The Brown Family

Juda and Thomas Brown were tenants of Park Farm between about 1800 and 1853. Juda was a Tempest. She was born in 1780, the eldest child of John Tempest, a yeoman farmer, and his wife Elizabeth (nee Webster). Juda had an illegitimate child when she was 16, a son, Thomas Tempest, brought up by her mother with her younger siblings.

A year later Juda married Thomas Brown. The couple went to live at Park Farm where Thomas already rented several fields from the Tempests, Thomas Tatam and Dorothy Webster Trowell, a relation of Juda’s mother who lived at The Outwoods and later at Thornhill.

Juda and Thomas had 14 children. The first three were born in Little Eaton, then the family moved to Kirk Ireton where they lived and farmed at “Millfields” for about 9 years. Juda, Mary, Lucy, Alice, Maria and Ann were born there and baptised at Holy Trinity Church in Kirk Ireton.

 Three of the Brown’s daughters died young:  Mary aged 5 in 1811, and Maria and Ann aged 3 and 1 in 1814 within a week of each other. They are buried at St Alkmunds in Duffield. Their names were used again for 2 of the later children.

Soon after their young children died the Browns moved back to Little Eaton and Park Farm.  4 more children were born. Park Farm, later described as “ 3 rooms upstairs and 3 rooms downstairs” would have been very small for such a large family, but the 3 eldest children had left home and daughters Juda, Lucy and Alice went to live and work with Dorothy Webster Trowell and her daughter Elizabeth, by now at Thornhill, Markeaton. 

Later their brothers John and William joined them in their early teens.  All 5 Brown siblings stayed at Thornhill for many years.  John Brown grew up to manage Thornhill farm.  William became the Trowells’ butler, bailiff and Steward. He eventually married Cecilia Triffitt, the Trowells’ ladies’ maid in 1856 after Dorothy Webster Trowell had died but they both stayed on working for Elizabeth until she also died. They were left substantial legacies and land, including Eaton Hill, by Elizabeth Trowell in her will.

Daughter Alice (b.1810) became the Trowells’ housekeeper until she married Thomas Bailey in 1853 ( again, after Dorothy Webster Trowell died).  Lucy stayed at Thornhill until she married Thomas Turner in 1834 and Juda married William Wootton in 1841.

They and their descendants were also left land and property by The Trowells, including The Limes. 

The Brickwood Family

The Browns’ youngest daughter Ann married John Brickwood in 1850, after her father’s death. The couple stayed on with Ann’s mother Juda, farming at Park Farm.

Juda died in 1853. The Brickwoods farmed Park Farm (by this time 102 acres, the largest farm in Little Eaton) until 1864 when they returned to Thornhill where their eldest son Thomas was already farming with his uncle John, Ann’s brother.

John Brown retired in 1871 and died aged 60 in 1875. Thomas took on the farm, helped by his parents until they died at Thornhill in 1886 and 1897, and then continued farming until not long before he died in 1917.

 John and Ann Brickwood had 3 sons (one died aged 3) and 5 daughters, including twins, all except the youngest born at Park Farm. 3 of them returned to Little Eaton when they married.