Many of the farms that once covered Basildon, Laindon, Lee Chapel, Langdon Hills, Pitsea and Nevendon have disappeared almost completely. Some were substantial working farms, while others were small dairy farms, horse paddocks or mixed holdings. Their names survive in roads, parks, schools and neighbourhoods, even though the fields and farm buildings themselves have often vanished beneath the New Town.
Markhams Chase area
Bluehouse Farm was one of the best-known farms in old Laindon. On the Chapman and André map of Essex published in 1777 the farm appears under the older name Little Gobions. In later years it became closely associated with the Markham family, who farmed extensively around Laindon and Langdon Hills.
The farm was strongly connected with dairying. The Markhams worked Bluehouse Farm and supplied milk locally, and the family's name survives in Markhams Chase and Markhams Close. Part of the farm's land was used for Markhams Chase Primary School in the early 1930s. Bluehouse Farm was also technologically notable for rural Laindon: in 1912 it had the telephone number Laindon 2, one of the area's earliest telephone connections.
As Basildon New Town developed, the old farmland disappeared beneath housing and public open space. The farmhouse remained occupied until around 1972, but after becoming empty it was vandalised, damaged by fire and demolished. Its remaining land was absorbed into Markhams Chase Recreation Ground, which had already been created partly from former Bluehouse Farm fields.
Great Berry / Langdon Hills
Great Berry Farm was another farm associated with the Markham family. The family farmed extensively at Great Berry as well as elsewhere around Langdon Hills and Laindon. Local recollections identify Dan Markham with Great Berry, and milk from the farm played a part in the area's small independent dairy trade.
When Sonny Firman began his Langdon Hills milk-delivery business in 1932, milk was collected in churns from farmer Dan Markham at Great Berry. It was bottled and initially delivered by trade bicycle before the growing business progressed to horse-and-cart deliveries. This provides a particularly good glimpse of how local farms supplied everyday food directly to nearby communities before supermarket distribution became normal.
Primrose Hill / eastern end of Lee Chapel Lane
Lee Chapel Farm had a particularly long history. Records connect the farm with Sir Brian Tuke by at least 1540, followed by the Petre family in the seventeenth century and the Gambier family in the nineteenth century. White's Directory of 1848 described Lee Chapel as having only eleven inhabitants and one farm, showing just how rural the district once was.
The property later passed through several families, including the Chataways, Bass, Jacksons and Freegards. The farmhouse was destroyed by fire in 1915. Today the surrounding landscape is radically different, but the farm is important because it demonstrates that Lee Chapel existed as an agricultural community centuries before Lee Chapel North and Lee Chapel South were created.
Lee Chapel Lane
Park Farm, also remembered as Park Dairy, was established by the Jackson family. Dairy farming was a major part of life in this area, with cows milked locally and fresh milk supplied to surrounding homes. Unlike many of the farms lost entirely during New Town development, part of the Park Farm building survived and was later used by a landscape contractor.
Lee Chapel South
Castlemaine Farm was one of the rural properties that stood in Lee Chapel before the New Town estates. Local memories suggest it was particularly associated with horses and paddocks rather than being a large conventional arable farm. The Chataway family were associated with the property.
The farm's distinctive name survived the disappearance of the old rural landscape. When a new public house opened in The Knares in 1963 it was named the Castlemayne, deliberately preserving the old local farm name.
Near Nightingale Avenue
Nightingale Farm stood close to the junction of the southern end of Nightingale Avenue and the western end of Lee Chapel Lane, part of which was formerly called Oxford Street. The Grove family were living at the farmhouse by 1918 and were still remembered there by local residents in later decades.
The surrounding Nightingale Estate developed on land that had once belonged to the farm. The farmhouse itself eventually disappeared and houses now occupy its former site. Local historical accounts have also recorded claims that its demolition occurred mistakenly, although surviving recollections do not provide enough evidence to state that as established fact.
