Est. 1830
The history of Martins Farm
What the records actually say, and where they stop. Three census returns, one Ordnance Survey sheet, a dairy name on a milk churn, and a building that kept its hat.
How to read this page
Fact, and inference
A farm this size leaves an administrative trail rather than a chronicle. We have marked each entry below as documented where a census return, a survey sheet, a photograph or the estate’s own records support it, and as inference where we are placing Martins inside the ordinary pattern of the Weald without direct evidence.
We have invented nothing: no owners, no hop tonnages, no dairy round, no dates of building or conversion beyond what is held. Where the record is silent, this page is silent.
Census pages and a nineteenth-century Ordnance Survey sheet — the whole of the paper record we work from
The record
A timeline, honestly kept
c. 1830
The estate date
Documented
Martins Farm is described as established in 1830. That date is the one the estate has always carried and the one we use; we make no claim about who first held the ground or what stood here before it.
1851
The Brabons on the sheet
Documented
The Brabon name appears in the census on this side of the parish, in the ordinary agricultural entries of the period: names, ages, occupations abbreviated, birthplaces usually the same parish or the next one over.
1871
The Elphicks
Documented
The Elphick name is recorded in the parish in the agricultural entries. Elphick is a common Wealden surname, so we record the name and the year and resist building a family tree out of a spelling.
1875
The Ordnance Survey sheet
Documented
The survey shows field boundaries close to the lines you can walk today, the track leaving the yard at its awkward angle, and the oast drawn as a small solid rectangle, doing its job.
1881
The Paiges
Documented
The Paige family carries the same ground through the 1881 return. Between the three censuses there are thirty years of documented agricultural households on this ridge above Frant.
Nineteenth century
A working oast
Inference
The building is drawn and described as an oast, and oasts existed to dry hops. What was dried here, in what quantity and by whom is not documented in anything we hold, so we say only that the building was an oast on a Wealden farm.
Undated
Hathaway, on the churns
Documented
Hathaway is the historic dairy name preserved on old milk churns associated with the farm, and it survives in one black-and-white photograph of a horse-drawn Hathaway cart. The name is the whole of the record: we do not know the scale, the years or the round.
Twentieth century
The kiln goes quiet
Inference
As happened across the Weald, hop drying ended and kilns became stores, then problems. Martins followed the regional pattern; the specific sequence here is not documented, and we do not invent one.
Later
The Oast becomes a house
Documented
The oast was restored and adapted into a house with unreasonably round rooms and no straight wall to hang a picture on. The cowl was kept working: it still turns with the wind above the single kiln.
Today
Family stewardship
Present
Ali and Sharon hold the farm under HINE Estate with their son Eddie, and Winston, a golden retriever, since 2021. Fifteen acres, one farmhouse, the Oast, the barn and the older working buildings, kept in one piece.
The Hathaway cart, horse and churns. Photographer and date unknown.
A name, and one photograph
Hathaway
Hathaway is the dairy name preserved on old milk churns associated with the farm, and it survives in this single photograph of a horse-drawn cart. That is the entire provenance, and it is the reason the planned huts carry the name.
We have not found — and will not invent — the years the dairy worked, the size of the herd or the round it served.
Read the census pieceThe buildings
What still stands
The farmhouse
The family house at the top of the yard. Not let, and not open to guests.
The Oast
A single-kiln oast, restored and now let to guests, sleeping four. Its cowl still turns with the wind, which is the last working part of the machine.
The barn and the older buildings
The barn shelters the Morgan. Beyond it there is a quiet space awaiting its next chapter; we will write about it when there is something worth saying.
The same fields, four times over
Four seasons at Martins Farm
Observed, not measured. We keep no weather records and quote none; this is simply what fifteen acres do over a year, and it is where most of the Journal eventually comes from.
Winter
Snow does come, and when it does the yard goes silent and the lane is the first thing to worry about. Frost sits in the low ground long after the ridge has cleared. Boots, and the boot room, earn their keep.
Spring
The hedges fill in along the lane, chiffchaffs start up before anything else, and the ground dries unevenly — hard at the top of the slope, still heavy at the bottom.
Summer
Long evenings, heat held in the yard brick well after dark, and swifts screaming over the buildings for a few short weeks. The meadow is left to grow and cut once, late.
Autumn
The field edges and the woodland turn at their own pace, the light goes low and long across the same fields the 1875 surveyor drew, and everything takes longer to dry out.
Spring: the lane hedges filling in on the way up to the yard
Summer: the meadow left long, cut once after the seed has dropped
Autumn and winter photography to follow, taken here rather than bought in.
Ahead
What is in progress, and what is only planned
None of the entries below carry a completion date, because none of them have one. When something opens, this page will say so.
In planning
The Hathaway Huts
In progress
Two shepherd's huts hand-built by Plankbridge — a living hut and a sleeping hut — forming one private family stay in the left meadow beyond the second tree line. Not yet open and never booked separately.
In planning
The vineyard
Planned
A climatology and site-suitability assessment has been commissioned for the proposed south-facing slope. Nothing has been planted, and any first release is years away.
Planned
Orchard and meadow work
Planned
Orchard planting, hedgerow work and a late single cut of the meadow, all intended to suit the wildlife already using the ground.
Planned
Beehives, and estate honey after them
Planned
Hives are planned for the meadow. There is no estate honey yet, and we will not offer any until there is.
Coming
An illustrated estate map
In preparation
A drawn plan of the estate is being prepared: the farmhouse, the Oast, the barn, the drive, the pond, the meadow, the planned orchard and vineyard, and the meadow site of the Hathaway Huts, with the neighbouring parkland shown only as the edge of the picture.
We would rather wait for a proper illustration than publish a satellite image with labels on it.
The estate today
The Oast is the one part of this history you can sleep in.