1926 1:2500 OS map (Old-maps.co.uk)


Woodfalls Farm on the 1966 1:2500 OS map (Old-maps.co.uk)


Woodfalls Farm on Google Earth (Copyright 2014 Google)

We encountered this building and the nearby Squirrels Holt house when walking in Cowesfield Wood in 2005 and it was still there in 2018. The footpath that used to run past it has been rerouted and now leaves the wood a quarter of a mile (400 metres) to the northeast. It is just outside the Whiteparish boundary and lies within Melchet. Both the house and dairy barn appear to be pre-1896, both having been altered and enlarged a number of times.


What I have recorded as Park Water Dairy, previously part of the Woodfalls Farm complex and with a recent extension at the near end (photographs from March 2005)


A closer view showing the construction more clearly - brick with asbestos roof on the nearer section, timber and corrugated iron beyond. Four of the five roof ornaments are visible in this picture; as can be seen on the aerial view above the fifth is on a lower section at the far end of the building. On a full resolution version of this picture the tip of it can be seen beyond the far roof line.

[There is another photograph of this building in this 2005 set, plus a new one 109-DSC_0459 with ivy taken in April 2022]


The dairy is the building on the right with the 185.95 foot Ordnance Survey Benchmark on the corner
1966 1:2500 OS map on Old-maps.co.uk

[This file was named "Park Water Dairy": it is not impossible that I invented this name at the time to keep a record of it. It will be worth renaming the photographs to Woodfalls Farm Dairy.]