The de Fraines of Chartridge

Thomas Turner de Fraine was a son of the de Fraine family of Aylesbury, where his father published the Bucks Herald. He was unusual in his family in wanting to be a farmer and his father sent him to learn about farming to John Tompkins who lived at Ivinghoe and Horseden, then at Avely Hall in Essex. There Thomas Turner met Rosa Ellen whom he married in 1890 in a double wedding with her brother Edwin Osborne and Susan Gillett. Thomas and Nellie (as she was known) set up home at Chartridge House and Thomas began farming. His land extended from Westdean Lane down to the top of Chartridge Hill and included the two woods above Pednor Lane. He farmed a mixture of arable, cattle and sheep, but his great love was breeding and showing shire horses. It's not known when he also moved into breeding pheasants but he set up the Bucks Games Farm sometime in the early 1900s and used the woods for setting out the young birds, who were guarded from predators by gamekeepers who slept in the wooden bird house. The field between the woods and Pednor Lane held the shooting buts.

He seems to have employed a large labour force from the village. When Nellie died in 1922 aged only 56, her obituary notes several local names in J. Dwight, J. Chilton, A, Cox, E. Cox, W. Cox, J. Rance, C. Roberts, A. Paxton, Mr and Mrs Higgs, Mrs Talmer and Mrs Musey, as giving wreaths from the employees. Nellie is noted as taking an interest in the Women's Institute, which was just beginning, and aiding the Nursing Association. Thomas belonged to the Chesham Conservative Association and it was coming home from there in his pony and trap that he caught the chill that killed him in 1928. Much of the farm land was disposed of when he died leaving the woods and the fields nearest Chartridge House.

Thomas and Nellie had four children. The two daughters Henrietta (known as Queen) and Dorothy (Dot) had married and left home before their mother died. His eldest son Leigh had had his inheritance. He had been apprenticed as an agricultural engineer to Messrs Boughtons at Chalfont. He had joined the Royal Flying Corps in 1918 but was invalided out and his father helped him set up a workshop in part of the farm yard (now the Warren business site) behind the old farm cottage (Old Cottage), and he began his steam haulage and agricultural engineering business, which continued until his death in 1978. John was left the farm and he continued running the Game Farm until 1939 when he joined the RAF, then the rearing of pheasants ceased, and much of the land was let. After the war John started to farm in Sussex and did not return to Chartridge. Leigh joined the Chartridge Parish Council in 1950, after being a Special Constable in Chesham all through the war. He was Chairman for a total of seventeen years, and was also Chairman of the committee of the Chartridge Horticultural Show and Sports day which Thomas had started. He was also elected to the Amersham Rural District Council where he served for fourteen years, latterly as Chairman. and as a JP. He had interests in the Chiltern Traction Engine Club and his outstanding work for the National Playing Fields Association locally received an award from the Duke of Edinburgh at Buckingham Palace. He was married twice, first to Molly Tompkins the daughter of Edwin Osborne and Susan who had married the same day as his parents. They divorced and he married Muriel Ashwell. After the war when the army left Old Cottage and the family returned, Muriel was an indefatigable worker for the Chartridge Show and for the Women's Institute, holding several offices including president, before she left Chartridge in 1979.

Dawn Lewcock, May 2007