Mr Mark Stevens, County Archivist, writes: This plan is a unique, contemporary representation of a property then known as Upper House Farm (D/EZ218). The farm sits within the ancient parish of Basildon, which is to the west of Reading and bordered by the Thames. The plan shows the farm buildings in elevation, field names, acreages and the state of cultivation. It was drawn for its owner, William Rawstorn, a London merchant. It consists of two membranes of parchment pasted together, measures 1345mm by 745mm and is surveyed at a scale of 40 inches to one mile.
The owner was the son of Sir William, who served as master of the Worshipful Company of Grocers and was Sheriff of London, 1677-1678. Rawstorn junior died in 1747 and Upper House Farm was subsequently incorporated by the 2nd Viscount Fane into his adjacent Basildon estate.
As part of that estate, the farm was sold in 1771 to the nabob, Sir Francis Sykes, who built its mansion house known as Basildon Park. Sykes expanded the estate further, as did his successor, James Morrison, a wealthy London draper who purchased it in 1843. In 1929, Morrison’s descendants sold the estate to the 1st Baron Iliffe, a newspaper proprietor who never lived at Basildon. Both Iliffe and his successor, George Ferdinando, sold off parts of the estate, including Upper House Farm and the mansion’s contents. What remained was reacquired after the Second World War by the 2nd Baron Iliffe and later given to the National Trust. Upper House Farm remained in private ownership.
Today, the property is known as Hillfields Farm and is an event venue and equestrian centre. The buildings shown on this plan still stand. The principal range is immediately to the northwest of Basildon Park.
The surviving Basildon estate records exist mostly in two collections at the Royal Berkshire Archives: one maintained by the Morrison family and another by the 2nd Baron Iliffe. Both include material for Upper House Farm and William Rawstorn’s plan is presumed to be a stray from one of these collections. Almost certainly, it shows the farm’s extent as it stood at the point of acquisition by Sir Francis Sykes. It provides a valuable addition to our understanding of how the wider Park was formed and remodelled during the later in the 18th century, and to how the spoils of the East India Company were reinvested in English property.
