This property as we know it today was named by a farming family who relocated from a farm named after the village of Braunton in Devon, to Northamptonshire. John Pike and his family arrived in the county in 1900, hiring a special train to transport their farming stock to Thrapston, where they first operated in this region.
This stone house is built on the south side of Main Street with land running down to the Willowbrook. It is of an historic structure that dates back to the early 17th century, with extensions added in the later 17th, 19th, and 20th centuries. It is built of squared, coursed limestone and lias stone, with some parts featuring banded stonework. The roof is covered with Collyweston slate; a traditional roofing material from this area.
Originally, the house had a two-unit plan, but it has since been altered into a T-shaped layout. On the left side of the house, there is a single-window range on the ground floor, featuring a 19th-century casement window set beneath a wooden lintel. The return wall of the cross-wing (the side part of the T-shape) also has a one-window range, with similar windows on both the ground and first floors. On the right side of the building, a former lean-to structure, originally attached to the gable end, has been raised and rebuilt in brick, now with a flat roof. There are also some interesting architectural features, including a blocked 2-light stone mullion window and a single-light window with a moulded stone surround.1
As with many farmhouses which front the village street, the working buildings that housed animals, grain, machinery, and so on were located behind the house. Like many of the properties in 
Woodnewton, identifying the original inhabitants of village houses has proven difficult even with local records. However, the 1778 Tithe Map reveals that No. 66 was owned by the Earl of Westmorland. The ledger records William Goodyear as the tenant of a property that included a house, barn, yard, and homestead, spanning 2 acres, 1 rood, and 23 perches, with a rent of £2 19s 11d.
Moving on to the next century, a positive confirmation of residents comes from the first detailed census record, taken on the night of Sunday, 6 June 1841, which shows John and Elizabeth Baxter and their family living at the property. In addition to the census, we have a further clue, the booklet: The Barfields of Woodnewton notes that Samuel Barfield, who married Sophia Baxter (a farmer’s daughter) in 1850, lived across the road from the White Swan.
John Baxter and his sons continued to farm from this property until sometime between 1851 and 1861. By the time of the 1861 census, John had retired, although he was still living at the property. His son-in-law, William Landin, was then recorded as the head of the household and listed as the farmer, working alongside his son, Robert. John Baxter died in 1868 and was buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s Church.
Robert Landin continued to farm the property. We know that his father, William, died in 1874 and his mother, Alice, in 1886. When the Earl of Westmorland placed the Apethorpe Estate up for sale in October 1892, the sales sheets record the tenants of this property as Robert Landin and Simmonds Mold. None of the Woodnewton properties were sold at that time, and the estate later passed to Henry Brassey when he purchased Apethorpe Estate in 1904. By the time of the 1901 census, Robert Landin, his wife, and their nine children had moved to Kimbolton, where he was recorded as a grocer and shopkeeper.
It is not possible to state with complete certainty who the tenants of this property were in 1901. At that time, brothers Philip and James Cooke are both recorded in the census as farmers in Woodnewton, but the census entries do not provide sufficient detail to confirm that either of them occupied this particular property.
By the time of the 1911 census, we know that Watson Parsons was the enumerator for Woodnewton, and we are able to locate his residence, which is the neighbouring plot to the property under consideration. This allows us to be confident that, by 1911, Samuel William Fenn of Nassington was farming from this property. He was still living there in 1915 when his son, Jack, was born, but then moved to Kings Cliffe by the time his daughter was born in 1919.
We can now confidently refer to this property by its house name, Broughton House (albeit with a slightly different spelling), as we have reached the period when the ancestors of the present owners first arrived in Woodnewton. From this point onward, the evidence for our account is firm and well-documented.
In 1918, John, his wife Elizabeth, and their daughter Florence purchased Broughton House and moved to Woodnewton. John was already of retirement age, and the farm buildings were therefore used by other members of the family. Sadly, John and Elizabeth spent only a short time in the village, as both died in 1922 and are buried in the churchyard of St Mary’s Church. Florence subsequently moved away, and the house stood empty for a period.
John’s eldest son, Herbert Thomas, had purchased Willowbrook Farm around the same time his father moved to Woodnewton. In 1940, following his own retirement, Herbert moved up the road to live at Broughton House, while his second son, Richard George, who had recently married, continued farming at Willowbrook Farm. Shortly after the move, in 1942, Herbert’s wife Thomazin died, and Florence returned to Broughton House to run the household for her brother. Although Herbert was retired, the buildings and surrounding land continued to be used for farming purposes.
Following the deaths of Herbert in 1961 and Florence in 1962, the house was renovated and restored by village builder Charlie Gilbert. On completion of the work, the present-day generation of the Pike family took up residence. They continued to rear pigs and cattle in the farm buildings, with sheep grazed on nearby land. The farming business expanded, with arable farming carried on alongside the existing livestock enterprises. When farming finally ceased at the property in1990, planning permission was granted for the conversion of the farm buildings into individual residential dwellings.
A member of the Pike family still lives at Broughton House today, making it the only house in the village to have been continuously occupied by the same family for more than a century.
Footnotes:
1. https://her.northamptonshire.gov.uk/RecordSearch?rt=mon&q=broughton+house
2026