Lee Wootens Lane / present St Luke's Hospice area
Fobbing Farm stood in what had once been the northern part of Fobbing parish, in countryside between Lee Chapel, Langdon Hills and Basildon. Samuel Colbear and Muriel Clark are remembered in connection with the farm, with Clark operating a riding school that was sometimes simply known locally as 'Muriel's'.
The farm also experienced the dangers of the Second World War. A V-2 rocket struck at Lee Wootens Lane/Fobbing Farm in January 1945, damaging the farm and outbuildings and breaking windows over a much wider area, although no casualties were recorded in that incident.
During the 1980s the site was chosen for St Luke's Hospice. The lease for Fobbing Farm was signed in 1985, the freehold was later acquired, and work on the hospice began in 1989. The hospice opened in 1990. The old farmhouse was retained and became part of the hospice's administration accommodation.
Former Cranes Farm Road area
Cranes Farm was one of the most historically significant farms swallowed by the New Town. The farming connection is traditionally traced to the family of Hugh le Crane in the thirteenth century. In later records the property was also known as Great Spenders.
The McCheyne family were the final occupants of the farmhouse. They sold the farm and a substantial amount of adjoining land to Basildon Development Corporation. The farmhouse disappeared in 1959 as the area was transformed into Basildon's first major industrial estate.
The farm itself may have gone, but its name became deeply embedded in modern Basildon. Cranes Farm Road, Cranes Lane, Cranes Court and Cranes Close all preserve it, while the industrial estate itself became known as Cranes.
Nevendon
Frampton's Farm was a substantial Nevendon holding rather than a tiny smallholding. A 1952 compulsory-purchase notice described the property as approximately 85.857 acres, including the farmhouse, cottages and farm buildings. The farm was therefore part of the extensive agricultural landscape that existed immediately before large-scale New Town development.
Nevendon Hall was also historically associated with William Pigott, who farmed at nearby Frampton's Farm during the late nineteenth century. As with Cranes, the transformation of Nevendon from farmland to industrial and residential development made farms such as Frampton's increasingly difficult to recognise in the modern landscape.
Wash Road
Puckle's Farm has an especially important place in Laindon's social history. Laindon landowner John Puckle died in 1617 and left his lands to provide money for charitable purposes, including maintaining a schoolmaster to teach poor children in the parish.
Nineteenth-century records describe the charitable holding as a farm of about 62 acres. Income from the land contributed towards education, coal and clothing for poorer residents and other local charitable purposes. The modern road name Puckleside was introduced in the 1970s in memory of John Puckle and the historic farm.
London Road, Pitsea
Blue House Farm in Pitsea should not be confused with Bluehouse Farm in Laindon. The Pitsea farm became associated with Harold George Howard, a major local landowner, farmer and businessman who founded Howard's Dairies around 1900.
Howard's dairy enterprise grew from local farming into a substantial milk business with shops, depots and hundreds of delivery rounds. Howard lived for a time at Blue House Farm. His influence on Pitsea extended far beyond farming: he was responsible for much of the distinctive mock-Tudor development around Pitsea Broadway, and Howard Park was created from land connected with the Howard family. The old Blue House Farm name continues to be used at the London Road site.
Lower Dunton Road
Brookmans Farm appears in early twentieth-century records for the Laindon area. By the mid-1930s its telephone number was still the very short Laindon 8, placing it among the relatively small number of locally connected properties during the early years of telephone use. Although less information survives publicly about its day-to-day farming than for Bluehouse or Great Berry, its presence is another reminder of the many individual holdings that once surrounded Laindon.
These were not isolated exceptions. Before the New Town, farms and smallholdings were spread across almost the whole designated area. Some specialised in dairy cattle, some kept horses, and others combined livestock, crops and market gardening. Green lanes and unmade tracks were used to move animals between fields, while milk could pass directly from a nearby farm to local households.
New Town development did not simply demolish a few farmhouses; it reorganised an entire landscape. Yet names such as Bluehouse, Great Berry, Cranes, Castlemaine, Markhams and Puckles continue to preserve fragments of that older geography in present-day Basildon.