A new chapter begins

My family’s history at Venthams starts in 1909 when the farm, forming part of the Nicholson Basing Park estate, was let to Noel Baxendale, my grandfather.

William Nicholson had been chairman of J&W Nicholson & Co, the successful London gin distillery and alehouse business. He was also an MP and keen amateur cricketer, playing for the Marylebone Cricket Club.

Nicholson invested in diverse interests, acquiring his farming estate in 1863. Then in 1866, along with his cricketing neighbour, Thomas Lord, he spent over £18,000 to enable the purchase of the freehold for the Lord’s cricket ground, plus a large loan for the new pavilion.

Venthams farmhouse is thought to have originally been Tudor but was enlarged by Nicholson in 1890. Further expansion by my grandfather around 1910 was in the Arts-and Crafts Lutyens style, incorporating the vernacular exterior brick and flint walls into a galleried hall surrounding an oak staircase. Where we now have polished parquet, my mother recalled “an area of nettles and chickens”.

Amazingly, Venthams has escaped being listed, offering any new owner rare licence to create a home suited to their own taste.

From 1909, Noel Baxendale farmed Venthams as a tenant farmer, until the success of the family’s Pickford’s removals business enabled him to buy the farm outright in 1945.  

A feature of Venthams that I particularly love is the stunning hilltop views over the Hampshire countryside. Noel was an early importer of a Friesian dairy herd, but no one at the time kept dairy herds on top of a hill as a river was needed for their drinking water.

This explains the huge subterranean water tanks under the farmyard for catching water, whilst the large semicircular pond originally fed a lower pond for cattle. The 745-acre farm is now arable, including 250 acres of woodland.

In 1952, Noel Baxendale offered the farm to his middle daughter Ruth Lucas, my mother, so we moved to Froxfield. Eventually my husband, Hugh Toomer, took the reins in the mid 70’s, farming until he died in 2014, and Venthams is now farmed by my nephews, Jonathan and Charles Lucas.