Church Farm

Church Farm, The Town

At the end of the 19th century the copyhold for Church Farm was held by the Hawkins family and then, through the marriage of Dorothy Hawkins, the Tempest family.  Selina Tempest died in 1892 and the property was vested in a Trust. The Law of Property Acts 1922 and 1925 abolished the tenure of copyhold and the property became owned by four members of a Trust, all descendants of the Tempest-Harvey family.

For much of the 19th century Church Farm was occupied by the Salmon family, with the farm for many years run by Sarah Salmon, widow of Jebez Salmon. Sarah was the granddaughter of john Vickers of Vickers Row.  In 1870 George Thums, a butcher by trade, came from Nottingham. He moved to Derby where he married Elizabeth Wilkinson and they then came to Little Eaton with their seven children. The Thum family lived at various times at both Park Farm (Top Farm at the top of Vicarage Lane) and Church Farm - also referred to as Bottom Farm. The brick extension on the south-east side of the property was the family butcher’s shop until the early 1960s.

In 1953 the freehold for the farm was bought by George’s grandson, Leonard Thums, from the surviving trustees. Between 1959 and 1960 Leonard sold off 3 plots of land 2 on Rigga Lane and one looking over Eaton Bank. Leonard died intestate in 1973 and the house, all outbuildings and remaining plots of land around the village were vested in his wife Clara Thums.

Over the next ten years Mrs Thums (in 1975 to become Mrs Clara Hill) sold off all the land attached to the farm. She also sold The Stone Barn and The Long Barn (as they are now known) to BM & FM Mitchell in 1974. She rented rooms in the house to a doctor.

In 1992, the house was sold to Jeremy and Dianne Campbell and then to the present owners, David and Hilary Young in 1993.