Farrar Farm

This house, recorded as early as 1874 as 'Farrer House', takes its name from Rev Richard Farrer, Rector of Ashley, a nearby village, from 1773 to 1809.

When the open fields of Farndon were enclosed in 1781, Rev. Farrer was allotted 78 acres of land on the eastern side of the village, extending back from where the house stands.

The house was built in stone and the date 1769 appears on a stone in the older part. This was presumably when it was built, most probably by Rev. Farrer. He is also recorded as having a house on the square in Market Harborough. Did he live in his Rectory at Ashley at all?

He may have let the Farndon farmhouse out to tenant farmers.
The house passed on through the Farrer family until it came to the daughter of a Richard Farrer. She was Louisa and she was married to Sir Henry Morgan Vane. The house has another date, 1865, higher up the wall in the middle of Victorian brickwork, with the initials H.M.V. It is clear from this that the original stone building was enlarged in brick in 1865 by H.M. Vane.

Vane's son, Henry de Vere Vane, became Lord Barnard in 1892, when another branch of the Vane family died out. He and his son and successor to the title were the last Lords of the Manor of East Farndon. The house and land continued in the hands of the Vane family, though let to tenants, until they sold it in 1967.

The change in spelling from 'Farrer' to 'Farrar' was simply a mistake, which has stuck.