Clophill House

James Bedford later sold his properties in 1825 - the middle section of the old Millcroft estate - to Thomas Parrish, who is shown as the owner in the Clophill Enclosure Map of 1826. The Horton's moved into Clophill House, now with only 10 acres of Home Close next to and behind it. A son, John, was born in 1811 followed by a daughter, Eliza, in 1809. Mrs Horton died in 1812 and John never re-married, but was looked after by his sister Mary. He died in 1836 leaving the property to his children, neither of whom married.

They moved back to Mill House and Clophill House was redecorated and re nted out for much of the next century. Most of its tenants were retired clergy. The first tenant was Mrs Dorothy Webster, widow of the Rev James Webster, Rector of Meppershall, who died in 1841. The next tenants were Rev and Mrs John Mendham, parents of the Rector, John Mendham, who had taken over after the death of William Nethersole in 1844.

Eliza Horton died in 1848 but her brother John remained at Mill House and continued to let out Clophill House. In 1854 John Mendham died, but his wife Ann continued at Clophill House until her death in 1870, outliving even her son the Rector who had died in 1869. His successor as Rector, the Rev Gustavus Bosanquet, installed his brother, the Rev Cecil Bosanquet, at Clophill House.

John Horton jr finally died in 1872 and the whole property was sold, with the tenants in residence, to Frederick Titmus. He then subdivided the land to create a small dairy farm which he ran from a new house, now 51 High Street, built in front of the old Clophill House barns and next to the old post office - still owned by Thomas Parrish. Clophill House was sold with 3 ½ acres of land behind it to Thomas Hassall Adcock, a farmer from Haynes who continued to rent it out. The field was about half its current size consisted only of its left side bounded by a diagonal line from the stables to the Mill Lane cottage, which had been bought by Mendham and was now owned by the trustees of his estate.

At about this time, 1870, the stable had been built and the garden was extended beyond the ha-ha to provide a carriage drive with the entrance on the corner of Mill Lane and running up the left side of the garden and then along what is now the narrow lawn to the stables. This clearly turned out to be unsatisfactory as only a few yerars later in 1876 Adcock purchased the other half of the field from Titmus and a further sliver of land beyond the vegetable garden to provide a new drive down to the High Street and give Clophill House more or less its current land area. The old carriage drive, with its wrought iron gates on the corner, was grassed over to become a narrow lawn. Bosanquet also added the bathroom by extending the front of the house for an extra bay over what had been a lean-to room downstairs.

The Ordinance Survey maps of 1883 and 1892 show the new stables in existance, and also the new farm building built by Titmus, where both had been absent from earlier maps. The 1883 map shows the garden with its current rectangular paths while the 1892 map shows the garden having been extended into the field to its current bounday.