East Meon estates

At the same auction, estates and farms in the parish of East Meon were also sold. Prominent is the Agricultural and Sporting Estate of 530 acres, comprising Hyden and Coombe Woods, as well as three important farms to the south of East Meon village, South Farm, 576 acres, Lower Farm, 257 acres, and Hyden Farm, 85 acres. It is notable that this sale took place at the time when farmers from Cumbria had settled in much of the Meon Valley. Click here for an account of this migration. (George Atkinson, the progenitor of the Atkinson family which has farmed at South and Lower Farms ever since, is mentioned as the tenant of South Farm, at the ’low rent’ of £291.)