Early 19th century farmhouse, Blue House Farm (EHER 81669)

An early 19th century weatherboarded farmhouse thought to have been built in around 1800, and enlarged in the 1860s.

March-May 1999. Fieldwalking survey. The farmhouse is a weatherboarded structure, generally regarded to date to around 1800, and enlarged in the 1860s. It may have been built as part of the improvements that followed the sale of the farm in 1775. The present farmhouse occupies an older site: two buildings are shown on a map of around 1775. However, Blue House Farm seems to have been known earlier as South Marsh Farm, recorded in several deeds dating from 1685. Charles Long Esq. purchased the property by auction on the 22nd August 1775. The premises consisted of: ‘farm house and offices, several pieces of fine meadow and marshland (295 acres) with an oyster ground of 9 acres’. Strangely, Blue House Farm occupies a different site on a map published three years later, in 1777, by Chapman and André. It is depicted on the site on the site of Hyde Marsh Farm (EHER 19585), probably in error. By the time of the tithe returns of the 1840s, Blue House Farm is shown on the original site and comprised a large complex of farm buildings. Some land was lost by 1889, with the opening of a Southminster Branch railway line of the Great Eastern Railway (EHER 80746), the line running East to West across the Northern part of the farm. <1>